JB84

Around 1980, James Brown suddenly became a reference point

So this Cabs song from 1984 is a bit behind the mark

Here's an earlier tune that name drops him ("Jaaaaames Brown") along with a bunch of other funk and black dance innovator ("Bohannon Bohannon Bohannon Bohannon", "reggae's expanding with Sly and Robbie")



The flipside of the Cabs single continues the homage with the wittily titled "Bad Self (Part One)"



There is little indication in the lyrics to "James Brown" why it is titled "James Brown".

The lyrics sound more like Michael Gira

With a touch of this fellow - who now I think of it, might have been the person who started putting James Brown back on the rockworld map




One band who got JB via JC/JW was Fire Engines.






See it's hard to remember the extent to which - back then - really recent pop history could just drop out of memory. When I first saw the name, circa 1980, I had no idea who James Brown was except that he had something to do with funk.

Suddenly he was being spoken of with such reverence and relevance, that I set out forthwith to do some catching up.

But there was nothing in print except for a live album recorded in Japan at the end of the 1970s. That's how I first heard "Sex Machine", ""Papa's Got a Brand New Bag", etc - as these slightly padded-out live renditions, not the skeletal minimalism of the recorded originals.

I'm guessing this must be the one - although the cover doesn't ring a bell.



I no longer have the record but it served its educational purpose, providing the rudiments of Brownian knowledge.

The discography stuff was still scarce on the ground by the time I was a student - but I found the Sex Machine Today album in the second-hand stalls of Oxford market



I remember breaking into a ball at one of the Oxford colleges - Wadham  - me and Monitor colleague Hilary were wandering along Holywell Street late at night, saw people clambering up a shop face into a student's bedroom via an open window, and on impulse followed suit, because we had nothing better to do then than stay up til dawn. In the marquee tent, around 4 AM, the deejay dropped "For Goodness Sakes Take A Look At Those Cakes"  - and we danced, my feminist friend smiling indulgently at the Benny Hilly innuendo. This was the summer of '84, I think.




But although the old classic stuff was hard to find, as a current-release recording artist James Brown had resurged in prominence. 1980 was when he put out "Rapp Payback (Where Iz Moses)", a near-hit in the UK. Staking a claim as the progenitor of  rap(p) - not for the borrowed breakbeats (at that point not featuring in recorded hip hop, which was all live-band backings) but for the speak-sing style of vocalisation.




He did a rather arid collaboration with Afrika Bambaataa in '84, firming up the rap godfather idea.



Then JB had a proper hit in 1985 - #5 UK (his only UK top ten hit; #4 US, his first Top 40 hit in a a decade) - with this:



Going back to white Brit emulators, this was fairly flagrant



The punmanship is excruciating, isn't it?

Fancy the Endurance Test mix?



What the hell is this?



This is just embarrassing



Haines managed this bunch



Merest spindrift from the tossing waves of postpunk music paper discourse, much touted by those bewitched by their own rhetoric, Stimulin never even got to make a record

And here's another completely different kind of James Brown homage - although just a semiotic nod at the start rather than a musical one (the music is a sort of scrawny-puny  Happy Shopper version of... Motown? Sam & Dave? 



Black horn section added on to bolster the stiff and parched fare from Redskins  - JoBoxers meets the SWP.

The bongo playing =  a particular embarrassment.