CHRISTGAU CONSUMER GUIDE

CHRISTGAU CONSUMER GUIDE

DEPARTMENTS

by Robert Christgau

For the - time being—probably until the beginning of 1981—1 have abandoned my obsession with new records for an even more pervasive obsession with old ones. The reason is simple: I’m trying to convert a decade’s work into a book, and I have a lot of relistening and rethinking to do. What follows is the first in a series of reports from the past:

At around the time of “Mother Popcorn” in 1969, James Brown began to concern himself more and more exclusively with rhythmic distinctions, thus leaving himself ever more open to the all-sounds the-same complaints he’d always been subject to. Having enjoyed his interracial vogue, he quickly faded from the consciousness of most white people. But between 1969 and 1971, while whites danced (i at all) to Creedence and the Stones and mayb' e Memphis soul (Motown was out too), Brow n scored 17—17 in three years!—Top 10 r&b h'iits that changed black dancing and paved the way to disco. That most of these were on Brown’s own King label, which had no press list, did nothin g to increase his access to journalists. But wher \ he signed with Polydor in late 1971 it got no be. jtter. Vince Aletti wrote a prescient review of Hot liPants for Rolling Stone and Richard Robinsovn did something in CREEM, I gave Get On The Good Foot a B +, and that was about it for tb ie rock press.

What follows, then, is my attempt to m iake up. f overrated Good Foot because I’d missed many much better LPs, and here’s a rundown on everything he did after dissolving King. The King stuff has disappeared almost complete) ,y (though I still see Super Bad, a pretty good one , here and there), but most of the Polydors, wh ile officially out of print, are available in discou nt bins and used record stores. I would like to thank Pablo “Yoruba” Guzman for raising my consciousness, Carol McNichol of Polydor for compiling a discography, Vince Aletti for lendir tg me records, and James Chance for ripping off' “I Can’t Stand Myself.”

“Hot Pants” (8/71) xs Is it i rolling, James? The hit vamp (can’t call it a tune , now can you?) “Escape-ism” was supposedly ci at to kill time until Bobby Byrd arrived. The title tr? ack follows and it’s a killer too, one of Brown’s ric ;hest Afro-dances. “Blues And Pants” suggests th at the title track is a mellowed-down takeoff pn ^ “Sex Machine,” which is good to know. And i “Can’t Stand It” is not to be confused with “I Ce m’t Stand Myself.” If you say so, James. Only he doesn’t. I don’t think he cares. And neither do I.

A-

“Revolution Of The M find” (11/71):: Ever the innovator, Brown her* »presents a live double LP, “Recorded Live At The Apollo Vol. III.” Good stuff, too—a con sistent overview of his polyrythm phase. But “Sex Machine” is sharper and “Bewildered” deeper on 1970’s live double. And with the medley on side three the tempo gets so hot that anybody but JB will have trouble dancing to it.

B +

“Soul Classics” (5/72):: Brown recorded nine of these 10 cuts for King; every track is good and many—“Sex Machine,” “Papa’s Got A Brand New Bag,” “I Got You”—are great. But they’re so jumbled chronologically—side two jumps ftom ’71 tq ’65 back to ’71 to ’69 to ’66— that itfs a tribute to Brown’s single-minded rhythmip genius that they hold together at all. Hearing his classic ’70s dance tracks in their original three-minute formats, you begin to pine for, the extended album versions—devoid of verbal logic and often even chord changes, these patterns, for that’s what they really are, are meant to build, not resolve. And the great formal advantage of top-forty strictures is that they force speedy resolutions. Time: 28:25.

A-

“There It I®” (6/72):: A generous four r&b hits here, three of them—“There It Is,” “I’m A Greedy Man,” and “Talkin’ Loud and Sayin’ Nothing”—ace JB grooves. (Who’s on congas, James?) The fourth is the “King Heroin” sermon, which together with its ten-minute offshoot “Public Enemy #1” is stuck cunningly—Brown has been reading his Alexander Pope—in the middle of the dance stuff on both sides. Plus an actual song, the first new one he’s recorded in years, and a JB composition called “Never Can Say Goodbye” that asks the musical question: “ What’s going on?” For junkies, this is an A +; for the rest of us if s somewhat more marginal.

A-

“Get On The Good Foot” (10/72):: Only two hits on this studio double, though it takes Hank Ballard five minutes to describe its riches on side two—“he comes from all sides on this one.” Lines repeat from song to song—“The longhaired hippies and the Afro blacks/All get together off behind the tracks/And they party”— and so do riffs. The hook on the 12-minute “Please, Please” (not to be confused, of course, M with “Please, Please, Please”) repeats one If hundred forty-eight (and c\ half) times. I love the I hook, I even like the line, and if , this were the ° world’s only James Brown album it would be I priceless. But there’s a lot of waste here, and the ^ ballads can’t carry their own weight.

B-

“Black Caesar” (1/73):: You listen to Brown = for music, not songs, but that’s no reason to y expect good soundtrack albums from him. He should never be allowed near a vibraphone again.

D +

“Slaughter’s Big Rip-Off” (6/73):: As movie scores go, this rip-off is only mediumsized. At least it apes Oliver Nelson rather than Henty Mancini, and sometimes it even breaks away from the atmosphere into something earthier. Worth hearing: “Sexy, Sexy, Sexy.”

C

'‘Soul Classics Volume II” (8/73):: In absolute terms, Brown has declined on Polydor. Even*if you don’t insist on great songs (neOer his strength) or great singing (where he’s waned " physically), he just hasn’t matched rhythmic inventions like “Mother Popcorn” and “Sex Machine” or the big label. And this compilation inexplicably ©mits “Hot Pants,” which comes close, in favor of his ill-advised revivals of “Think” and “Honky Tonk.” Still, eight of these 10 tracks have .made the soul top ten over the past two years, and except for “King Heroin,” you shake ass to every, one.

A-

“The Payback” (12/73):: Because more is often more with JB, a studio double comprising eight long songs isn’t necessarily a gyp: Especially when all the songs have new titles. Not only does most of this work as dance music, but two slow ones are actually sung. “Time Is Running Out Fast,” however, is a spectacularly inaccurate title for a horn-and-voice excursion! that shambles on for 12:37.

B +

“It’s Hell” (6/74):: Great stuff on the two good sides—tricky horn charts, “Please, Please, Please*^ with a Spanish accent, law enforcement advice. Then there’s the side of ballads w/strings, which might be all right if they were also w/voice, „ and the side that begins “I Can’t Stand It ’76.’ ”

B

“Reality’’ (12/74):: Talkin’ loud and sayin’ nothing, Brown’s streetwise factotum intones: “He’s still the baddest—always will be the baddest—that’s why we give him credit for being the superstar he is.” A bad sign (really bad, I mean). As are “Who Can 1 Turn To” and “Don’t Fence Me In.”

B-

“Sex Machine Today” (4/75):: If someone were to airlift this one tape to you in the tundra, the remakes would be godsends. But if you own another version of “Sex Machine” you own a better one. Ditto “I Feel Good,” ditto every aimless solo, and djtto the reading from Rand-McNally. Which leaves us with the symphosynth, the complaints that other musicians are ripping him off, and the putdowns of hairy legs.

C +

“Everybody's Doin’ the Hustle and Dead on the Double Bump” (8/75):: In Which JB eases the tempo and stops using his voice as a conga drum, thus fashioning a languorous funk that I guess is designed to compete with Barry White. It’s not horrible, but I’d just as Soon hear the competition—after all, what’s JB without intensity? And then suddenly he says fuck it and closes the record with a seven-minute jam on “Kansas City” so sharp it could bring back the lindy hop, at least in dreams.

B-

“Hot” (12/75):: This record has a bad rep. Most of it was reportedly cut with arranger Dave Matthews by New York studio musicians and then dubbed over by JB, and the title hit didn’t do as well among blacks as David Bowie’s “Fame,” where its guitar lidtc first went public. But side one really worlds. If Brown did cop that lick, he certainly had it coming, and except for the sodden “So Long” everything else is touched with the extraordinary, from the cracked falsetto that climaxes “For Sentimental Reasons” to the stirring male backup on “Try Me” to “The Future Shock of the World,” a high-echo rhythm track on which JB does nothing but whisper the word “disco.” Unfortunately, the dance vamp and ballads overdisc are nothing -new, though “Please, Please, Please” (with more male backup) sounds fine in its umpteenth version.

B

“Get Up Offa That Thing” (7/76):: “I’m (back, I’m back?” is how JB begins the commercial message on the jacket, and the title track is his biggest single in a year and a half. ‘7 can see the disco now," he emphasizes, and even the blues and ballad cultivate a groove designed to reintroduce him to that strangely hostile world he discovered. But he sounds defensive because he has a reason to be—he can’t hit the soft grooves the way he can the hard ones. When he starts equating himself with Elvis Presley (just before the fade on “I Refuse To Lose”) you know the identity problems 'are getting critical.

B-

“Bodyheat” (12/76)::Two or three functional dance tracks, and Brown’s will always be tougher thanMFSB’s. Butnotthan Brown’s. “Woman” is unlistenably sanctimonious, “What the World Needs Now Is Love” is the raggedest singing I’ve ever heard from him, and “Kiss in 77” is “head to head and toe to toe.” In other words, as “brand new” as the “New Sound.1” he promises.

C

“Mutha’s Nature” (7/77):: When they start writing songs called “People Who Criticize,” you know they’re really worried. And the anxiety always comes out in the music.

C

“Sex Machine” (9/77):: This is the same Sex Machine Brown released on King in 1970. Some doubt the claim that it was recorded in concert in Augusta, Georgia, but everyone believes in the music. On “Get Up I Feel Like Being a Sex Machine” he creates a dance track even more compelling than the 45 out of the same five elements: light funk-four on the traps, syncopated bass figure, guitar scratched six beats to the bar) and two voices for call and respose. When he modulates to the bridge if s like the Spirit of God moving upon the face of the waters. After that he could describe his cars for three sides and get away with it (hope this doesn’t give him any bright ideas), but in fact all of it is prime JB except for the organ version of “Spinning Wheel” (horn bands will out) and the cover of “If I Ruled the World” (thought he already did). Side four, with its powerful “Man’s World,”) is especially fine, closing with a soul-wrenching scream that says it all.

A

“Jam/1980’s” (3/78):: Free of the pretentious bluster that haswiarred so much of his work in the disco era, this is the groove album Brown has been announcing for years. He’s finally learned how to relax his rhythms without diluting his essence, and the A side is simply and superbly what the title promises, though he may have the decade wrong. The B side is less of the same, and I bet no one ever chooses to play it. I also bet they’d get dancing if they did. ^

B +

“Take a Look at Those Cakes” (11/78):: The title cut is a great throwaway—an elevenminute rumination on ass-watching, including genuinely tasteless suggestions that Ray Charles and Stevie Wonder join the fun. The rest is just throwaway—with a beat, of course.

B'

“The Original Disco Man” (6/79):: In which Brown relinquishes the profit-taking ego gratification of writing and producing everything himself. Those credits go to Brad Shapiro, Millie Jackson’s helpmate, who thank god is no Disco man himself. Sure he likes disco tricks—synthesized sound effects, hooky female chorus, bass drum pulse—but he loves what made JB the original disco man: hgrd-driving, slightly Latinized funk patterns against the rough rap power of that amazing voice, which may have lost expressiveness but definitely retains its sense of rhythm. Plus: disco disc of the year, “It’s Too Funky in Here.” And a renunciation of “It’s a Man’s, Man’s, Man’s, World.”

A-

“ People” (2/80):: Once around with Brad Shapiro was a treat; twice is an American cheese sandwich. Although “Regrets” is the-strongest new ballad Brown’s had to work with since coming to Polydor, Shapiro apparently went with his best uptempo tricks last time. Not that the new ones aren’tfun. But even “Let the Funk Flow,” a valiant attempt to create a classic can’t-stand-it rhythm, tries too,hard.

B