Features
Tuesday, July 17 2007
Part 2: Janis Ian to Jimi Hendrix (1966-1970)
Music truly is the universal language. The best songs of protest are passed around, from movement-to-movement, era-to-era; its singers gaining multilingual fluency along the way.
Wednesday, January 3 2007
Soul Power
Though James Brown's body was lying in state at the Apollo Theater, on the streets of Harlem, his spirit seemed to be everywhere.
Tuesday, January 2 2007
The Last Soul Brother: James Brown (1933-2006)
The humanity of the man -- with its funky and messy flaws and frailties -- could never sustain the myth, so much so that the image of the man who gave Black Power its soundtrack became a harsh reminder of its fractured legacy.
Reviews
Friday, November 18 2011
James Brown: The Singles Volume 11: 1979-1981
If you're looking for the Godfather singing disco, country, and a jawdropping 11-minute ode to cakes, this is the comp for you.
Thursday, October 30 2008
James Brown: Double Dynamite
James Brown: Double Dynamite isn't in the extras, it's in the music. It's in the man.
Friday, September 5 2008
I Got the Feelin': James Brown in the '60s
At the time of Dr. King's murder, with America's racial and existential crises at a peak, Brown's music was itself a crisis, always on call.
Thursday, August 30 2007
James Brown: The Singles, Volume 3: 1964-1965
Hip-O Select's limited edition series rolls on by documenting an overwhelming awkward period in Brown's otherwise superhuman ascension into R&B's uncharted places.
Friday, March 23 2007
In Memoriam: James Brown
It’s a mistake to compare James Brown (or anyone else, for that matter) as a showman at 70 to what he was like at 40, 30, and 25. But, until the last, Soul Brother #1 still brought the funk.
Blogs
Friday, July 1 2011
Counterbalance No. 40: James Brown’s 'Live at the Apollo'
Counterbalance tackles the Hardest Working Man in Show Business as James Brown's Live at the Apollo clocks in at number 40 on the list of the most acclaimed albums of all time. As it turns out he’s freakishly strong and slightly slippery. It’s Star Time!
Wednesday, April 1 2009
Old Skewl B.S. aka Morality Police Bite
Artists continually suffer for refusing to bow to the morality police. Yet, like this Kentuckian, we are all Unbridled Spirits, refusing to conceit to itty bitty morality pity. It’s a shame that one has to chant louder, write faster, read quicker, exercise harder, know more and listen with more compassion, isn’t it? Naw, that’s just old skewl.
