James Brown, "Please Please Please," plus a little Lesley Gore

I just cited the performance below in another context, but this is too good to pass up.

Before I present the clip, let me introduce it to you. Let's say that you have a short snippet of a song with no real words, just lasting maybe less than half a minute. Simple little stuff, a nice little riff, but not all the exciting.

But what if you're James Brown, and you have complete, total, utter control over your audience - enough control to wring every last scream out of them?

As Sting said, James Brown, the T.A.M.I. show.



I originally saw this in the early 1980s, in a version that included most of the people who appeared in the original performances, including Brown, Jan and Dean, the Rolling Stones...and Lesley Gore.

This is a contemporary performance of Gore's hit "You Don't Own Me," which blows her Judy songs out of the water.