rock and roll musings by Tim Byrnes

SAY IT LOUD: I'M BLACK AND I'M PROUD

     My recent mention of James Brown got me to thinking. There's an episode of the PBS 'Rock and Roll' documentary that deals with Motown and the '60's ingeneral. After a wonderful hour detailing the am radio sounds of my youth the episode ends with a freeze frame of the Beatles landing at JFK. The voiceover guy says something along the lines of 'Many said that the Beatles had 'saved' rock and roll, but from whom?' In a later episode, Ben E King elaborates that when the Beatlesa hit, the soul music revolution was lost as those 4 moptops changed history and all that. He mentioned that all black artists had their momentum ripped from them by the British Invasion. In a telling moment he said "With the exception of James Brown, who's thing was SO far removed...."

     It's true. I was there. I remember seeing the Beatles on Ed Sullivan that February night and being mesmerized. I've since written that that night was a defining moment in my generation's development; that after that night we became We, a generation with a new identity. I also remember seeing James Brown on the same show months earlier and being somewhat scared. Protean and uncompromising, James Brown danced his holy dance and yelped his gutteral war cry with total abandon, and certainly caring not a whit what White America thought of him.

     Of course, age and drugs and compromise have found him in Rocky movies and TV commercials, but I can remember when James Brown was a source of power, liberation and fear masquerading as White Liberal Guilt. As a young, severley white Catholic school lad in the '60's, I held fast to my Beatles/Stones axis, not knowing then that the much of the music I loved originated in the blues and Little Richard. I remember tuning out the Motown songs, somehow certain that soul was not 'my' music. Of course in later years I came to appreciate the wonder and marvelous talent of Motown, the reckless abandon of Little Richard (the King and Queen of Rock and Roll, just ask him!) but it wasn't until I was in the Army that I got a handle on James Brown. It was the mid 70's, post Cream and pre-punk. I was heavily into Bowie, Mott the Hoople (sigh, now there was a band!) and the parent-scaring New York Dolls. So, as you might imagine, it was a difficult time for a skinny boy in the military for the sole reason of impressing his ultimately un-impressable father. It was also the first time in my life I shared my world with Black people. So I started hearing the music with new ears, in a new experience. To this day, I still remain unmoved by what I consider the supper club sound of much Philly soul, Gladys Knight and (gasp) B.B. King. (As a guitar player, I know it's almost heresy to knock B.B., but I find most of his work a little too clean, too uptown. I like my blues raw, like Muddy Waters and R.L Burnside. I find vindication in the fact that the legendary Gatemouth Brown -rip- felt the same way. Although I will admit that, much like Elvis Presley, B.B was a motherhubbard when he was young).

     It was in the Army, also, that I first fell into the trap of alcohol and began my drinking career in earnest. So little peckerwood me would get all tanked up and wind up cruising the clubs in Wrightstown N.J. usually the only white guy in the car, a situation I'd find myself in more and more often as I got older. It was on one such hot New Jersey night that me and about 6 guys were coming back to post in varying states of stupefication that 'Say It Loud' came on the radio and, yes, we all sang drunkenly along. It was that night that I first heard the words "I like you, Byrnes, and I usually don't like White people'. It wouldn't be the last.

     And you know what? Neither do I. Like White People, that is. With a capitol 'W'. The power structure that must be fought in this country is run and supported by White People. Now I know I'm not a brother and I don't try to talk like one or presume to understand Black Culture, but I'm painfully aware that a poor white person like myself, has a lot more in common with the Black Man than the White Man. And, as I've written at antimusic to great ridicule, I think Eminem is the new Dylan (more on which later). I was thrilled a few weeks ago to see on CSPAN, all day coverage of the Million More Movement rally on the steps of the Capitol, where Black Leaders like Jesse Jackason, Malik Shabazz of the New Black Panther Party and Louis Farrakhan spoke words of hope that I'd not heard from the mainstream (read:White) political structure.

     Approximately 2 million people, when asked by Shabazz, how they found President Bush on the charges of racism and lying to the American people about the war in Iraq (amongother things) shouted 'GUILTY!!' in one voice. And little peckerwood me sat on his couch, left arm thrust out in power salute shouted along. They called for Bush's impeachment, an obvious wish to me, but somehow overlooked by the spin controllers on the Sunday shows and the apologists who abound in Washington and, especially, the media. Apart from a 2 minute piece on 'This Week with George Stephanopolous' the following day, that showed only Russel Simmons reminiscing about the original Million Man March 20 years ago, it was the ONLY media coverage of an event that was certainly history in the making.

     The Rev. Farrakhan called for the poor white, the Native American and the Latino communities to band together and organize. He suggested the formation of a new political party, built from the disenfranchised among us, to call this administration on it's high crimes and misdemeanors and demand "justice for all." A far cry from the 'kill the White Devil' days, and certainly more reasonable. I've posted a link to the MMM site and I hope you'll investigate and see that a truly peaceful and political movement is forming a fair wind to blow against the Empire that is hiding from us as it lies to us and treats it's people like obstacles to power; to be ignored, abused and ultimately swept away.

      Now get up off of that thing.

Posted by: timbyrnes at 17:34 | link | comments

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