hot pants (1971)

The experience that made me want to start this blog in the first place:

I'm coming home from my Tuesday night class on Chicago's Blue Line. On the way into the train station, the first few flakes of snow are melting into my lashes, and Labradford's P is on my mp3 player, and everything seems very soft and delicate. My hands are shoved into my gloves which are in turn mashed into my pockets and my shoulders are hunched up and I am keeping myself safe.

I shuffle onto the train when it comes and sit down and I start to zone out, and all of a sudden James Brown is yelling in my ear: HOT PANTS! SHE DOES THE FUNKY DANCE! (Note: this is not the single version that you may be familiar with. It's the extended version from the remastered version of this classic record - the one with the sick horn bridge about three minutes in and the a capella break.)

This is music about dancing (and, thus, about fucking). It is not Sodom and Gomorrah. It is perfect in its utter lack of pretension, its mix of gutter-thought and (surprising) gender politics, its repetitive complexity-in-simplicity. JB, you may have ceased to make relevant music from the '80s onward, but when you were in your prime, boy, you were unstoppable.

None of my fellow sleepy, well-worn travellers seem to notice that I am being yelled at by a ghost and his rhythm section. I start giggling to myself - a song has completely changed my context, brought the the washed-out subway tile, all blue and grey and rushing by quick-matte, into a strange kind of relief. The band barrels onward for the next four minutes.

The woman beside me is the complete opposite of funk. Everything about her is squinched up, from the elastic band on her beret to her knuckles as she clutches her purse. Everything about her is taut. "Hot Pants" is loose. It is slinky and a little bit sloppy in places.

But it's all right, you know? It's all right. It's always all right. I was born with bass in my hips and sometimes, you know, you do need to use what you got to get what you want. Huh!

James Brown - Hot Pants (She Got To Use What She Got To Get What She Wants)