James Brown is Annie Single Launch at Hard Rock Edinburgh

James Brown is Annie took over Hard Rock Edinburgh last night to launch their latest single ‘(You Got to) Get Up to Get Down’. And with the promise of a seven song set from the Edinburgh funksters, there was no danger of decibelROGUE missing the opportunity to see them in action again.

We first saw JBiA perform live when they opened for funk legends Average White Band at a show in Glasgow a year or so ago. It was one of those great nights of music when, at the end of the evening, we left the venue having been as blown away by JBiA as we were by the headliners. We made a point of keeping track of their subsequent gigs, although fate and day job commitments conspired against us actually getting to one of them. Until last night.

‘(You Got to) Get Up to Get Down’ is taken from the band’s self-titled debut album and has been named as BBC Radio Scotland’s Single Of The Week. The song is a properly catchy, upbeat slice of good-time funk. If you listen to this song and don’t at the very least tap your feet, you should immediately find someone to check whether you have any kind of pulse! There’s so much to like about it, whether it be Aki Remally’s fantastic vocals, Will Whitmore’s* fabulous Alto Sax, or Barry Gordon’s Nile Rodgers-esque rhythm guitar. All six members of the band bring their own little bit of class to the party. In addition to the single, JBiA grooved their way through five other songs from their album, plus for the first time ever, they played a song by the Godfather of Soul himself in ‘Pass the Peas’. It was a short, sweet and extremely impressive performance.

So cutting right to the chase, follow the link below to check out ‘(You Got to) Get Up to Get Down’ for yourself. And once you’ve done that, you’ll probably want to buy the album, so I’ve included a link for that too.

Links

You can listen to (You Got to) Get Up to Get Down on Bandcamp HERE
You can follow JBiA on Facebook HERE
You can order your copy of JBiA’s latest album HERE

Gallery

*Since the album was recorded Will Whitmore has left the band to be replaced by Jonny White on Alto Sax