Artist: James Brown
Album: Live at the Apollo
Year: 1963
James Brown, the Godfather of Soul. A live set from the Apollo Theater in NYC here. I expected something somewhat akin to Sam Cooke's Live at the Harlem Square Club and was somewhat right. I MUCH preferred Cooke's smooth vocal delivery to what Brown offers up here.
You can tell that the crowd is totally "into" this performance, but in listening to the music, I have absolutely no idea why. The vocals are raspy and mumbly and the songs are like completely inferior versions of Sam Cooke tunes. Most of the songs are in the 2-minute range, so even when some of the songs start to build a nice little groove, they're over just as you're catching on. There are little instrumental bridges in between some of the cuts here to try to infuse some energy into the proceedings, but ultimately fail to do so.
Somehow Rolling Stone has deemed Live at the Apollo one of the Top 25 albums of all-time. It all feels like a gigantic hoax to me: I wasn't feeling this one at all.
Rating: Not worth a listen
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