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Monday, May 07, 2007
CHUCK BABY
Chuck Brown ft. KK
LOVE THEME FROM "THE GODFATHER"
Chuck Brown
We're About the Business
Raw Venture : 2007
[Buy it]
BUSTIN' LOOSE
 Video
Chuck Brown & The Soul Searchers
Bustin' Loose
Valley Vue Records : 1979
[Buy it]
WE NEED SOME MONEY
Video
Chuck Brown & The Soul Searchers
T.T.E.D. : 1984
available on The Best of Chuck Brown
[Buy it]
WOODY WOODPECKER
Chuck Brown & The Soul Searchers
Any Other Way To Go?
Verve : 1988
[Buy it]
DO YOU KNOW WHAT TIME IT IS?
Chuck Brown ft. Little Benny, Rare Essence, DC Scorpio
Live at The Capital Center
Video
CAT IN THE HAT
Little Benny & The Rockers
Live on "It's About Time"
Video
Chuck Brown may be the "Godfather of GoGo", but the title comes somewhat by default. Not to say he doesn't deserve it. He invented the word, and popularized its syncopated backbeat when he first experimented with latin jazz rhythms in the late '60s. But the GoGo sky is as starless as a humid PG County night in August. Chuck Brown isn't just the face of GoGo, he's GoGo's only face.
There are a couple clear reasons for this. First, GoGo is party music, street music. It isn't a music of songwriters, or frontmen, or even MCs. It has never translated well to the studio. GoGo's best studio recording may still be one of its first: when a very young Rick Rubin signed the even younger Junkyard Band to Def Jam and released the stunning Sardines/The Word 12". GoGo has remained a stubbornly local sound*. Its greatest shot at a Jeffersonian advance, and by 'Jeffersonian' I refer of course to the Norman Lear sitcom, came in the late '80s, when the band Experience Unlimited (EU) was featured prominently in Spike Lee's 'School Daze' and collaborated with Salt N' Pepa on Shake Your Thang (It's Your Thing) and the brilliant My Mike Sounds Nice.
Second: GoGo, at its heart, is just a beat, a beat knocked out on congas or paint buckets. Despite many efforts, this sound just isn't proprietary, it's more of an open-spource code.
Where Chuck Brown has been most successful, is in respecting the GoGo animal. (Did I really just write that?) He hasn't tried to own it or tame it. Instead he presides over it in the James Brown mold; as a showman, a bandleader, as, they might say in Vegas,"a professional's professional." He has hemmed a medley of styles to it's beats; funk, jazz, blues, and given it a diversity that is the trademark of his 40 year career.
Bustin' Loose, Woody Woodpecker and We Need Some Money are the classic cuts. I just saw this astonishing video for Bustin' Loose last week: Chuck appears to have borrowed Rick James' BeDazzler and set it to full-auto.
A couple months ago Brown released a new CD, and at age 72, hasn't lost that swing. Especially on the contemporary single Chuck Baby, which features his daughter 'KK' doing her best Missy Elliott impression.
*Not always local. When I was in college in Australia my neighbor, a friendly, hard-drinking single woman of around 40, had, to my amazement, a Best of Chuck Brown CD in her collection.
. . . . .
Also...
It's been quite a year for our friends the Wizznutzz. They were the only Washington Wizards sports blog this year to:
-Coin the nickname-of-record for an NBA superstar
-Appear on TV, radio, and in a number of national papers, including the NYT, WSJ, The Washington Post and Newsday.
-Accidentally turn up on Finland's National High School exam
-Equate double-consciousness in the NBA with the cover of ABBA Arrival
-Claim August Strindberg (1849 - 1912) as an intern
-Open a popular online fashion boutique named after a torture chamber from a Sam Lipsyte novel
It is in that fashion boutique that they are offering a dope new t-shirt that threatens to one day become as ubiquitous among local hipsters as the CBGB tee. Get it while it's hot.Labels: funk, GoGo, James
posted by James
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