April, come she will. Before she
leaves I’m squeezing in one more review.
Disc 731 is…. Make it Funky: The Big Payback 1971-1975
Artist: James
Brown
Year of Release: 1996 but with music
from (duh) 1971-1975
What’s up with the Cover? Almost prayer-like
in his concentration, James Brown prepares to deliver the funk.
How I Came To Know It: My friends Nick and Spence both
had this album and played it often. I coveted it for years but could never find
it. I even contemplated burning a temporary copy off of them, but couldn’t do
it. James Brown may be dead, but that doesn’t make it OK to steal from his
grave. Buy your music, people.
How It Stacks Up: This is a compilation album so it doesn’t stack up.
Rating: Compilation albums don’t get
ratings, but if they did this one would do very well.
There is no one funkier than James Brown and his
band. Song after song on this compilation deliver riffs that make your spine
slide around in all kinds of pleasing gyrations.
It is no wonder that rap samples James Brown more than
any other artist. The grooves are so sharply delivered you couldn’t do better
even if you sampled and looped them. They slink along in a rhythm that makes
you strut when you walk. Even though my walk to work is only twenty minutes,
the groove stayed in my bones for hours after I reluctantly took the head
phones off. I would go so far as to say
if you aren’t strutting when you listen to “Make it Funky” you aren’t listening
hard enough.
The backing band are all virtuosos and James Brown
is a masterful – if demanding – band leader. He is the Glenn Miller of his day,
directing things with his voice as he demands the drummer to “get on top of it”
and then “get into it” and the drummer seamlessly makes the necessary adjustments.
Elsewhere he tells the trombone to play different styles of jazz in time with
the groove, getting exactly what he wants every time.
All these instruments ‘hitting it’ and ‘quitting it’
in perfect time creates a crisp, layered groove where you can generally take it
all in, or bend your ear now to the bass, now to the guitar, now to the horns.
Whatever way you choose to focus, it always works.
If you prefer lyrics, the lyrics on this record aren’t
that exciting. There are songs where Brown tackles inner city issues, such as “King Heroin,” “Problems” and “Funky
President (People It’s Bad)” but this isn’t the focus of this music. This
is music to make you move and have a good time.
In fact, the sillier Brown gets with his proto-rap
delivery the happier I am. On “World of
Soul” he spends most of the song just yelling out astrology signs followed
by “Can ya hollah?” “Gemini – can ya hollah? Aquarius – can ya
hollah?” His timing and enthusiasm are so good he makes such pointless
rambling cool.
On “I Can’t
Stand It” he calls for the band to play various forms of funk – “Georgia funk!” “Saltwater funk!” “Hambone
funk!” – all of these funks sound the same, but they all sound awesome. You
know they are having an effect on Brown as well, who at one point exclaims “I feel so funky I want to take off my watch
and ring.” I think we can all agree that when you take off your watch and
ring, it means you are feeling exceptionally funky. He later takes off his
shoes for the same reason. At this point I would also take off my socks,
because you just look silly in only socks, but this development is not
mentioned. But I digress…
The songs on this album take their time to unfold.
Many are six to ten minutes, but because they are such a pleasant groove you
don’t mind. The best of them is “Hot
Pants, Parts 1 & 2” which is the sexiest, funkiest song on this album.
A song that leaves you feeling satisfied and sweaty, but a little bit
disappointed that there just aren’t more songs written about hot pants.
It isn’t all perfect, though. At 13:50 “Papa Don’t Take No Mess” doesn’t have
quite enough over the top exhortations or funky riffs to sustain itself. I
would have cut this one off at 8:00 or so, but you can’t order the funk around
like that. Funk is like the tenth muse; she comes when she pleases and you risk
her wrath if you try to cut her off before she has fully shook her thang.
There are also remakes of earlier songs that have
been funkified, including “I Feel Good.”
I’m not a fan of “I Feel Good”
generally, and while the funky version is better, it doesn’t do enough to make
me love it.
While overall I prefer a slightly earlier period
(196-1969 which is represented on “Foundations of Funk” (reviewed back at Disc 621) there are tracks on “Make it Funky” that you simply must own if you
are a James Brown fan. In addition to “Hot
Pants” you need to have “The Payback”
and “My Thang” or you haven’t lived.
I
slightly broke the rules on this album – getting my work station set up as I
listened to the last five minutes or so of “Papa
Don’t Take No Mess” and when I got home feeding the cat as I listened to
the last five minutes of the funk. The whole two disc set is over two hours of
music though, and allowances had to be made. I never insulted the Muse of Funk
though; I was struttin’ and swayin’ the whole time.
Best
tracks: Hot
Pants Parts 1 & 2, I’m a Greedy Man, Don’t Tell It, The Payback, My Thang
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