Video: Awards Presentation

A short video has been released to me by EDF, sponsor of the Regional Media Awards, of me collecting my award this week.

Revisiting 'One More Chance'

In addition to the huge amount of messages I received today about yesterday's blog entry, there were also some unexpected messages about another article I wrote back in 2010. I spotted fans were tweeting me about Michael Jackson's final music video 'One More Chance'. They reminded me that today - November 17 - is the 10th anniversary of the video shoot, which was abandoned halfway through, due to the infamous Neverland raid on November 18, 2003.

I told the story of the short film's creation and ruination three years ago, when the unfinished video was included in a DVD box set. The article was published on US news website Sawf News, which I recently learned has since been closed down. However, a copy is available on my website.

Click here to read my exclusive article about the making of 'One More Chance'

World Music Awards 2006 - Blog Reaction [New Video]

The response to yesterday's blog has been overwhelming. My blog stats tell me that thousands of people from all over the world - UK, USA, France, Germany, Italy, Poland, Russia, Canada, Australia and more - have read my memories of Michael Jackson's appearance at the 2006 World Music Awards. My Facebook, Twitter and email accounts have been inundated with messages of thanks, many from people who were at the WMAs ceremony and had never seen anyone tell the truth about the night's events before. It is a wonderful feeling, to be told that your work has moved somebody. It has been a very humbling day.

My friend Damien also messaged me, to say that the video I posted of the World Music Awards appeared to have been doctored; Jackson's vocals were quieter than they should have been. I had thought when I watched it that they were quieter than I remembered. He sent me an earlier edit of the ceremony, with different camera angles, in which Jackson's vocals are far louder. Listening to them with more volume and clarity serves only to further dispel the nonsense stories I quoted in yesterday's blog, which claimed he had 'mangled' the song and missed his high notes.

Here's the clip:

Bootsy Reboots on IndieGoGo

A few weeks ago I interviewed Bootsy Collins, who had launched a crowd-funding campaign on Kickstarter to pay for his new humanitarian-themed album and tour. Despite being one of the most sampled musicians of all time, Bootsy told me he was one step away from being a starving artist.

Here is an audio excerpt from our chat.



He has since moved his campaign away from Kickstarter, saying that many international fans were reporting problems trying to make payments. He has relocated to IndieGoGo. Rewards available to those who donate to the project include digital album downloads for just $1 andsigned copies of his new album and DVD for just $25. With those rewards at those prices, you'd have to be a loony not to donate at least $1.

Click here to read my exclusive interview with Bootsy.

Click here to donate to Bootsy's rebooted campaign.

#iGiveAFunk

Last week I had the privilege of interviewing one of my favourite musicians. Bootsy Collins played bass on some of James Brown's funkiest and most dynamic tracks. He then took Mr Brown's philosophy of 'the one' over to George Clinton's Parliament / Funkedelic, where he worked on some of that collective's greatest tunes as well. By the late 70s he had gone solo, recording a raft of classic funk tracks. He has contributed to some of the greatest party anthems and hip-hop tracks of all time. His live shows are some of the most dynamic and exciting you could ever hope to attend.

Click to enlarge.
Bootsy Collins on stage in London, 2011.
(Picture: Charles Thomson)

Right now, Bootsy is running a Kickstarter campaign, where he is giving away signed merchandise and rare memorabelia to anybody who supports his new album and tour - both dubbed 'iGiveAFunk'. The project, inspired by the philanthropic work Bootsy has gained a passion for in recent years - would see him record a 'unity in the community' themed album and then travel the globe delivering its message. The plan was for the Kickstarter to raise $100,000 in 30 days.

Presently, there are three days left of the campaign and Bootsy has raised roughly 30% of his goal. Sadly, it looks unlikely that the project will be successful, short of a miracle. I'm not sure why. Bootsy toured Europe in 2011, playing to packed out venues all across the continent. He has thousands and thousands of fans. As part of his Kickstarter campaign, he is offering a digital pre-order of his new album for just $1. If all of his fans pledged for that alone - and you'd have to be a wally not to, at that price (about 65p in British currency - less than a KitKat bar) - he would meet his target with ease. He seems to have had trouble getting the message out.

I wanted to do the best I could to help him get that message out, so I organised a 40 minute phone interview. During our chat, I expressed my surprise that he needed a Kickstarter campaign in the first place. The comment led to a lengthy discussion about the music industry in general and the way it treats artists. Bootsy told me he was 'one step away from being a starving artist'.

I produced a 2,000 word article based on our conversation, published on my blog at the Yellow Advertiser - one of the largest regional newspapers in the UK. A short news story publicising the online contribution was published in over 100,000 newspapers. How many readers were funk fans, I don't know.

Click to enlarge.
Bootsy Collins on stage in London, 2011.
(Picture: Charles Thomson)

If Bootsy's Kickstarter campaign doesn't prove successful, I hope he will try again but spend a little longer on advance publicity it and give himself a longer fundraising period. I'm sure he has enough fans to help make it happen, just as long as they know about it.

That said, on a personal note, I am a little disappointed that some of Bootsy's more prominent fans haven't made more of an attempt to help him out. Some of today's biggest rappers have built songs around Bootsy's riffs; songs which have helped them become businessmen with globe-spanning, multi-billion dollar operations. Those Bootsy samples they used - he says they just about cover his bills. Snoop Dogg, who used Bootsy on his 2004 album Rhythm & Gangster, is worth a reported $100million. He could probably sponsor Bootsy's entire project without spending more than a few weeks' interest on his bank account.

Click here to read my exclusive, in-depth interview with Bootsy. 

Below is a 16 minute audio excerpt from our conversation.

Click here to donate to Bootsy's Kickstarter campaign.

Good luck Bootsy. I've already pledged all that I can. I hope you pull it out of the bag somehow. When you eventually do - I'll see you in London!

VIDEO: The Godfather's Last Giveaway

A few weeks ago I published an article titled 'The Big Payback', all about James Brown's little-known humanitarian work and his family's efforts to carry it on since his death on Christmas Day 2006. In the article I wrote about how Mr Brown's last ever public appearance, three days before his death, was at his annual Christmas toy giveaway.

Yesterday my friend Ron sent me some footage I had never seen before of Mr Brown at the giveaway. Shot by an Augusta news station, it is the last known video of the Godfather of Soul.

I was struck by one poignant exchange.

"Mr Brown," says the reporter, "you've been doing this for 15 years and even when you're not well, you always come out and give back."

"Well," replies Mr Brown, "I come out because I want to do this. It's a duty as a human being, a duty as a citizen of this country."

As it turned out, Mr Brown wasn't just 'not well'. He was dying of pneumonia. Less than 72 hours later, the world had lost him. He had been visibly deteriorating for a number of months (in the video he looks unusually thin and sounds unwell, as he had done since October 2006) but despite his condition, he still made sure he was there to hand out those Christmas presents to the most needy children in his community.

I thought that was pretty inspiring. Here's the video.

Second Jermaine Jackson Audio Extract

In this second audio extract, Jermaine speaks to me about how delays in the Conrad Murray trial left him feeling that the justice system didn't care about his brother's death.

Jermaine Jackson: Audio Extracts

I will be posting a few audio extracts from my interview with Jermaine Jackson over the coming days. Some will be of segments which were included in the final article, some will be outtakes which had to be cut to keep the word limit down.

I will post blog updates each time a new clip is uploaded. I will also alert readers via my Twitter page and my Facebook page.

Here is the first clip, in which Jermaine discusses media manipulation, the famous 'pyjama day' during his brother's 2005 trial, what Michael would think of his children's increasingly public profile and Jermaine's thoughts on the controversial Cardiff tribute concert.

VIDEO: James Brown Press Conference 2006

Having successfully ripped my Sky News appearance from a DVD and uploaded it to the YouTube, I was inspired to pluck another clip from my archive and stick that online for your enjoyment too.

Back in October 2006 I had just begun my journalism degree. I had been a James Brown fan throughout my teens and had seen him live three times. When I found out he was coming to the UK for a BBC concert, I decided to use my new 'student journalist' credentials to apply for an interview.

Most press officers would have simply ignored my email but Adam Dewhurst, who was looking after James Brown during his London trip, was kind enough to reply. He told me that Mr Brown wasn't doing any interviews while he was in the capital but that he was giving a press conference at Camden's Roundhouse a few hours before his concert there. If I wanted to go, he said, he'd put me on the list.

And so it came to be that on October 27th 2006 I found myself sitting in a small room upstairs at the Roundhouse - one of only two non-BBC journalists to be invited - waiting for an audience with my hero: the Godfather of Soul.

Mr Brown was late. I didn't much care. It gave my nerves time to settle. I was green; I'd never been to a press conference before; talk about a baptism of fire.

The other journalists seemed unphased - some actually seemed to view the press conference as an unwanted distraction from their other work. I couldn't understand it. How many people can say they've had the opportunity to pick the brain of the most influential musician of the last century? But their nonchalance subsided as soon as somebody whispered, "He's coming! He's coming!" There was a stunned silence.

Author Jonathan Lethem once wrote of James Brown:

"It is not merely that attention quickens in any room this human being inhabits. The phenomenon is more akin to a kind of grade-school physics experiment: Lines of force are suddenly visible in the air, rearranged, oriented. The band, the hangers-on, the very oxygen, every trace particle is charged in its relation to the gravitational field of James Brown...

"I'm also struck by the almost extraterrestrial quality of otherness incarnated in this human being... He's in his midseventies, yet, encountering him now in person, it occurs to me that James Brown is kept under wraps for so long at the outset of his own show, and is viewed primarily at a distance, or mediated through recordings or films, in order to buffer the unprepared spectator from the awesome strangeness and intensity of his person. He simply has more energy, is vibrating at a different rate, than anyone I've ever met, young or old. With every preparation I've made, he's still terrifying."

The description is an accurate one. A room full of cynical journalists, bemoaning James Brown's lateness and its impact on their deadlines, fell into a deferential hush as soon as he came into view down the corridor.

Mr Brown was in pain throughout his trip to the UK. In an article titled 'Jawedfather of Soul; James Brown ignores dental op agony at Scots gig', Glasgow's Daily Record reported that Brown had undergone dental implant surgery just days before flying to the UK and was "in so much pain he had to avoid talking and rinse his mouth with salt water just hours before going on stage."

Brown's cheeks looked sunken - the teeth he had in didn't fit properly. They were holding the fort until his final set were finished and inserted. It was when Brown attended a dental appointment two months later to have the final set put in that he was told he was too ill for surgery and sent to hospital with pneumonia, where he died shortly afterwards.

His voice was hushed, his speech difficult to decipher. It's not obvious in the below clip how quiet his voice was because he was speaking directly into a BBC microphone, but at 1m18s you'll notice a significant change in audio quality. This was because reporters were complaining that they couldn't hear Mr Brown's answers to their questions, so a door was closed.

The press conference was roughly fifteen minutes long, in which time Mr Brown discussed what to expect from his concert that night, the need to get children interested in playing instruments again and the negative impact that violent hip-hop imagery has on young people and on society in general.

Being as green as I was, I was too timid to shout my way through the other reporters and ask a question, so Mr Dewhurst kindly offered me the floor. I took the opportunity to ask Mr Brown about the album I knew he'd been working on, then known to fans as 'World Against The Grain' (it later turned out to be 'World Funk Against The Grain'). I got an answer I didn't expect.

During his lengthy response, Mr Brown spoke about the new track 'Gutbucket', in which he blasted hip-hop artists for their violent and misogynistic lyrics. This led to a discussion about the degradation of the music industry. Finally, though, he made some troubling comments. "Somebody's gonna have to die before we get that out," he muttered about the album. "I won't say much more than that."

He concluded, "We would love to get that out, but we need help." As he said the word 'help', his voice cracked - perhaps through emotion, perhaps because he was battling intense oral pain. Either way, to hear the notoriously proud James Brown publicly stating that he needed help was bizarre; as somewhat of a James Brown archivist, it is the only occasion I'm aware of on which Brown has ever publicly exhibited anything approaching weakness.

The comments prompted an uncomfortable silence and Mr Brown's personal manager, Charles Bobbit, leaned apologetically into the assorted microphones and said, "You should get that some time next year."

"I remember that press conference," Mr Bobbit would later tell me. "It was as if he had a premonition. I guess it came true, huh?"

Mr Brown's comments that night divide those who surrounded him. Some believe that those in charge of Brown's estate never intended the album to be released while he was alive and that his death was suspicious.

According to family sources, when Mr Brown's son-in-law told the National Enquirer he believed Brown had been murdered, he was shot dead days later and $500 was found in his pockets, ruling out robbery as a motive. Another family member told me last year that when they started asking questions, they were told, "that I could go missing and that there are a lot of swamps in Georgia."

Others, though, say the album simply wasn't finished and that Brown had a tendency to exaggerate, perhaps amplified on this occasion by pain medication he may have been taking to counter the agony caused by his dental surgery.

This month, former trustee of Brown's estate, David Cannon, is due to stand trial on numerous counts of mismanaging the James Brown estate both before and after Brown's death. Perhaps some answers will be provided by those proceedings.

The press conference was shot in full but never aired. The only footage broadcast on TV was the two-minute skit I have included below. My question was included but Mr Brown's answer, unsurprisingly, was not.

I didn't take many notes - I wasn't sure about the etiquette of breaking eye contact with James Brown as he spoke to me, so I maintained eye contact for the duration of his answer and scribbled down what I could when he finished. Those notes have long since been lost.

A few years ago I tried to obtain the unedited footage of the press conference but was told by the BBC that this skit was all they could find.

Although Mr Brown seemed troubled, I remain grateful to Mr Dewhurst for inviting me to that press conference. As it turned out, I would never have had another chance to speak to Mr Brown. He died less than two months later, on Christmas Day 2006.

My encounter with James Brown prompted my research into his final album, which produced my Guardian Award-winning article, 'James Brown: The Lost Album'. James Brown book-ended my career as a student journalist. In my first month of studies, I attended that press conference. Just over three years later, shortly after I graduated, I was handed my Guardian Award.

Though this footage is brief, and my own on-screen appearance amounts to about two seconds, this is a video I will treasure forever - and I'm glad to finally be able to share it with you all.

2011: An Undersea Odyssey

Further to my vacation snaps in the last entry, this year Emily Jayne of TABA took a little video of two of our undersea adventures.

New Video: Kriyss Grant speaks about dealing with crazy Michael Jackson fans

Here's another excerpt from my interview with 'This Is It' dancer Kriyss Grant. In this clip he speaks about how he and his fellow dancers were subjected to abuse by some Michael Jackson fans in the wake of the star's death, and laughs about the sometimes crazy questions he receives from the King of Pop's followers.






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New Video: Kriyss Grant speaks about his concerns over 'This Is It'

In this latest excerpt from my interview with Kriyss Grant, the 'This Is It' dancer explains comments he made in an interview about organisers 'taking advantage' of Michael Jackson and elaborates on his early concerns over the comeback concerts.





The full article is available here on my website. To receive YouTube updates every time I upload a new video, subscribe to my YouTube channel.

Cazwell Interview - A Teaser

I recently interviewed US rapper Cazwell for Sawf News. The full article will go online in the coming days - and I will update the blog when it goes live - but in the meantime here's a short teaser, in which Cazwell talks to me about homophobia in the hip-hop industry.