At this moment, snippets of Christmas melodies are repeatedly jin-jin-jingling or fah-lah-lah-lahing in the heads of half the populace of America. The ability of Christmas songs to infect the human auditory cortex with mental recitals is on the same contagion level as kitchsy advertising jingles, sit-com themes, and teenybopper pop hits. In other words, crappy music is often tortuously catchy music.
Christmas morning, as I sipped coffee and engaged in pre-gifting pleasantries with family, my pliable hippocampus seized on a very unusual theme. We were discussing how James Brown had died. My aunt commented, “It was unusual, instead of saying ‘James Brown has died’ or ‘James Brown dies at 73,’ the radio station said ‘James Brown is dead.'”
James Brown is Dead. The words whisked me out of my father’s kitchen and onto memory lane, to a run-down standalone nightclub in Malvern, PA called Breakers that I frequented as a teenager. Breakers catered to alienated suburban kids by playing the most popular songs in every musical genre that appealed to them, from industrial to metal to rap to techno to punk to ska to indie rock. My friends and I were avowed punks, but we would dance to anything, and we grew to love all of the regular Breakers’ songs, including L.A. Style’s techno rave anthem “James Brown is Dead.”
And dammit, it was a childbook Christmas morning, and “James Brown is Dead” invaded my head like a nest of bedbugs: The infectious refrain of the slightly amused male voice declaring “James Brown is Dead,” the frantic patterns of techno beats and chanting, and jarring visuals of 16-year old Meredith on the dance floor, gyrating her honed techno steps to impress some loser named George or Mikey or Tim with how she knows exactly when to stop dancing and thrust her arms in the air to proclaim “James Brown is Dead”.
I ate eggs, I opened presents, I watched others open my presents, I even listened to notoriously infectious Christmas songs like “Santa Baby” and Mariah Carey’s farcical hit, but all I could hear is: “Duh duh duh dadada duh duh duh dadada JAMES BROWN IS DEAD.” Occasionally, celebration distracted me, but then I’d realize “Hey, ‘James Brown is Dead’ is no longer stuck in my brain… oh, eff. There it goes again…” And there it remained for the rest of Christmas, until on the journey home, listening to 107.5 FM outside of New York, a song came on that instantly evicted “James Brown is Dead” from my brain:
“Mama, come here quick, / bring me that lickin’ stick.”
Thank the Lord. He is alive, and he is funky.
