JAMES BROWN - A SUPERBAD TESTIMONY
When did JB turn up in your town? Superbad brought him into my life a 30p cut out import in Smyths record shop adjacent to the former Belfast Savings Bank, at the top of main Street, just around the corner from Hamilton Road, in Bangor Northern ireland in the nineteen seventy eight. I knew of James a visitor from another planet glimpsed a little here or there before that. But Superbad with its frenetic live work out of the title song was a manifesto, a rallying call to all God’s children. My first of many full length JB I swear for 2 weeks and maybe more, often times after that I ran on the spot, elated, calisthetic ised and transformed, emotionally enriched, surging with fervour and righteousness and an energy so right so powerful that you knew it came from god or the good or whatever you wanted to call it. The ecstasy in the scream the sheer humming blasting snapping back and propulsion oif the music. James made the call and who couldn’t hear or try to answer? I remember workin in the chip shop in town, Ken’s. Pealing the spuds and doing the prep every week it was the custom of the local police cheif to come in for a free burger. ken was on hand to discuss matters of political import around the world. At that time there was negotiations of a sort occuring between Bishop Desmond Tuttu and whatver racist scumbag held power in South Africa. One day ken said to the Cop, as he drooled into a mega burger burger, that talks were happening South Africa. “Ken I don’t care what you say - you cannot talk to a monkey,” came the greasy fat fuck’s reply. That’s what the scumbag thought a pig like whooly ignorant man. The sort of fucker who were and are keeping us down, man. While up there up in my room James was preaching the gospel of transcendence. God don’t let that die, that force, that will power, that - you can build a planet in my or in your own or some otherworldly image - glory. Don’t let it die with the Godfather. Keep James alive, keep James alive, keep James alive…
