I always said that if I went for my PhD, James Brown would play a starring role in my dissertation, along with Muhammad Ali and, just maybe, Ice Cube.  I’m still about six months away from finishing up this M.Ed, so that PhD in American Studies and its Ali-Brown-Cube dissertation is still off somewhere in the misty future.  Regardless, since I have some time, I think I may try to whip up something decent over the next couple days.  In the meanwhile, I guess I’ll run something from the old website.

20 Favorite James Brown Records
Y’all know I’m deep on James, so chances are that many of these may be records you’re not exactly familiar with. But that’s cool. It’s my job to purvey some edumacation. So let’s get down.

20. Escape-ism - 20 minutes of funk! Twenty minutes!! But the break at 2:39 is a beast.

19. For Goodness Sake, Look At Those Cakes. - Clearly during the decline, but the title is kinda funny and James’ rap/spoken word is a good hot mess. Emphasis on good, though.

18. Santa Claus, Santa Claus - A Christmas blues. And I’m talmbout some sho’nuff blues.

17. I Can’t Stand Myself (When You Touch Me) [Sex Machine] - The intro kills it, as does the fact that it’s obviously really recorded live as opposed to some of the other songs on Sex Machine. But the thing to peep on live records is how those screeches and yowlps and whatnot acted as directions to the band.

16. Gittin’ A Little Hipper/ Get It Together - These are two versions of the same song, with Gittin’ A Little Hipper being the more jazzified instrumental version, which was then funkified as Get It Together. I love Get it Together because the lyrics kinda make no sense, but they’re hot anyway. As in, “you may dance good/ you may have fast feet/ but you ain’t hip/ your business is in the street.” Now that’s the goodness. That, and the fact that on GIT, James takes the jam apart and puts it back together over the course of the 9 minute jam.

15. I Got You (I Feel Good) - It’s almost like a cliche, and a part of me feels that I should put somethin on there that people would be less familiar with, but this is just undeniable proto-funk. Not exactly funk, not just yet, but it’s in the prevenient stages.

14. Say It Loud (I’m Black and I’m Proud) [studio] - Again, everybody knows this one, but always remember: in addition to being about racially Black, James also wrote this as an anthem for those of us who are dark-complected, back when them light-skinneded dudes was in style.

13. Talking Loud And Saying Nothing - Nice groove that didn’t really eat me up at first, but really got me once I heard Bootsy’s bass backflip at 5:59.

12. Kansas City [Say It Loud And Live] - One of James’ show standards, but they ROCKED it that night.

11. Somebody Done Changed The Lock On My Door - James coming at it from a straight-up blues perspective. James was tailor made for the blues, because there the actual singing voice is second to emotion. The yowlp at 2:57 is scientifically valid.

10. Get On The Good Foot - Just for the bass solo. Makes me get on the good foot.

9. Cold Sweat [studio] - Bam! The thing most people fail to realize is that this is actually a love song. But does it get funkier than this? Not by a lot. The studio version of this is my favorite, mostly because of how tight the high hat is. I wanna say this is Jabo Starks (so howcome I googled it and my name came up 2nd? And I still don’t have my liner notes!), but it could be Melvin Parker. Either way, this is the groove.

8. The Payback - One-take Hov, meet One-Take James and his one-take band. Freestyled lyrics and all.

7. Make It Good To Yourself - I’ve only heard this song as two interludes on two different albums, but I kinda spliced em together to make a whole song out of it. This joint is monstrous. This is the screeching, howling, band-controlling James at his best. And the way the drum bubbles and pops like it’s at a low boil is just sickening.

6. Funky Drummer - You wanna trace the evolution of Black music from a certain style of orchestral R&B through to funk, this is the jam to do it. Takes you from the 2-4 to The One. Clyde Stubblefield. There are some tight drum solos out there, maybe some that I might even be in a mood to hear more frequently, but this is the prototype of the tight, controlled solo. “Don’t turn it loose! Cuz it’s a mutha!” The Maceo solo at 7:17 is hot too.

5. There Was A Time (I Got To Move) This is actually an combination of two songs, There Was A Time and I Got To Move. Actually, it’s the lyrics from There Was A Time (for the most part) on top of a sped up version of I Got To Move. Check for Catfish Collins on the guitar solo.

4. Mind Power - One of my favorite James songs, and not just because De La sampled it for Stakes Is High. This jawn takes three different forms. In the first part, the guitar percolates in the background as James raps (not in the current sense) about the social conditions that prevailed at the time. Then, at 4:01, the horns come in and kick the song back into the next groove. Then the guitar ushers the next flip at 6:49. Then they go backwards through each different groove until they’re back at the beginning. Twelve minutes of grooving.

3. Soul Power - Bootsy on the bass and that little horn section he had in 1970 representing for all it was worth. Bad. News. See when I think of other bands and whether they coulda took out the JBs, I keep hearin that extended note at the end of the bridge and I’m like….I think not. They’re especially bad on this joint, when they’re arranged to accompany in a call-and-response pattern. Vicious.

2. Make It Funky (pts 1-4) - Take your pick of elements. First, there’s the intro, which is where I take the titles of my playlists from.
Bobby Byrd: Wha’chu gon’ play nah?
JB: Bobby, I don’t know. But whas’n'ever I play, it’s got to be funky.
Then, one time in a Black Aesthetics class, I used this as a prototypical song, because it includes so many elements of Black culture, right on down to the menu. James represents with Neckbones! Candied yams! Turnips! Smothered snake! Grits and gravy! Cracklin’ bread! Snap peas! Mobile gumbo! A hunk of cornbread! Buttermilk! Well how can you top that? The track, that’s how.

First, as was common at that time, James had the band completely flip the track from the main groove to the bridge. That was beastly enough, but then in part 4, he has Fred Wesley do a solo. We ain’t even gonna mention the little ribald joke JB throws in there. But the call-and-response between James and Fred is nooooo joke. And then, he gets his guitarist in there, playin’ like BB King. This song would easily be my favorite JB record if it weren’t for the last one.

1. Let A Man Come In And Do The Popcorn. For my money, this is the James Brown song. Not that James didn’t have some songs where lyrics were important, because he did. And he also had some great old-style R&B songs, although I’m not necessarily all that crazy about most of those. But when it comes to the funk, Let A Man Come In is what it was all about.

First, James had his whole, original, sprawling, orchestral band gunnin’ and runnin. This is partially what makes the jam. He separates the brass and the woodwinds and gets them into descending phrases at different speeds, so it’s like the woodwinds are walking gingerly down the stairs, then the brass come running down in front of them and jump onto the floor.

High-hat? Tight. Bass? Beast. Lyrics? Nonsensical as they should be to bring the funk through. “Water boy, the boy with the bucket/ if you didn’t want the job, you shouldn’t oughta tuck it.” Sayyyyy what?! But that’s what makes it so good. And then comes part two.

Fred kicks part two off with the trombone solo. Workin it. Killin it so bad, James tries to talk on top of it but the funk is too strong for him for him to say anything intelligible. I got-ta-git-ta-guh..Huh! And then to close it out, James takes it to church.

He don’t take it to church content wise so much as stylistically. Old-school preacher style. Reverend Cleophus James style. Easter morning. How do I know it’s Easter? Because of the way he screams Early! In the mo’nin! Breakin it down by the clock, until at the moment of the song, he jumps out and lays out the JB yell of all time, soundin for all the world like somebody just gave him a hot foot. And then the brass punch in right behind him. Ri. diculous.

I got this from a post on Okayplayer, and I thought that it was probably the most appropriate way to start my however-long commemoration of The Kang.  So with no further ado…

1. Best Use Of “Funky Drummer”: I wanna say Rebel Without A Pause, but…Mama Said Knock You Out is very close.
2. Best NON “IT TAKES TWO” use of “Think”: Golddigger - EPMD.  The little “She bad, Hank” sets off the action just right.
3. Best Use Of “Funky President (People Its Bad)“: Eric B For President
4. Best James Offspring Production Use In Hip Hop: “Four Play” - Fred Wesley and the Horny Horns in Packet Man - Digital Underground
5. Best St Clair Squeal PE - Rebel Without a Pause.  No. Question.
6. Best Non PE St. Clair Squeal- ??
7. Best James in RnB - Hold On - En Vogue
8. Best James in Pop - I don’t know pop that well.
9. Best Use of his Vocals - Golddigger - EPMD
10.Best “holy shit THAT was JAMES BROWN?” - There Was A Time - Dee Felice Trio.  There Was A Time is a James Brown staple, and I thought I had heard it every way there was to hear it, but I was stone-cold wrong.  You know that sample from Chubb Rock’s Treat ‘Em Right?  That bass line?  It’s from here.
11. Best JB Album Cover - Black Caesar is pretty hot.
12. Best Haterade James -
13. No JAMES NOOOOOOO!!!!!: The rapping on For Goodness Sakes, Look At Those Cakes.  Sheesh.
14. Best JB just hanging with the boy’s banter on wax: “We gotta go on a Jesus crusade like the rest of ‘em…” from More Peas.  But More Peas is just a gold mine of banter in general.
15. Best JB Drummer:  Gotta give the nod to Stubblefield, although Starks always represented, and Melvin Parker plays on my all-time favorite James song.
16. Best JB Label
17. Irony In The Fire
18. Tell the truth…Eddie Murphy started your interest in JB: Yes or No:  Naw, what really got me into JB was hip-hop.  Started tryin to source all those samples I loved.  That put me on the quest I’ve been on ever since.
19. The Best James On TV to school a youngin:  This clip of JB doing Sex Machine and Soul Power.  Note the extremely tall bassist in the background.
20. The Funkiest Moment captured on wax:  So many to choose from, but Let A Man Come In And Do the Popcorn is, to me, the absolute essence of everything James Brown was about.

I wake up on Christmas morning to find out that James Brown has died. He was getting up there, so I knew it would happen eventually, but I wasn’t expecting it now. That’s not the way to digest my Christmas bacon.

It’s doubtless that there will be literally hundreds of obituaries detailing everything he did over the course of his illustrious career, and there’s probably not much I have to add to that. Not in the traditional sense, at least. Sooner than later, I’ll try to break it down scientifically and provide some context for the playlists that you KNOW are coming. But for now, just suffice it to say I’m missing the legend already.

On a lighter but related note, does this mean Al Sharpton is going to cut his hair?

Well, I went to see Rocky Balboa, and I’ve got ambivalent feelings about it.  Being a person who has seen all four of the Rocky movies that count literally dozens of times, I know how the movies are supposed to go.  I know the formula, even when there’s not quite supposed to be one.  So going in, I pretty much knew what to expect.  And really, nothing happened that I wouldn’t have expected.  What this movie does is actually put a nice bookend on the series.  It matches the original in several ways, which kinda makes me better able to rationalize the tremendous suspensions of disbelief that are required to make it work.

I know what I kept saying before, but during the movie, I stopped wanting him to die.  I woudln’t have been able to tolerate it if Rocky had won, but I wasn’t really ready for him to die, either.  The way it turned out literally streched my credulity to its edge, but it was acceptable.  I think what did it was that Rocky was always a very likable character to me.  That didn’t change in this movie.  He’s just a hard dude to root against.  Mason Dixon, on the other hand (one of the worst movie names of all time) is hard to deal with.  At times, he comes across as someone who needs guidance.  At other times, he comes across as this arrogant punk who needs Rocky to lay him low one time.  It doesn’t quite work.

In a way, I think that’s about how it is for the whole movie: it doesn’t quite work.  It makes sense on some level, but noooot quite.  Like I said before, Rocky Balboa as all-time great heavyweight fighter doesn’t really make sense.  Rocky was very popular, but he was never really great.  Mason Dixon vs. Apollo Creed on a computer would have made much more sense, but then with Apollo being dead and all, there wouldn’t have been much of a movie for us to watch.  Likewise, taken out of sequence with the other movies, this movie kinda makes some sense, but not exactly.  The common sentiment is that Rocky V never happened, and Rocky Balboa accepts that, at least to a limited degree.  Rocky really did lose his money, but all that business about the brain damage and hearing the angels and whatnot?  Nuh-uh.  He’s in fine fightin’ shape.  Which I suppose I can accept, but for the sake of the continuity of the series, I would have at least liked some type of explanation about the medical aspects of Rocky fighting again.  We know there was a faith-based message…did Rocky get The Touch?  Maybe it’s like Superman Returns, which kept some elements of Superman II and threw away the rest.  I will say that Rocky Balboa feels more like a proper conclusion to the series than Rocky V ever could have.

It wasn’t great, or necessarily even very good.  It was decent enough to be what it was, though, and I guess that’s all I needed it to be.  Well, I guess I needed it to be better than Rocky V, but that ain’t hard to be.  Either way, it worked enough to go the distance, but not enough to win.  Which, I suppose, is fitting.

If I Ever Lose This Heaven - Minnie Riperton
Nearer Blessed Lord - Nina Simone
Bitties In The BK Lounge - De La Soul
Ain’t Misbehavin’ - Fats Waller
I Can’t Stand Myself (When You Touch Me) - James Brown
Love Me Two Times - The Doors
Not Just What You Say - Fred Hammond
Miuzi Weighs A Ton - Public Enemy
I’m Just A Bill - Schoolhouse Rock
Walk Tall - Cannonball Adderley
Super Soul Sister - Heatwave
Real Raw - Craig Mack
Fat City Strut - Mandrill
Cosmic Slop - Funkadelic
Don’t Wanna Be A Fool - Luther Vandross
Jesus Children of America - Stevie Wonder
Two Words - Kanye West, f. Mos Def & Freeway
Who Stole The Soul - Public Enemy
Yearnin’ Learnin - Earth, Wind, & Fire
It’s A Demo - Kool G. Rap & Polo
Sophisticated Lady - Art Tatum

I’m jackin’ this from DarkStar.  I don’t know if he intended it as a meme, but this is just too good to walk past.

• chitlins

• P-Funk
• James Brown
• Al Green
• Barry White
• Bobby “Blue” Bland]
• Muddy Waters
• Neckbones
• Nappy kitchens
• Duke Ellington
• Count Basie
• Jimi Hendrix
• Marvelous Marvin Hagler
• Ebony
• Jet
• Page 43 in Jet
• Snappin, cappin’, dozens, or joning (depending on where you live)
• AAVE
• Standard English
• the four-syllable word
• Don King
• soul food cuisine
• foot in the pot
• “Get yo’ hand out my pocket!!”
• quiet strength
• the laughing mask
• Fiddy
• Oprah
• Assimilation
• oppositional identity
• Jesse Jackson
• Jesse Peterson
• Al Sharpton
• Stanley Crouch
• Mae Jemison
• Guion S. Bluford
• Pigmeat Markham
• Dr. Ralph Bunche
• Redd Foxx
• Richard Pryor
• Bill Cosby
• Aretha Franklin
• Tamara Dobson
• M.C. Lyte
• George & Weezie
• James & Florida
• Cliff & Clair
• Not-snitchin
• droppin’ dimes

wait til i think of some more…

There weren’t any animals in the manger, but jackasses still managed to show up.

PETA mistakenly targets church’s nativity scene

The pastor at Anchorage First Free Methodist Church was mystified. Why was the activist group People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals chastising him? No animals are harmed in the church’s holiday nativity display. In fact, animals aren’t used at all.

People, however, do dress the parts — Mary, Joseph, the wise men, etc. The volunteers stand shivering at a manger on the church lawn in a silent tribute to Christmas.

The Rev. Jason Armstrong was confused by an e-mail this week from PETA, which admonished him for subjecting animals “to cruel treatment and danger,” by forcing them into roles in the church’s annual manger scene.

“We’ve never had live animals, so I just figured this was some spam thing,” Armstrong said. “It’s rough enough on us people standing out there in the cold. So we’re definitely not using animals.”

So I went and saw the new James Blond Bond picture, and I must say that I’m fairly impressed. Fairly. It ran a little long for my tastes, but it was good. The action was good, and the new James Bond, Daniel Craig ,was pretty good. Throughout the whole picture, I really couldn’t get past that light hair, but as I looked, it kinda made sense. If I remember correctly, dark hair is less distinguishable than light hair, so it makes sense that he would’ve changed as he got more into the business of being James Bond. That did seem to be the theme of the picture, after all. Yeah, he was James Bond, but he was a rookie at it. He got better.

As far as the picture itself, the most impressive character to me was the first mini-villain he chased. That dude was like a real-life Spider-Man. Dude was runnin and jumpin and flippin through windows, and all that stuff. I was sorely impressed. I remember thinkin that if it took all that for me, I would’ve just given up the secret. Some of that stuff was pure madness.

One thing that was interesting for me was watching the movie the way I tell my students to watch, maintaining sight of all the elements of plot that I teach. I was in the movie theater, drawing the same story map that I put on the board for them to copy.

****

Jared has an interesting post on the Christian themes present in the character of Rocky, particularly as typified in the new film, Rocky Balboa.  

All that’s well and good, but I’m tryin’a tell you:  I’m a Rocky FAN.  I’m not gettin the boxed set, I been had the boxed set.  And if that dude does not die in the ring, I will be this close to disavowing myself of the entire series.  I’m not sure what it is that’s irking me about it, but something about this last entry is just rubbing me the dead wrong way.  Unless he dies in the ring.  It’s not necessarily about him losing the fight.  Of course he should lose the fight, and it really shouldn’t even be close.  But this is Rocky, so it’s gonna be close.  But if this dude lives, the possibility for another movie will remain.  And it shouldn’t.  Okay, let’s break it down scientific-like.

Rocky was about 30 years old when he got the call from Apollo, give or take a year.  Which basically means that his career as a name-brand heavyweight started when most fighters’ physical tools are diminishing.  Then he has two wars with Apollo.  Okay.  Then there are the ten title defenses against less-than-stellar opposition.  “Good, but not hungry,” as Mickey described them.  Then there’s that brutal loss to Clubber Lang, and the Apollo-like regaining of the title.  Rocky’s next fight is against Ivan Drago, and we all know how that turned out. 

So now the premise of this next film, per the preview, is that some computer program has, in a set-up of all-time great fighters, pit Rocky against the reigning champion.  My first problem is this:  how is Rocky an all-time great?  In all honesty, he should never have even won the belt, because if Apollo had used an ounce of sense, he would have stayed away in the 15th round, and that would be that.  But taking things as they “actually” happened, the mark of a champion is his opposition.  His inquisitors, Clubber Lang excluded, were tantamount to a Bum of the Month club.  The win over Lang was quality, and I suppose the win over Drago should count, but then that makes 2 title wins and 11 defenses.  That’s not an all-time record.  Sorry.

But then that’s my beef with the premise of the picture.  I can suspend my disbelief for a lotta things, but the idea that a 60-year-old heavyweight would be able to contend with the heavyweight champion is beyond laughable.  Especially one WITH BRAIN DAMAGE!!!  If Rocky was some dude who had kept himself in shape all these years, and had never had any health problems, livin nice and easy, stayin in the gym, then I still wouldn’t buy it, but it would make a little more sense that he could actually get a license to fight.  Hardscrabble hand-to-mouth?  Are you serious?  And I know much of the plot is probably supposed to address these concerns, but I ain’t buyin it.  The only thing I’m evaluating this movie on is whether he dies in the ring. 

May be kinda morbid, but that’s how it is.