Any NY headz going to The Apollo?? ( JB related)
JustAlice
1,308 Posts
Just curious if any east coasters were going to try to go to the Apollo to pay their respects in the next couple days. Please to report and take pictures to share with the rest of us. Its probably gonna be hectic and also I bet a lot of famous folks will be down there as well. It would be interesting to see or hear about it here. Just a thought, please share.
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I was at Secret Chimp's house a couple nights ago and we were all excited to see JB on The Oreily Factor, but all the sudden it was like, **SPECIAL REPORT : G. Ford Dead**
man, fuck gerald ford. JB would be mad as shit his death shine got hijaked by that scumbag.
FOR REAL. Why couldn't Ford have picked a better time to kick off?
After the procession passed we took the subway down to 125th & got in line for the viewing. It took about four hours to get in & we were in the theater for all of five minutes, but it was well worth it. James lay in an open casket on the stage wearing a sequined light blue suit w/ a white shirt; we were allowed to step onto the Apollo stage to walk past & pay our respects. While it was a chilly day to be standing on line outdoors for that long the mood was upbeat. The video store two doors down showed some vintage performance footage on a small outdoor monitor (including James on Playboy After Dark doing 'Say It Loud' - priceless seeing all those blonde Playboy bunnies shouting 'I'm Black & I'm Proud' during the choruses). An old school concert promoter carried a sign w/ an OG poster advertising a show at the Manhattan Center from the 70s - JB, Black Ivory & Joe Bataan - w/ a handwritten thank you to James above it. It was great seeing parents who'd brought their young children w/ them, schooling them on James' significance.
An older woman waiting in line near us pretty much summed things up when she said, 'James, you had us lining up when you were w/ us & you're still doing it!'
God bless the Godfather.
JAMES BROWN FOREVER!
Totally. James Brown was healthy and handing out presents to needy kids just days before he died. I think someone ought to a check for some polonium 201 because James did not die, he was assassinated. They just couldn't stand to a powerful Blackman running around upsetting their little games. Then when they saw how much press he was getting dead they went to Gerald Ford and said, time to take another hit for your country .
All in all, it sounds like a remarkable day. I wonder when anything like this will ever happen again.
It's weird - when news of his death first came out, I registered it intellectually (i.e. "Oh, James Brown is dead") but not really emotionally. After all, while not an excessively old man, he certainly wasn't young either and given the average life expectancy of a hard-living performer - Black no less - it just seemed only natural that death would eventually claim him.
But it's been in the last few days that I've really begun to feel what his passing means. For one thing, trying to wrap one's head around the enormity of his career and influence is awe-inspiring to the point where you can't even take it all in at once - it's just too vast to contemplate. But the outpouring of memorials and remembrances really makes one realize how incredibly important he was in people's lives. It's one thing to contemplate Jame Brown, the musician, but thinking of him as the man - correction, The Man - who's touched so many millions of people around the globe is something else entirely. He was a constant, a force you could depend on, even through his own personal scandals and travails.
Seriously, how the fuck can an immortal die? It's still hard to contemplate a world without having him simply be what seemed to come so naturally: a living, breathing embodiment of energy, vitality, and passion.
James Brown, forever, indeed.