Robin, do you want I should send you some Big Sandy and the Fly-Rite Trio?

...wrong thread...

A cartoon for the Jimmy Webb/Glen Campbell fans.

Heh!

I have always liked rockabilly but am not part of the scene in any way and only own a smattering of CDs, but I will say that it is IMPOSSIBLE not to have a great time at a Rockabilly show!

Right on! I love the image of Rockabilly!Scrappy. My friend Betty usually goes to the Vegas rockabilly show (she's hot for rockabilly boys, like Allyson is). I personally own vast yonks of rockabilly, though mostly the original stuff. It's all about Johnny Burnette and the Rock and Roll Trio. Though you've got to give it up for guys like Groovey Joe Poovey and Warren Smith and Charlie Feathers and Wanda Jackson. (Nick Tosches famously described Wanda Jackson as "So hot she could fry an egg on her mons.")

"I got a train / I met a dame / She was a' hefTY / She was a real gone dame / She was a' pretty / From New York City / And we rocked on down / that ol' fair lane / With a heave / and a Ho / Well I just couldn't let her Go! / Get along / sweet little woman get along / get on that train, get along / Well the train kept a' rollin' / All night long / The train kept a movin' / all night long / with a heave / and a ho / well I just couldn't let her go-ho-ho ho ho!"

I don't want nobody to give me no quote. Open up the search engine, and I'll get it myself. Hunhh! Gud God, y'all!

Just kidding. Don't know if this is the one you're thinking of tommyrot:

We lost out on "Sex Machine" and now it's the number one dance song in the world. Because they thought the title "Sex" went some other place. But it wasn't about that. A fella and a girl were sittin' down in a club, and everybody was dancing, and the cat said, "Get on up! I feel like being a sex machine!"

It said, "The way I like it is the way it is. I got mine and don't worry about his." What is better than that? You cain't beat that. That record is so clean. They were worried about the title. Everytime I see the words "sex machine," it reminds me of a cash register opening up. That song opened up more cash registers than most songs I know.

Coolest Thing James Brown Ever Did?

Titling a song, "Funky President (People It's Bad)" during Watergate.

...or possibly doing an entire album of Popcorn themed dance songs. It's a toss up.

People people, we gotta get over before we go under

"Funky President" is a great song -- and from a Nixon supporter no less! JB's career is full of ubercool & uberweird things (sometimes inseparable). His achievement -- he changed the face of modern music (at least the popular variety, and I've read more than one composer who cited him as an influence) -- & his wackiness are both hard to overstate.

I haven't seen a Pixies date for SF, dammit.

They're not doing a show in Boston either, which strikes me as willfully perverse.

JB's career is full of ubercool & uberweird things (sometimes inseparable). His achievement -- he changed the face of modern music (at least the popular variety, and I've read more than one composer who cited him as an influence) -- & his wackiness are both hard to overstate.

Heh. Then you're going to love the part of the book where I say he's overrated!

Well, not really. But I do think his influence has been overstated in the same way that Louis Armstrong's influence was overstated in the Ken Burns jazz doc.

Which is to say, of course they're titans, and HUGE in American music. But by making them that HUGE you wind up distorting the history. Mostly I wanted to make the case that while I think James Brown is funky, he isn't Funk. (Except for the very brief period when he had the JBs with Bootsy.) I think Sly and the Family Stone were far more influential on the direction of black music from the late sixties on.

I just don't hear James Brown rhythms except as pastiche (with a huge and notable exception being "Funky Drummer" samples). But Larry Graham's bass-playing defined black music for the last 40 years.

Here's what I wrote:

Some celebrated artists still need reconsideration because their narrative doesn't scan neatly. Because Sly Stone remains inconveniently alive, the history of funk and rap has been grossly distorted. James Brown is a gigantor dust magnet accruing credit for every flicker in black music for the last four decades. While his rhythmic innovations brought a stinky new whipcrack funkiness to American music, James Brown did not invent funk. He's sui generis—nobody sounds like him except by pastiche. Neither did George Clinton invent funk. Funk starts on the thumb-callous of Larry Graham on "Thank You (Falettinme Be Mice Elf Agin)"—and all things funky roll outward from that low, seismic tremor. But Sly crawled up a hole in his nostril thirty years ago, and George Clinton's a cuddlier interview for VH-1. Also, the Family Stone's epochal Woodstock performance date-stamps them as Hippie Rock in a way that muddles the clear line from There's a Riot Goin On through every Dr. Dre production.