The collector in me breathes a heavy, internal sigh when I think about James Brown records. I’ve always liked the collecting aspect of music, almost as much as the tunes themselves. It started with Aerosmith, and I ingested everything greedily. Then I turned to AC/DC, same deal; then the Beatles. And on and on and on.
It’s too hard with James Brown though – he just has too many records. Wikipedia credits him with having sixty-three studio albums, fifteen live albums and forty-nine compilations (at the time of writing). Of course, there’s a lot of variability in there – a couple of diamonds for every half a dozen lumps of coal.
It’s always worth the effort mining his work though – this, his forty-sixth studio record, features one of his biggest hits, Get Up Offa That Thing / Release The Pressure. The song, released as a two-part single a couple of months before the album dropped, is a dancefloor smash and a worthy addition to the man credited on the sleeve as the Minister of New New Super Heavy Funk. He should add ‘doctor’ to his list of titles, given his medical advice in the song – ‘Get up offa that thing and dance till you feel better!’
I’d like to collect all sixty-three studio records but I think it might be too difficult, particularly considering my location in the world. I’m sure that I’d have a better chance if I was within driving distance of record shops in the Bronx, or other inner-city American areas. There’s always Discogs though, and that helped me greatly when I was collecting all of the James Bond soundtracks.
Perhaps I have another James-related quest in me. Five down, fifty-eight to go…
Hit: Get Up Offa That Thing / Release The Pressure
Hidden Gem: I Refuse To Lose
I’ve been looking for a nice, clean, affordable, original copy of this record for what feels like forever. I recently gave up and bought a minty Back To Black reissue, and I can report that it sounds glorious.
Pop quiz, people: what’s the link between this Jonathan Demme film and Miloš Forman’s 
Another clue for the pop quiz at the top of the page – the third film that links The Silence Of The Lambs and One Flew Over The Cuckoo’s Nest is Frank Capra’s 1934 proto-romantic comedy It Happened One Night.
ANSWER: All three films – It Happened One Night, One Flew Over The Cuckoo’s Nest and The Silence Of The Lambs – won the ‘big five’ academy awards in their respective years: Best Picture, Best Director (Demme), Best Actor (Hopkins), Best Actress (Foster) and either of the two screenplay awards, in this case Best Adapted Screenplay (Ted Tally).
I recently saw The Last Waltz, Martin Scorsese’s film of the final Band performance in 1976. I don’t know why I had avoided this for so long; perhaps it was the feeling that when you’ve seen one classic rock superstar concert line-up, you’ve seen them all. “Get Eric Clapton on the phone, we’re having a get-together.” Or perhaps it was the suspicion that Scorsese’s presence might taint the Band, just like his sycophancy for the Rolling Stones has left that band a little less dangerous.
Gremlins is such a great film; one of those movies from my childhood that was a little bit scary but a whole lot of fun. I would have only been six years old when I first watched it, half laughing, half watching through my fingers. I re-watched it recently just to check whether it was as good as I remembered. Perhaps the special effects would have dated the film, or maybe I hadn’t noticed if the acting was hammy back when I was a kid.
Most of the laughs in Gremlins comes from the creature effects, and you can tell that the team behind these had loads of fun coming up with disgusting ways for the little critters to behave. It almost feels like two projects on the screen at once – one, a film of a smalltown hero battling the odds to save the day, and a second project, led by the creations of special effects artist Chris Walas, ultimately aimed at innovating ways of showing the gremlins causing mayhem. At one point, the special effects crew had a list on the wall titled ‘Horrible Things To Do To Gizmo’.
As well as the obvious nostalgia factor, a re-watch of the film also pays off to spot small parts from actors who went on to bigger things. Judge Reinhold (
Re-released by Mondo Records in 2016, this double LP is an incredibly well thought out package with design elements by Phantom City Creative reflecting the events of the film. The records – one disc on brown and white swirl mogwai vinyl, and one on green swirl gremlin vinyl – come in a UV sensitive gatefold jacket; when exposed to daylight, the cover reveals additional artwork. The inner sleeves are water sensitive as well, revealing additional artwork when exposed to a damp cloth.
I recently watched Holy Flying Circus, the BBC’s dramatisation of the events surrounding the release of Monty Python’s Life Of Brian in 1979. Portrayed by a bunch of lookalikes and soundalikes, including an uncannily accurate impression of Eric Idle by the comedian Steve Punt, Holy Flying Circus is overloaded with Pythonesque references and absurdist humour. The film finds the Python team and their management in the middle of a backlash from Christian groups and local councils against Brian, culminating in the now infamous television debate between Michael Palin and John Cleese versus Malcolm Muggeridge and the Bishop of Southwark.
As much as I love Python, their television sketches have lost a lot of their edge over the years; what was once irreverent now seems fairly quaint. More interesting to me is the behind the scenes story of the Python team themselves, and their journey from television sketch comedians to ‘blasphemous’ film stars and beyond. Holy Flying Circus doesn’t really add anything new if one is already familiar with the team’s 2003 autobiography or Michael Palin’s diary concerning The Python Years (2006).
What if Elvis had never happened? What if Elvis had walked into Sun Studios in Memphis in 1953, but was prevented from making his first recording for Sam Phillips by a city-wide power cut? Of if he was hit by a bus walking over to the studio? The whole future of popular music and teen culture might have changed into an alternate timeline that doesn’t bear thinking about.
In the 1970s, Haley becomes a staple of the Las Vegas casino scene. He switches draper jackets for white and gold jumpsuits, and it seems that his star will never fade with a million impersonators copying his gold wraparound sunglasses and kiss-curl hair-style. However, in December 1980 tragedy strikes when Haley is gunned down by an obsessive fan outside the New York apartment he shares with his Japanese wife, the artist Yoko Ono. Haley falls into a coma, and dies a few months later.