Have not wrote in this thing for ages...been busy and shit. So I figured the best artist to blog about is a guy who lived at or near KC for like 30 minutes per an obscure interview that was cited by the label, Numero Group.
This LP is pretty great, it's the soulful James Brown before he went straight funk. Odd thing about James Brown records, they are almost always beat to death. You find them, get excited, look at it and the vinyl is tore up and barely playable.
They were party records. You put on James Brown when you wanted to get down with friends. Which also meant you were probably tipping a few back with friends. Which means, especially when records weren't thought of as fetish items, people just took them right off the platter and probably laid them on stack of other played through records, no sleeve or inner. Just out there, getting torn up.
Here's the thing though, that all makes sense; party records. But, next time you're out digging, look at a popular Joni Mitchell album. It's also tore up. Odd, because unlike James Brown, Joni isn't for partying. I have this romantic notion that it is because some girl in the 70's got her heart broken and for comfort, just played the crap out of Joni Mitchell...but, Joni is not from KC, not even for 30 minutes like Brown, so I'm not going into how great she is.
