James Brown was the act scheduled for the 930 Club’s penultimate concert of 2003 Monday night, but what the audience at the jampacked venue was treated to was closer to the James Brown Revue. Meaning there were more instrumental solos, guest vocalists and dancing girls than heavy doses of Soul Brother Number One.
The show’s setup was understandable of course, since Brown ---biographical sources place his current age somewhere between 68 and 75--- doesn’t possess the stamina he did when The Hardest Working Man in Showbuisness was more truism than sobriquet. Still, when he did sing Monday, Brown’s voice was as full of sandpaper yelps and gutbucket groans as it was in his heyday. Feeding off The Bittersweets, his energetic quartet of backing singers/dancers, JB ran down the funk phrase book he virtually invented, exhorting the energetic crowd to “Get Up Offa That Thang” and “Make it Funky”, even tossing in a few spins and his trademark mike-stand yo-yo trick.
The engine of the show was the irrepressible funk pump of Brown’s band, the Soul Generals. The General’s horn section bleated beautifully across the two-bass, three- drummer rhythm section, keeping a constant, percolating groove, slowed only when Brown’s wife, Tomi Rae, took the mike for a vocal turn that was such a change of pace that it bordered on the surreal. All the bluster that surrounded the show was bearable just to soak in a bit of Brown’s legend, and occasionally----as during a simmering snatch of “Try Me”---that legend still seemed viable.
Washington Post, 2002
