James Brown - Live at the Apollo 1962
|
List Price: Our Price: $2.55 You Save: $3.39 (57%) Availability: Usually ships in 1-2 business days Buy Used: from $2.24 (click here) Category: Music CD See more new music releases 
|
|---|
Buy this Music CD at online store in your country
Canadian Music Store
Canadian Music Store
Free Music Notes for Live at the Apollo 1962
Free Music Review: mellow but intense
Hit: 5 Stars
I am happy over this well priced item b/c James voice is more on display than his later funk and showmanship. Since there is nobody like him, it seems appropriate in a well rounded collection.Free Music Review: The Greatest Live album ever recorded
Hit: 5 Stars
This album of Brown's strong precense on stage may be the best live album in history of popular music. Live at the Apollo is pure, uncut soul. Simply a landmark.Free Music Review: WHAT MORE CAN BE SAID!!!
Hit: 5 Stars
WHAT MORE CAN BE SAID about such a GREAT ALBUM that has not already been said??Free Music Review: The One And Only Mr.Dynamite Just Starting To Do It!
Hit: 4 Stars
Someone once described the film Purple Rain as "a timely event that captured a revolution as it was happening". Much can be said of this particular album. So much has been made of this albums legendary status and it being one of the "greatest live albums of all time" it all just can't help but diminish it's impact. Now saying this is even JAMES BROWN'S greatest live album of all time would be padding things just a tad but the fact is this is one of his most defining albums of his late 50's/early 60's career. One big reason is that it represented something of a concluding chapter onto this part of his career. At this point JB's liveshows with his Famous Flames were still based around a dozen or so of his early blues and doo-wop oriented singles such as "I'll Go Crazy","I Don't Mind",the rollicking "Think" (one of my personal favorites) and his then new single "Night Train". But it's not the presentation of those songs musically that really makes this live performance what it was. For one rather than playing before an Apollo audience so excited that his performance was interupted by screams and applause the audience sounds serve more to cheer him on from tune to tune,stopping largely during the performance due to the wordless level of respect James' presense seemed to demand. There's a medley of songs here but the whole album plays that way;James and the tight Flames flow from one horn fueled soul workout into another with little more than a scream and/or a horn blast to indicate passing into another song. Also elements from songs such as "Please Please Please" appear throughout the song and James often refers back to "Lost Someone" and "I'll Go Crazy" as phrases throughout the album-treating his single songs as parts of a unfied entity as opposed to seperate statement. Since albums as a studio entity were almost unknown during this time outside Ray Charles and Frank Sinatra,for someone as single based as James Brown the live show seemed the best way to express this unity in his music at the time. At the times when the audience does interact with James it's very strong and mutual and seems to happen almost as a matter of course. Because the visual element of James' dancing,the whole cape routine and sweating is missing you'll have to refer to the liner notes for photographs of the event to get something of the idea of what it looked like if you even need to. In fact for the most part the musical presentation here should do the job nicely. They say music cannot create imagry but the nature of albums such as this will make many people wonder,as it did with me as to the all around truth of that statement.Free Music Review: Revolutionary and mostly excellent
Hit: 4 Stars
Yes, this album is a massive influence, a turning point from funk to soul. And for the most part, it's fantastic, pretty much serving as a "greatest-hits live" for James Brown's early period - with the obvious exception of a full-length "Please, Please, Please", which is presented in medley format. And I actually prefer many of these live versions to the studio originals - a manically paced "Think"; powerful versions of the doo-wap-ish "I'll Go Crazy" and "Try Me"; a slow blues-ballad take on "I Don't Mind"; and especially the lengthy, raving "Lost Someone", which takes the intensity of gospel and puts it into a blues format. That especially was a revolutionary track, pure soul in its most unadulterated form. It's like listening to a jazz song or something, only with the soloist being one of history's greatest vocalists. Go ahead and scream! Yeah, don't just say "ow", say "ow!" That's another cool thing about the song: the audience participation. Listen for some funniness from the peanut gallery (why does nobody say that anymore?) when James is doing the "I believe somebody over there lost someone!" thing at around nine minutes. Plus the band is fantastic, with enough energy and enthusiasm to match up with Brown's on-the-edge vocal performance. I do have a few complaints to put in the suggestion box, though. The medley's uneven: it can be fun ("Please, Please, Please"; "Why Do You Treat Me Like You Do?"; "Strange Things Happen", with wonderful guitar licks), but when he takes the energy down and puts the focus on his dated organ ("I Love You, Yes I Do"; "Bewildered"), his goals fall flat. And the record closes with a going-through-the-motions "Night Train". That leads to my next complaint: The arrangements, other than "Lost Someone", are just rawer takes on the studio originals (even "Think" is just the single take sped up). They're raw enough to mostly be better than the single takes, as I alluded to previously, and I would have liked to hear the band use the less constricting live format to expand on certain elements of the originals such as the guitar/sax break on "Try Me" or the solos on "Night Train" and "Think". You know, he's got this great band behind him, but the only time he lets them do their thing is on a trilogy of fun ten-second interludes.