The Grandfather of Soul
May. 10th, 2005 01:09 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
millariSaw James Brown tonight at the Calvin Theatre. Bought tickets as a social event between me and GF, my father and his girlfriend. Damn pricey, too. But it felt good to be able to afford a bit of a luxurious gift to my father, who has done so much for me financially throughout my life. I thought he would get a big kick out of seeing The Godfather of Soul on stage before the man up and died. I thought it could be kind of cool to say I'd see James Brown once, although, going in, I had privately felt the concert could totally go either way. I mean, the odds were that by this point, he was *way* past his prime, and it was just going to suck pathetically, like Elvis in the 70s. Or, he could be still freakin' amazing, dancing and singing his heart out to the very end of his days. I really didn't know. I was bolstered in an optimistic view by the thought that perhaps all that prison time had got ol' JB lean and mean like a sex machine and ready to wow a crowd.
Sadly, this is not the case. The whole show seemed a lot more like "James Brown Presents" than an actual James Brown concert. He had his band prep the audience with instrumentals for the first 10 minutes before he even came onstage. Then, he spent much of the show turning the mike over to solos, to other singers, and even to one of the dancers, who he briefly let rap unintelligibly. During your average song, he spent about two minutes singing, and seven or eight minutes hiding behind the keyboard letting the band play. Sometimes, he sang with his back to the audience, and my father pointed out that another stage singer who was there to do all the parts like, "Get on up" had a very similar voice, and so he proposed that this guy was actually singing some of JB's parts for him.
The band was very talented, and at times fun, but I felt![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
grinninfoole hit in on the mark when he said, "I feel like there's some gravitational pull to these guys to become the Mohegan Sun All Stars house band. Every once in a while, they'll go back to not sucking, but yet they keep not making it quite out of orbit."
In short, the whole show's structure seemed calculated to conserve JB's fleeting stamina for the last half hour of the show, so he could sing, "Living in America," and "Sex Machine" with enough vigor. The whole thing was fun in a mindless, groupthink sort of way, but a pale shadow of the legend. And what's more, he didn't even play "Papa's Got a Brand New Bag," much to my father's disappointment. I think JB knew he couldn't handle it. He couldn't use the speed and driving rhythm of that song live anymore. He couldn't go back in time to 1963.
Despite general agreement on this point, my father still wanted to try and wait to get a glimpse of the legend getting into his ridiculously stretch Lexus. We waited for 45 minutes at the back door by his limo. We were finally rewarded. He came out and signed autographs and let the crowd take pictures of him.
This was when The Godfather of Soul is the improbable age of 73.
So I guess I can cut the man some slack. He still can do his awesome scream, anyway.
Sadly, this is not the case. The whole show seemed a lot more like "James Brown Presents" than an actual James Brown concert. He had his band prep the audience with instrumentals for the first 10 minutes before he even came onstage. Then, he spent much of the show turning the mike over to solos, to other singers, and even to one of the dancers, who he briefly let rap unintelligibly. During your average song, he spent about two minutes singing, and seven or eight minutes hiding behind the keyboard letting the band play. Sometimes, he sang with his back to the audience, and my father pointed out that another stage singer who was there to do all the parts like, "Get on up" had a very similar voice, and so he proposed that this guy was actually singing some of JB's parts for him.
The band was very talented, and at times fun, but I felt
grinninfoole hit in on the mark when he said, "I feel like there's some gravitational pull to these guys to become the Mohegan Sun All Stars house band. Every once in a while, they'll go back to not sucking, but yet they keep not making it quite out of orbit."In short, the whole show's structure seemed calculated to conserve JB's fleeting stamina for the last half hour of the show, so he could sing, "Living in America," and "Sex Machine" with enough vigor. The whole thing was fun in a mindless, groupthink sort of way, but a pale shadow of the legend. And what's more, he didn't even play "Papa's Got a Brand New Bag," much to my father's disappointment. I think JB knew he couldn't handle it. He couldn't use the speed and driving rhythm of that song live anymore. He couldn't go back in time to 1963.
Despite general agreement on this point, my father still wanted to try and wait to get a glimpse of the legend getting into his ridiculously stretch Lexus. We waited for 45 minutes at the back door by his limo. We were finally rewarded. He came out and signed autographs and let the crowd take pictures of him.
This was when The Godfather of Soul is the improbable age of 73.
So I guess I can cut the man some slack. He still can do his awesome scream, anyway.
