JAMES BROWN AT SHORELINE

Rip It Up, Issue 13, 1 July 1978, Page 8

JAMES BROWN AT SHORELINE

Alastair Dougal

James Brown probably invented funk and could lay a substantial claim to being the grand daddy of disco. It’s not easy to appreciate the importance of James Brown from New Zealand for Brown is a figure whose influence musical, political and social has always been most significant on the American black community.

During the late 50s and early 60s he mounted the James Brown Revue which travelled back and forth across America playing mostly to all-black audiences. It's on this arduous circuit that Brown developed the show that became legendary with Brown working his audiences into a frenzy that climaxed when he would collapse in an exhausted heap at the centre of the stage at each show. His attendants would rush forward, drape a purple cloak over him and help him slowly off th the stage. Suddenly he would fight off his helpers and force his way back to the microphone, only to collapse after forcing out another chorus. Again his

attendants would assist him off the stage, this time draped in a different coloured cloak, to find that he forces them away and ... so on. Brown never left the stage until at least his fifth time through the routine. In Auckland to perform at two cabaret shows, the routine is now reduced to a mere two capes and a perfunctory run-through, but it was the only aspect of the show that was. Brown is now at least in his mid 40s but his onstage energy and commitment remains impressive. His movements the distinctive fast-foot shuffle and press ups now come in short bursts, rather than the show-long athletics he once managed. Power is still his trademark. He has one of the loudest, most harsh voices in all of popular music. Onstage his tiny frame seems to contain more power than he dare let loose. After the fast songs, he has to visibly compose himself before he can tackle a moving version of "Georgia on My Mind” it’s as if he didn't contain this strength, he would overwhelm the song. The fast songs display Brown’s taste for simplicity. He’s stripped the soul formula to its basics rhythm and voice. As one writer has noted: "Attacking Brown for being repetitive is like attacking Africans for being overly fond of drumming. "But it’s the slow songs "Please, Please, Please”, "Try Me”, "It’s a Man's, Man’s, Man’s World” that show off Brown’s talents as a singer, his ability to wring the most out of a phrase.

For "It’s a Man’s World" he almost dispensed with the lyrics and for several verses just hammered those words. With Brown’s characteristic power and intent, you knew he meant it. After the show, Bryan Staff of IZM and I talked to James Brown. He's an impossible mixture of the jive-ass and the friendly. He welcomes everybody as brothers, while he sits having his hair permed. So did Mick Jagger really steal his stage movements from Brown, as legend has it. Brown isn't telling. "I’m not going to talk about Mick. Mick and I are good friends. I don’t think as a performer I should say anything.” But he reacts explosively to the suggestion that disco is merely watered-down soul music. “Yeah, you’re right man.” But admits that disco will “be a broader scope for us." Thus Brown is peddling his 1978 sound under the title of heavy disco. “But this new disco is really heavy soul. But I water some of it down too otherwise people wouldn’t understand it.” By now, it's three thirty in the morning and Brown has to leave to catch the five thirty plane to Australia. He’s changed his clothes, his hair’s finished and he delivers his parting message: "I just want to say to the people out there ‘Hope you live two hundred years and I live two hundred years minus one day, so I never know beautiful people like you have passed away. God bless you.”