When funk was everything (RIP Chuck Brown)

[drwex]

Lots of ink and pixels will be spent commemorating the passing of Donna Summer, the queen of disco.

But those of us who grew up chanting "Disco sucks!" and "Bring on the funk!" have another loss: Chuck Brown, who is credited with being one of the fathers of the go-go variant of funk.

Probably the best and most comprehensive tribute I've seen is from Xeni Jardin, over at Boingboing. It links to the remarkably comprehensive Wikipedia entry on go-go, as well as embedding a couple of videos in case you're not familiar with Brown or go-go.

Brown was also one of the funk artists who actively branched from earlier styles to new hip-hop styles but he never lost that phat horn sound.

Comments

[rmd.livejournal.com]

Nevermind "disco sucks". Disco might've sucked (although a lot of that was racism/homophobia, sort of like now people say "oh, I like all kinds of music ... except rap) but Donna Summer was the real deal.

The Summer/Moroder "I Feel Love" (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xSTf0B-9laQ) is one of the songs that divides pop music into "before" and "after". (http://www.soundonsound.com/sos/oct09/articles/classictracks_1009.htm)

and, honestly, she did a kick-ass straight-up rendition of the national anthem (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=o_7vRg14plA).

[catness.livejournal.com]

I tell people about that particular Star Spangled Banner all the time, actually. She was a damn fine singer.

[drwex]

There's a longer story here that I don't have time to type but in my childhood/adolescent universe "disco" was Bee Gees and similar white people who were co-opting and decimating funk. Disco was funk with all the soul bled out of it. Funk was too weird, with people who had foot-high afros and spaceships/motherships, and huge platform shoes and scary pimp cars. In my world, white people fled from all that, and disco was their refuge. Disco clubs, particularly in NYC, were a sea of white faces and from what I heard, the bouncers at the door were instructed to make it so.

Funk and Motown were what I liked to listen to - huge brass sections and uninhibited rhythms. The disco I heard had none of that.

That said, I get where you're coming from - anti-disco was also a cover for anti-black and especially anti-gay. But that's not something I learned about until much much later.

It's not that I particularly disrespected Donna Summer. It's just that in my world she never held a candle to Aretha Franklin or Etta James.

Running away from keyboard now. Always happy to talk about this more.