A dance lesson by James Brown
January 24th 2008 21:26
Whew - I don't know where they dug this up from. A time capsule, launched into space, then returning to Earth in a fiery blaze?
James Brown used to be a major dancer, but, when I started listening to his music, his best years had flown by, leaving him angry and drug-addled. We've all seen interviews with James mumbling away incoherently, and that was part of the charm.
I saw him live in concert in Ottawa, when he came for his Canadian tour in 2000. He wasn't so spry then, being over 70 years old, but he still put on a decent show. Not a great show, by any stretch of the imagination, but he pumped out some good tunes.
Unfortunately, he needed to take a couple of breaks... he'd scream out 'Sex Machine' and 'Get on the Good Foot', but then would retreat from the stage at the bridge, letting a bikini babe come up on stage to dance up a storm. It worked - I was distracted.
Back in tha day, though, James was the master of showmanship. He was kind enough to give us a hard-to-follow lesson:
(this video is from 5min, but the link was found on Digg)
James Brown used to be a major dancer, but, when I started listening to his music, his best years had flown by, leaving him angry and drug-addled. We've all seen interviews with James mumbling away incoherently, and that was part of the charm.
I saw him live in concert in Ottawa, when he came for his Canadian tour in 2000. He wasn't so spry then, being over 70 years old, but he still put on a decent show. Not a great show, by any stretch of the imagination, but he pumped out some good tunes.
Unfortunately, he needed to take a couple of breaks... he'd scream out 'Sex Machine' and 'Get on the Good Foot', but then would retreat from the stage at the bridge, letting a bikini babe come up on stage to dance up a storm. It worked - I was distracted.
Back in tha day, though, James was the master of showmanship. He was kind enough to give us a hard-to-follow lesson:
(this video is from 5min, but the link was found on Digg)
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Comment by JohnDoe
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Comment by Miswanderlust
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Hipnotherapy
What a wonderful video. Thanks for the JB shout out!
Mis
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Comment by D. Armenta
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Debate Fan
I saw this last year on YouTube, too--great stuff!
I know a sax player here in south Florida who used to play in Brown's band, and he had this to say:
"In a lot of shows you'd see him dancing toward the band and shouting to the players off-mike; he was actually either checking us to make sure we'd followed the dress code rules or coming back to give someone hell for messing up. Brown had a series of fines for various band infractions--five bucks out of your pay for wearing wrinkled clothes or unshined shoes, ten bucks for a missed cue or a clam (wrong note), etc.
What sounded like spontaneous shouts was actually Brown informing different players of their fines: "Five dollars! Ten dollars!" -as he danced between our ranks. It was pretty funny."