“When I’m on stage, I’m trying to do one thing: bring people joy. Just like church does. People don’t go to church to find trouble, they go there to lose it.”
– James Brown
“Our whole thing was based on James Brown. We listened to Live at the Apollo endlessly on acid. We would listen to that in the van in the early days of 8-tracks on the way to the gigs to get us up for the gig. If you played in a band in Detroit in the days before The MC5, everybody did ‘Please, Please, Please’ and ‘I Go Crazy.’ These were standards. We modeled The MC5’s performance on those records. Everything we did was on a gut level about sweat and energy. It was anti-refinement. That’s what we were consciously going for.”
– Wayne Cramer, MC5
One of the best live albums in music history, James Brown – Live at the Apollo was recorded october 24 in 1962.
My favourite moment: The whole horn infused “Think” that borrows heavily from jazz legend Charlie Parker in the way Brown scats over the band with the crowd participating enthusiastically. Not remotely like the studio versions and terribly good!
Lost Someone (audio):
Before the release of the classical and hugely influential ‘Live At The Apollo’ in 1962, James Brown was something of an unknown quantity outside of the R&B charts of the US south. Staying on the pop charts for 14 months, and peaking at #2, it’s a demonstration of Brown’s self-belief that he (himself!) had financed and released the recording when his label saw no sense in releasing a live album that featured no new material. Brown went on to record several more albums at the Apollo over the course of his career, including 1968’s Live at the Apollo, Vol. II (King), 1971’s Revolution of the Mind: Recorded Live at the Apollo, Vol. III(Polydor) and Live at the Apollo 1995 (Scotti Bros.).
Night Train (not the Apollo show but a great video clip from The T.A.M.I. Tv-show!):
Continue reading 30 Best live albums countdown: 24 – Live at the Apollo by James Brown
