Get Up Offa That Thing!

I’ve been editing and burning my voluminous VHS collection onto DVD, and in my case it’s a myriad collection of arts documentaries from the 1980’s. Late night re-enactment of the 'foetus earrings' trial anyone? Watch the KLF burn a million quid? We got’em!

One of the most fascinating was a sixtieth birthday retrospective of James Brown, who sadly died in December of last year, leaving a big, in fact a monumental, Godfather shaped hole in music. The programme was full of extraordinary clips of the original funkster writing, rehearsing, and performing; always in the most horrendously fashionable threads.

I don’t yet have the skills to post direct from my own video collection [just you wait!] but while trawling YouTube last night I found this stunning clip.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pq1w0syylZI

Need to get that uploading thing sorted too!

Get Up Offa That Thing was written in 1976, by which time James Brown was in his mid-forties. He invented soul; now he’s inventing disco. He’s back, he’s working hard, and he’s taking you to the bridge. To paraphrase Captain Willard in Apocalypse Now – I did it when I was half his age and it nearly killed me. Curiously this cut is shot largely from the band’s point of view; so you get to see the tiny hand movements and hear the vocal ticks that Brown used to keep his musicians in line. Hup means one thing; Goo’god means another. It is without doubt the tightest two minutes of funky soul I have ever seen.

Can I count it off?

Andrew Mishmash