Welcome to The Cahokian... A thousand years ago Cahokia — across the Mississippi from what is now St. Louis — was one of the biggest cities in the world. Now it's an empty green spot next to the highway. I'm a middle-aged gay man living in New York City, center of the world, future footnote on somebody's future map. Welcome to the new world.
Showing posts with label funk. Show all posts
Showing posts with label funk. Show all posts
Thursday, December 08, 2011
Musical Interlude: Smile of the Beyond
Something like three years ago I waxed rapturously about my favorite "fusion" album of all time, "Apocalypse" by the second incarnation of the Mahavishnu Orchestra of John McLaughlin. When I stumbled across this video and considered posting it here I realized I had said just about all I had to say about that album back then, but I still love this music. This oddly distorted video is from a mid-1970s live performance at Montreux: it's better than the video or sound quality of a number of other youtube versions, and a bit different than the album cut. But it's cool to see the musicians play, and you get to see spacey Gayle Moran actually sing what is, I guess, an actual fusion ballad: at least it starts out that way. The lyric is vintage early 1970s Sri Chinmoy devotee melding of sacred and profane. Sort of a codependent religious hymn, near as I can tell. God, like all lovers, is difficult sometimes.
Fusion didn't age well. This song displays something of the emotional range of fusion, and the tension between controlled virtuosity and ecstatic chaos that marked the best of the music in its early days. Uncontrolled cock-stroking keyboard and guitar wankery eventually took over leaving the sound sterile and uninteresting, at least to me. By the 1980s, fascination with digital technological effects choked the life out of it. Here the mix of funk and art seems alive and promising.
As a bonus here's the album version below, for contrast, which is heavier on the string orchestra at the beginning. I do recommend the whole album.
Monday, December 25, 2006
the death of soul?
James Brown died early this morning.
James Brown invented the funk. Completely his own man, he was raw sexuality, raw power, raw groove, questionable taste, bad politics, big hair, shiny clothes, a vital font of energy birthed by the caldron of African-American oppression. He was sheer excess, eccentric, kinetic, unrefined. He took a gospel shout, a field holler, and the rhythm of sex and gave birth to the funk.
When I was a little boy he was one of a few Black artists I was not allowed to listen to. Too black, that gyrating tightly clad crotch just a little too much for my otherwise liberal mom. But now we're all listening to him every day, and I can't think of a better way to spend Christmas then to let out the funk and play James Brown.
God Bless the funk.
James Brown invented the funk. Completely his own man, he was raw sexuality, raw power, raw groove, questionable taste, bad politics, big hair, shiny clothes, a vital font of energy birthed by the caldron of African-American oppression. He was sheer excess, eccentric, kinetic, unrefined. He took a gospel shout, a field holler, and the rhythm of sex and gave birth to the funk.
When I was a little boy he was one of a few Black artists I was not allowed to listen to. Too black, that gyrating tightly clad crotch just a little too much for my otherwise liberal mom. But now we're all listening to him every day, and I can't think of a better way to spend Christmas then to let out the funk and play James Brown.
God Bless the funk.
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