Party Jive You Can Live In

Party Jive You Can Live In

JAMES BRQWN Soul Classics Vol. 2 (Poly dor)

THE JB's Doin' It To Death (People)

THE NEW BIRTH Birth Day , (RCA)

Black music’s gettin’ good again. Never was completely bad, but’s fallen a long way from the pinnacles of 65-8 when Motown and Stax were truly cooking and, f'rinstance, Stevie Wonder was serving up heartthrobbers like “I Was Made to Love Her” steada (still fine, but) earnest mellowtoned channels such as “He’s Misstra Know-It-All.” “Serious” white rock was a rotten influence on corporate black music, and when the black artists themselves (led by Slyand Stevie) demanded more artistic freedom from the cartels it just compounded the bushwah becuz if it wasn’t psychedelic shackles it was kozmo/ekologic lyrics and self-indulgence ran bubonic cross the land.

Things are easing up now — the sociokozmoidal pretensions are still there in full force, whether it’s Stevie's “Jesus Children of America” or Marvin Gaye’s big schtuppo concept album, but not everybody on the block’s out to save the planet or anything else. New jive evawhere so now’s the time if you punkass ofays wanna get your grits together and establish yourself as real brothaly equals with the Afrika Korps you always modeling your strut and jivetalk on.' You’d do wise to chuck all that blues maggotry that black people hate and get into Mel & Tim, and O’Jays, the New Birth, the JB’s, the Isley Brothers, even the Sylvers whom I heard Don Cornelius introduce on Soul Train last week as “the most popular singing group in America” when I’ll lay odds you don’t even know what they sound like.

Just leave all meaning and significance behind in true idiot rock ’n’ roll tradtion and get into the deepest recesses of Bantu Kenya tta Afro-Amerikool & The Gang popsikles: the JB’s, the New Birth. And as a special bonus to the chickenfooted, you can even stop off at that smithy's tooner where old James Brown himself is still hamhocking ’em out steady.

Sole brudda numbah one has been making singles off a master lathe for almost half a decade now, that same old brannew bag spilling no surprises. Polydor bought him from King for bigger bux than sane men fondle, since then he ain’t been worth a skeeter’s tweeter in terms of musical growth or his own abilities.

For years he’s been honing this one riff which Was reductive in the beginning, till now there’s practically nothing left but the bareass minim bone throb straight outa ancestral oree drums crossing the veldt in a whir of machetes, and over that jussa little sketchy sizzle like monotone-lashed guitar and saxo squiggles not hardly hot by now. You remember all those lowest-common-deetox clazzix like “Cold Sweat” and “Lickin’ Stick.”'Well he’s been hotfooting round em so long he’s hit the sill this week with a second cream o’ the crop culling from these compdter-readout chartstilters. Q.: How do you distinguish between “Talking Loud & Saying Nothing” and “I Got Ants in my Pants?” Ans.: They both sound like “Good Foot.” Which is a dunco masterpiece worthy of Lou Reed or the Stones and shows that Bruh Jaybee’s sense of humor’s better’n ever: “Que pasa! Hit me, now!” All these records sell more’n enuff to exactly the same people every time, becuz they always need a new one cuz last one’s worn out from last winter’s dance parties. Here’s “King Heroin” and even “Honky Tonk” for a li’l change of pace, but the poppa share of these sides’ charm lies in their near-monomaniacal identicalness. Razor backoff bugaloos no more samey in their way than Astral Weeks, so if you need validation just pretend it’s an artrock concept suite.

And while we’re on the subject of redundance the only currently breathing act who possibly cut James at these stakes is his backup band, who are so monotonous they’re not even boring; they’re great! Maybe we’ve all been resensified into blitherdom by Warhol movies, Robbe Grillet & Beckett novels, live Cream and Leon Russell recrods, but there’s something not just hypnotic but positively gonad-charging about mindless treadmill repetition hammered at to infinity. The JB’s have performed their tapeloops on Soul Train to general delight of the gang there, cuz nothing beats ’em for dancing. “Doin’ It To Death” and “You Can Have Watergate Just Gimme Some Bucks & I’ll Be Straight” (suprema titles too, you’ll note) are exactly the same songs as found under different names on Soul Classics Vol. 2, but belabored way past the attention span of even an amphetamine idiot, of anybody in fact but you and I.

Because we understand the supreme durability of these pumps. You can throw this record on and never have to listen, you can leave the room and come back and know you haven’t missed a thing, or conversely you can let it spin all day like a funko mantra to live by. It blends so good it becomes a total environment. You might also wanna dig up, if you’re as. monkey backed into this stuff as I am, the JB’s earlier 12-inch opus, Pass the Peas Please I Mean Gimme Some More, which was released in the season of Miles Davis’ On the Corner and made that snotty shuck look like the plate of dogpus it was. The JB’s are the real avant-garde.

Far as Fucqua from avant are the New Birth, who’re but foremost of many slicko blax ax skilleting regular dollops of chitlin grease to the ravennoids twistin’ all those car radio dials. Nobody named Harvey Fucqua could cop too bizarre, and since he’s the New Birth’s producer/arranger mastermind, we know we can mellow back in e-z liznen’ hewen. But this ain’t no Karen Karpenter tampon pillow, this still bums when’s a mind. Unless you’re a totally wizzed-out FM progressive-radio goner you gotta remember the NB’s hit rend of Bobby Womack’s great “I Can Understand It.” A standout among manifold Womack mastuhpieces, and NB assay a great extenso. version here. Only a skoolfool slunk could get too much of something this good, especially after we been conditioned so scientific by the JB’s and their namesake.

Just fine mainstream soul poppyscholock. “Got To Get a Knutt” cooks more diversivo than any JB’s chart, sorta like some old Ray Charles band instru sides. “Theme From ’Buck & the Preacher” sounds like Tempts gone Hollywood but that’s kool becuz they were halfway there axiyway. Sly strutto ferns ’n’ spikes of “Easy, Evil,” the almost bossalatin lightness of “You Are What I’m All -About” — the NB got it all covered. Corporate grits refined in fro-glo proto-muzak blenders until worn smooth, and still more than okay becuz again such a suave respite from Brotherhood pretenses and Jesus children of Ecology lyrics. And if you get really racked and gotta trek this groove all the way in, know that the New Birth have their very own repetitso instrumodal JB’s equivalent called the Niteliters. Greasy pig’s knuckles and sweet balmetto soul will stand.

Lester Bangs