FROM DA BRICKS

Just this evening I’ve read a few comments/posts where the issue of whether providing access to whole albums is a good thing or not. This is something that I have thought about a lot and would be interested to know what people feel about it.

On the one hand, posting these albums provides exposure to an artist and may encourage people to buy their records, go to see a live performance or spread the word amongst their friends. Word of mouth is a powerful force and it could be argued that bloggers provide a kind of advertisement for recording artists that ultimately provides them with financial rewards. Many of these albums have been long forgotten about by the masses (if they knew that they existed at all) and blogging provides them with a fanbase that perhaps they may not have had. Recently, one of the members of Yaggfu Front dropped a comment after I had posted the album showing love for the exposure of his music, so it is clear that some artists are more than happy for this behaviour to continue.

On the other hand, it is of course providing people with decent quality copies of music that they may not subsequently buy. It could be said that blogs harm an artist’s financial growth and limit them in the future. Perhaps online file sharing IS killing music, and we should not shoot ourselves in the foot by harming the genre by sharing it so freely.

What are the rules exactly? Does something have to be out of print to be ‘postable’? Should it be more than ten years old? Does posting new/old albums work in or against the favour of the artists in question? Should record companies step their game up and make their products more desirable? Is file sharing going to bring down the record industry and destroy music? I would be very interested to know people’s thoughts on this one: you know what to do.

I wasn’t going to write anything on From Da Bricks over the Christmas period as I am away from my collection and knew I’d be gorging myself on food and drink for a week. However, James Brown died today and I felt compelled to write a short tribute to a man whose music made him an international figure who had an impact on men, women and children for close to half a century. Brown’s contribution to hip hop has also been massive: how many tracks can you name that have sampled a James Brown beat?

Funnily enough, I don’t feel like I know Brown’s music as well as I should do. I guess it is a case of only having so much time on my hands and for the last six or so years I have been committed to listening to as much hip hop as possible to the detriment of other genres, however closely related. This is something that I aim to correct in the near future. James Brown may not have been the most commercially popular or the most naturally skilled of vocalists, but he sure was the funkiest and was undeniably one of the most exhilarating performers to ever grace a stage.

Unfortunately, his life was marked by tragedy from a early age and it plagued him throughout his 73 years on this planet. Failed relationships, battles with drug addiction and prison sentences meant that towards the latter stages of his life he had lost the grace and raw power that he possessed earlier in his career, becoming a parody of himself. However, this video of a performance of ‘Mother Popcorn’ demonstrates what the ‘Godfather Of Soul’ was all about. The funky music and dance moves are what he should always be remembered for, and there are very few people who have acted as such an enigmatic and powerful symbol of the African-American male in popular culture.

In the liner notes to ‘Endtroducing…’ DJ Shadow states that James Brown was the inventor of modern music. His raw and unadulterated sound has influenced musicians across the globe for decades, and there is no denying that hip hop would be a drastically different entity if it wasn’t for Brown. Christmas day or otherwise, I’ll drink to that.

James Brown R.I.P.