Today is the 42nd anniversary of James Brown’s famous live show at the Apollo. It’s also the 42nd anniversary of John Cage’s experimental piece 0’00”, which asks the performer to “perform a disciplined action” of an undetermined nature. I learned of this coincidence in Douglas Wolk’s meticulous, poetic new book James Brown Live at the Apollo, which puts the Godfather of Soul in the context of the Cuban Missile Crisis and other roiling events of the time. I’ve been listening obsessively to “Lost Someone,” and I'm in love with the modulation at the beginning of the song— the plunge down a whole step after the brassy introductory chords. It’s the feeling of a door opening, of stepping from a shiny modern place into an old carved room. (Something similar happens in the final section of Janacek’s Jenufa.) There’s another seismic harmonic shift later on: after five straight minutes of I, IV, I, IV, you suddenly get a V chord underneath the phrase “ten thousand people.” Another door opens to another secret room. I’ll let Mr. Wolk say the rest.
