Payback is a mother

I was fortunate enough to see The Godfather of Soul once or twice live while he was still in his prime, with the full power and majesty of the JBs on display and in effect including half nekkid dancing girls. It was truly a thing to behold, especially for an impressionable and musically oriented young fellow.

I can tell you, I witnessed live shows for 99% of everybody who was anybody in the 70's and truly, James Brown was in fact the hardest working man in show business. I won't sit here and tell I remember how long the show lasted. But I can tell you by the time he took is last bow, I was exhausted and ready to go home.

It was loud, sweaty and funky beyond comprehension. There was shit happening that I had never seen before. The horn players were twirling horns, doing choreographed dance routines and playing syncopated hit it and quit it licks on their instruments that simply defied the laws of physics. Don't let anybody fool you, Walmart and Toyota didn't have shit on JB when they thought they invented Just In Time delivery. You literally found yourself rooting for them to get the horn to their lips and make it to the mic in time to hit that one one note. I mean there was so much going on on stage that the spectacle of it all was enough to give you an epileptic fit.

And there wasn't a whole bunch of talking to the audience either, about bullshit nobody didn't want to hear. It was just a man and his band, putting in work.

And to think that by the 80's it was all gone. Not just JB but the whole music scene was one big gelatinous pile of highly produced, under talented, over hyped crap. I really do pity young people today who have never seen a real band perform music so funky you had to burn your clothes after the show.

Sigh!