What becomes a legend most? Judging from last Sunday night's James Brown concert at the Opera, the answer might be "craziness."
It was a strange, entertaining and perplexing show, one that at times stunned the crowd into buzzing submission and at other times lifted them out of their seats to dance the Wild White People Dance, but at all times it was meditation on the question of how much leeway do we give a legend.
The basis of all James Brown shows is his band, and this one, clad in what looked like matching bellmen's uniforms, was as tight as Colin Farrell's pants. Two drum kits plus another percussion zone (and it was a zone, taking up a huge chunk of the stage with various cymbals and hand drums) anchored the groove, along with a minimal but
effective horn section (a couple of saxophones, a single trumpet), two bass players (yeah!), several guitars and a single electric keyboard. And, of course, the sexy background singers-three of 'em, clad in silver lamé and high heels-rounded out the scene.
The centerpiece, though, is always Mr. Dynamite. He strutted out to the microphone, clad in sparkle-coated, high-waisted pants and a sparkle-coated matching tux jacket, deep green shirt and high-heeled boots. He looked like somebody's aunt dressed up for a family reunion. The crowd, meantime, was primed. It was lovely to see the staid Opera stage filled to the brim with so much funkiness, lovely to see the haggard, hungover-from-Fiestas crowd keyed up and grinning and ready to get nasty.
Thing is, there is the nastiness that we all know from James Brown's hits, and then there is the nastiness that infuses a true funk show. These two things can intertwine, but the Santa Fe audience is accustomed to the former, while the latter is as foreign to us as inorganic fruit. It seemed like the crowd wanted "Sex Machine" and "Goodfoot," but they got, for most of the show, something entirely different, and it caught everyone off-guard. A collective shiver of adrenaline rolled through the crowd when the man stepped onstage-it's James Brown!-and he shuffled to the microphone and did that knock-the-mic-down-and-save-it-from-falling-
by-grabbing-the-cord thingy that never fails to be the coolest thing ever. And then he launched into…
What exactly did he launch into? A medley of songs, some well-known and some obscure, through which he flipped more quickly than a Rolodex in a stiff breeze. Various "uh"s and "hup"s. The crowd hung with him, roaring as he slid into his famous foot shuffle for, you know, about three seconds, then into a goofy running-man kind of thing for, you know, about four more.
Thing is, James Brown is 73 years old. And that's 73
hard
years. The man boasts stunning amounts of energy-and I don't wanna know how much of that is channeled sexually-but he's still a septuagenarian, and in this show, it showed. Brown didn't spend too much time dancing, giving us only teasing bits: a sample of a famous song here, a sample of fancy footwork there. After a song or two, it became clear: he was letting other people do the work for him.
Those people, specifically, included the background singers and a very tall, large lady who looked like a drag queen-I mean, I could see her talonlike fingernails from my midlevel seat!
It turns out the drag queen was James Brown's newest wife, Tomi Rae Brown.
Brown's basic m.o. was this: Say something incoherent into the microphone. Launch into the first part of a song. Sing first four words of song. Get highly competent band member (rotating from guitarist to different horn players) up to the mic and have him solo. Combine this with having background singer bust out with a solo. Sing four more words. Pull Tomi Rae to front of stage. Have her sing something. Say, "Tomi Rae, ladies and gentlemen!" and end the song.
There were other interludes. One background singer pulled out about two verses of "Ave Maria" in honor of the Opera (to a confused audience that received it politely). Tomi Rae explained how we all love the Statue of Liberty, and that we should be for peace. Occasionally, two cheerleader types clad in bikini tops and hot pants with "J" on one ass cheek and "B" on the other would bound out, bounce around and skitter back offstage. Toward the end Brown dictated a little lesson in jazz improv, with his guitarist and trumpet player trading licks, an oddly sweet little moment that was one of the show's highlights but also a microcosm of the disjointed nature of the performance.
The band jammed, Brown played off them, teased the crowd with smidgens of songs, only to cut them off abruptly or launch into another that would last 20 minutes. He dropped to his knees at one point, asking each lady singer on stage to give us "s-c-r-e-e-e-a-m…" and all three did, launching into gorgeous, all-too-brief vocal solos.
In other words, it was a train wreck. A glorious, wacked-out, sloppy mess, an apocalypse of ill-considered bits and bad timing and what-the-hell moments. Entirely fitting for a man who has spent his life pumping out some of the greatest soul music ever made on the one hand and perpetuating bizarre situations on the other. Most important, Sunday's show was an oasis of unusual behavior in a world that's become all too sanitized. I can't think of a better antidote to MTV, to overly handled "rock" stars, to
American Idol
-atry. It was a funky freak show, and it was beautiful.
