Customer Reviews

Live at the Apollo 2 (Dlx) (Dig)

5 star:		(19)
4 star:		(3)
3 star:		(1)
2 star:		(2)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

I first ran across this album years ago on vinyl and it quickly became one of my favorites. This is James Brown at the height of his powers before he began to recycle his best efforts and shriek too much. This version of the band is tighter than a drum head and pumps out the funk beyond belief.

I totally flipped when I found the CD with EVEN MORE MATERIAL! While I'm not completely crazy about the intermission material (Caravan is a good song but without SEEING the JB Dancers doing their stuff it seems like filler) the "There Was a Time" medley is worth the price of admission alone. This song is so powerful it completely makes up for some slight (and I mean slight) problems with the rest of the set. Every time I have it on in the car I can't help but shout along with the audience, UHHHH....UHHHH UHHHH!!!! If you're one of the drivers next to me in Houston please be kind and don't laugh too loud - I just can't help myself. "Kansas City" is also one of the highlights of the show while "Cold Sweat" is an absolute monster. Well, you get the picture. I just wish I could have been there at the Apollo in June of 1967 to witness this amazing series of concerts. If only I had a time machine I could have shot over to the Monterey Pop festival to catch Jimi and Otis and then later that same month out east to the Apollo.... Please strongly consider this CD for you collection. If you have the slightest funk-bone in your body, you won't be disappointed. Long live James Brown!

James Brown has made four albums at Harlem's Apollo, the first in 1963 introducing the James Brown Show to a whole new audience and staying in the top selling lists for well over a year. By the time of this second album, selected mainly from the second of two shows recorded during a record-breaking 10-day run in June 1967, he had played there a further 200 times and claimed to know the stage so well he would recognize it blindfold from the sound of the fans in the balcony.
The concerts caught the James Brown Band at an important transitional phase. The previous month Pee Wee Ellis had taken as over musical director and with Maceo Parker recently restored to the line-up on tenor sax the music had taken a new, more funky direction (at a time when funk didn't exist), as demonstrated on the first groundbreaking piece they had recorded together that same month, Cold Sweat. James Brown did not waste the opportunity to bring his audience up to date with his sound, performing new titles such as Cold Sweat and Let Yourself Go, the current single.
However, less than two minutes into the latter song the Band go into an extended locked groove jam called There Was A Time, with both Clyde Stubblefield and Jabo Starks whacking out the tempo on twin drum kits, plus bongos by Ronald Selicoe, and this soon developed a life of its own when an edit of the performance appeared as the B-side of the next single, I Can't Stand Myself (When You Touch Me). It did better in the R&B charts than the A-side, reaching number 3, and boosted sales of this legendary live album. The liner notes claim that this track "may well be the single most riveting Brown performance on record."
However, James Brown was off to Las Vegas the following month and also had an eye for the mainstream, so as well there are violin-filled renditions of standards like That's Life and I Wanna Be Around, which owes as much to Tony Bennett as it does to Dinah Washington.
This two CD set reconstructs the original set-list as far as is possible, restoring material edited from the original 1968 double-album because of running-time constraints, including in their entirety Sweet Soul Music from Bobby Byrd's set and the James Brown Band's revival of Duke Ellington's Caravan, and edits removed from longer pieces such as It's A Man's Man's Man's World, There Was A Time, I Feel All Right and Cold Sweat, with its Maceo Parker sax solos, all taken from the four-track remote recording master tape

"Live in Dallas" is a very strong contender for the Greatest James Brown live album, but this set from approx. one year earlier has a greater range of material and presents the arrangements generally at a better tempo. The original Vol. 2 release was beautifully programmed and the "Deluxe" reissue, with many extra segments and deeper sound is another must-have for any fan of JB or current rap/hip-hop. "...Man's World" is much longer and is almost completely different. "Please, Please, Please" is here a rare alternate and prefaces a prev. unrel. "Bring It Up" finale. I was sad to note that "Money Won't Change You" was not a vocal but an instrumental - there are no "new" entries otherwise, except for Mr. Bobby Byrd's "Sweet Soul Music", a performance which warranted release back in '67/'68. I hope Polydor can offer all the JB live albums in this format - the "Revolution of the Mind" set, reportedly produced using many shows, would be the perfect follow-up! Oooooo-wee!

Recent musicological and historical analyses of James Brown have come to realize that he is probably one of the five most important musicians of the second half of the twentieth century, easily as important as Dylan and the Beatles, and probably even Elvis and Frank Sinatra. One simply cannot understand contemporary popular music without a thorough grounding in what Brown did in his development of soul, R&B, and of course funk. One peek at the most recent Billboard chart (and not just the pop chart) should be all the proof a skeptic requires.

JB recorded many fine live albums, and this is probably the best and most important. This is pivotal and high quality African-matrixed (thanks Mr. Belafonte) music, whose percussive force and unbelievably deep groove is trance inducing and hypnotic in the extreme. The experience of listening to this music is difficult to convey in words: combine an intense two hour exercise session with some hypnotherapy, intense lovemaking, poetry, and a thunderstorm, and you begin to approximate it. JB and the Fabulous Flames are so rock-solid here, they are about as dense as the thickest diamond. This music is tighter than Captain America's shield.

Regarding the sound quality; it's not the best. Perhaps this is a reflection of the middling tape quality of the original, because one can actually hear tape squeak at various places in the performance. It's not a deal breaker, though, and I'm glad the engineers decided to keep the imperfections in place instead of editing them out.

First, may I say, I think James Brown is a genius.
A genius performer, a genius vocalist, a genius in
putting his bands together, a genius at improvisation.
Many times at these gigs, he was making it up as he
want along, the band was vamping, and he was just
"feeling it". As far as live recordings, this version
of "It's a Man's, Man's, Man's World", when he goes
around the clock, like what he's feeling at 10'oclock,
11 o'clock. and when the clock strikes THREE-E-E-E-E"...

Folks you have to hear this to believe it.

James Brown is a just a natural born genius. It is
all on this record, and I thank God somebody had
a tape recorder set up that night so those of us too
young or in a different neighborhood or part of the world
have the opportunity to hear a genius in his finest hour.

I cry every single time I hear it. This is right up there,
with Hendrix, with Mozart, with Michelangelo, Miles Davis,
Leonardo da Vinci, Marvin Gaye...there's James Brown, doin'it.
Thanks, Polydor, for recording this thing. Just get it. It
could change your whole life.

If you haven't heard this, YOU MUST! Words can't describe the energy and soul these two discs drip with! I hadn't heard the original album, I've been satisfied with the Live in Dallas. the performances here BURN that one to me. I love both albums, but here I enjoy the more inimate setting and sound of the Apollo theatre. Just go buy this, you won't regret it!!!!

Having picked up the original CD issue of this album, then subsequently learning about the deluxe edition, I was first rather cynical. Most of these 'deluxe' editions do little to improve, they're just cash cows, especially when you consider the actual cost of manufacturing the discs is minimal. Also, when you compare vol. II to the first and third in the series, how does it match up?

You needn't worry--it's as good as volume 3, and personally, I think it's way better than vol.1, for sheer entertainment value as well as timelessness.

JB was on the verge of hardening his funk; he had yet to compose 'Sex Machine', 'Soul Power', etc., and you can see him leaning both ways--both the with superb crooning of 'That's Life', and 'I Wanna Be Around' (a Tony Bennett favourite!)', and the mid-to-low-key funk of 'Prisoner of Love' and 'Cold Sweat'.

From start to finish, however, this is a funk tour de force, that no self-respecting JB or R&B fan should be without.

Can't stop playing this. James Brown and his band are so tight and the grooves so amazing, I keep getting blasted away.

Folks, one listen to the incredible medly of Let Yourself Go/There Was a Time/I Feel All Right is all the reason you need to buy this. "I Got To Feel That Love Is Real!" as JB put it. Simply put, this is among the best sessions of live R&B from it's golden age ever recorded! By the time of "Please Please Please," you'll be worn out!

If you were to get one live album in your life, make it this one. It just blows volume I out of the water.

Highlights include "It's a Man's World", "Sweet Soul Music", "Kansas City", "Let Yourself Go", "Bring It Up", "I Feel All Right", "Cold Sweat", "Prisoner of Love" (except the orchestra and the backup vocals), and the Best Song Ever, "There Was a Time".

However, there are a couple overly-orchestrated tunes, such as "I Wanna Be Around". Don't ask me why. But you should still just get the album. Every song is at least listenable, and there are many gems.