Review of James Brown: Body Heat

Introduction

James Brown or, the “Godfather of Soul” as he is also known (perhaps as much a reference to his delirious criminal exploits as to his musical talent) performs a series of hits before a Monterey, California audience in January 1979. The track list features: Get Up Offa That Thing, Body Heat, Try Me, Sex Machine, Georgia On My Mind, Please Please Please, Hindsight, Can’t Stand it, Papa’s Got a Brand New Bag and Jam. This disc, presented by ‘Gravity’, claims to be a lost recording of Brown’s live work.

Video

This is as bad as you probably expect: 4:3, plenty of flare, not a lot of sharpness. Not surprising really as it seems to have been shot with only a few cameras in fairly unflattering lighting.

Audio

There is a 5.1 track here, although, I can’t say I was terribly impressed. Actually, it’s a bit of a phony, it’s been forged from an original two track mix so never sounds totally convincing. Only at terribly loud volume do you really get any sense of atmosphere, and at a lower scale the effect is diminished so much that a stereo track would have been more realistic.

Features

Yeah, very funny.

Conclusion

Despite spirited renditions of ‘Try Me’, ‘Hindsight’ and the dynamic, charging closing track ‘Jam’, this is a meager offering, with only 60 minutes of footage and no added booty, it couldn’t do much else to re-enforce its status as a bogus collector’s relic. Perhaps it’s foolish to expect any of the gimmicks that make other live music discs bearable for non-aficionados, but even for rabid James Brown collectors, this is going to seem like a cheap knock-off: the mechanical, detached recording detracts from the singer’s possessed style. Forcing us to concentrate on the music, which, as it happens, has a lot to answer for.

‘Get Up Offa That Thing’ and ‘Papa’s Got a Brand New Bag’ come off as indifferent totems of cool, so worn into the mass-consciousness that they now possess no life of their own. There is a version of ‘Sex Machine’ that lasts longer than the Roman Empire, eventually dissolving from its anthemic posturing to seemingly improvised bouts of Brown speaking in tongues and elaborate saxophone solos. Throughout all of this, Brown’s charisma remains pretty elusive, the pipes are still in full working order, and his PCP-riddled carcass still convulses in crowd-pleasing fashion. However, his funk-scatting, disco-pimp routine doesn’t have the staying power or ingenuity of say, Curtis Mayfield. ‘Godfather of Soul’? Who knows, maybe it’s just those pearly whites.