Fellas i’m ready to get up and do my thang

I’ve spoken numerous times before on A Story To Tell about the fact that ubiquity is no excuse for nonchalance. The existence of a song as a staple, as a cultural reference point rendered seemingly closed to appreciation or even criticism by its very familiarity, is something that fascinates me and thus pops up here again and again. Another frequent visitor to these pages (how could it be otherwise given the subject matter) is of course the Godfather himself, Mr James Brown, a man whose recorded oeuvre is surely rich enough for repeated and valuable comment until the internet itself runs out of space. And these two forces are inevitably going to crash into one another at some stage, where the well-known meets the critically acclaimed.

And so there I was the other day listening to a James Brown compilation, the type that you buy as a keen 13 year old using Best Of collections as a tentative dip of the toe into the waters of deeper back catalogues. Indeed, this was a CD copy of the very same Best Of I first had on cassette tape, as that impressionable teen. And in ran the now familiar spoken intro, Mr Brown telling the JBs that he wants to get into it, and asking permission to count it off, before the horns explode into possibly the funkiest groove you will ever hear. Certainly as a young man the realisation of how damn tight the music of James Brown was capable of being, how effortless the sheer funk of the jam, was an utter revelation, setting the scene for many great nights to come.

I’m talking, if you haven’t already picked it, about “Sex Machine”, taken from the 1970s album of the same name. The album, of course, has an 11 minute workout of the track, whilst most of us are most familiar with the double-sided single release. And given the nature of the track, perhaps release is the absolute best term for what comes next (oh the joy of euphemism!). For “Sex Machine”, over-familiar or not, is simply incredible.

Notable for all sorts of reasons, not least the first contribution to music of Brown’s new band the JBs. The story of this band’s rise is itself worthy of attention, but for now let us just revel in the fact that the horn-backed soulful funk of the 1960s was now giving way to a hard funk of startling innovation and sonic inspiration. The horns might intro the track, but it is the dual guitar, bass and lead, of Bootsy and Catfish Collins that own this tune, working out all over the groove. Fred Wesley and Maceo Parker would have their moment, and naturally Jabo Starks’ drums kill it, but for me the sheer raw power of the licks that the Collins’ produced is just insane.

But when I was listening to the song recently, it struck me that there is another small but vital ingredient to the all-encompassing funk sound. It is so brief as to be almost easy to miss altogether. Or if not miss, then at least not grasp its brilliance. The moment is one minute and two seconds in, and of course the element in question is the piano lick dropped as a bridge by Bobby Byrd. 18 seconds of sheer brilliance. When you initially listen, or even after too numerous repeats to remember, the piano lick may appear welcome respite from the sharpness of the bass and guitar licks. But focus in on it and the tickling of the ivories really is astounding in its simple execution.

It comes once more, at three minutes and fourteen seconds, this time called in by Brown with the almost surreal motif “Taste pian-ah!”. And then it is gone. A fleeting moment of brilliance that sounds more and more to me like the calling card of a hungry band who realised that they were setting a new template for music. And if it doesn’t make you feel like a sex machine yourself then it’s time to go see the doctor and ask him why you can’t get up.