James Brown
Hometown: Macon, Ga.
http://www.funky-stuff.com/jamesbrown/
Wednesday, May 10, 2006
Stubbs Bar-B-Q (Austin, Texas)
Get back - wanna kiss myslf ... heeeeyyy! heh...
The hardest working man in show business, the godfather of soul, and the man with possibly the longest intro in the history of music, rolled his show through Austin last night and a show it was. Playing to a packed audience with no opening act, the show started promptly at 9 pm, with James actually not appearing until 20 minutes later, relying on his fabulous show band to get the audience revved up.
Fifteen years or so ago I made my only trip to Las Vegas for a bachelor party. All the other guys wanted to drink and gamble. Me, I wanted to see a Vegas show. I didn't want to see Sigfried & Roy, or Wayne Newton, I wanted to see James Brown, who was playing at the Hard Rock. My attempts to drag the others away were fruitless, I missed the show, and regretted it ever since. I mean who wouldn't want to see James Brown in Las Vegas?
Well Stubb's is certainly no Vegas, but what I do at Stubb's doesn't stay at Stubb's either, and James Brown brought enough Vegas with him to sate my desire to see a show. His traveling show must have 20+ artists involved, from his tremendous brass section, to his back-up singers and dancers. He even brought his own MC to do his 20 minute intro.
Covering most of his hits, James got tremendous crowd participation as he danced, kicked his microphone, and blasted through his 90 minute set like a man half his age. While I didn't see him do the splits on-stage, its possibly because of the 7' 4" man mountain in front of me intermittently blocking my view. Unfortunately this also impacted my ability to take pictures of the show, and few that I took actually came out. This didn't impact my ability to enjoy the show however, and I shifted back out of camera range. Good thing I did because there simply was no place to dance up-front, and if there is one thing James Brown does to me, it's make my feet want to move and my head bounce up and down.
I can't think of a single bad song in the whole set, but my favorites and the crowd's were his hits, like "Living in America" and "Sex Machine," and before I knew it the show was over. It felt short, but clocked in at about an hour and 40 minutes.