YouTube Gold: Princess Of Funk

It’s fun to look back at older music, especially stuff that’s somewhat forgotten. It’s always interesting to us to explore people like Chick Webb, Louis Jordan and Bullmoose Jackson.

Pop music is fun but it isn’t always as, well, fulfilling as some other types of music can be.

Every once in awhile a musical trip to somewhere else is really nice.

But there’s nothing wrong with pop music. Some of the best, most memorable music is just fun, even stuff that you might file under junk.

Take Radar Love, for instance, by Golden Earring. It’s a ridiculous song but it has a tremendous hook.

James Brown has a whole catalogue of songs that have minimal lyrics. Please, Please, Please isn’t exactly Hall of Fame material, but it’s fun. So is Sex Machine, which is almost hypnotic.

Brown of course is called The Godfather of Soul but he also called himself funky more than once. By coincidence, the Queen of Funk, Betty Davis, who was big in the ‘70s (and a native of Durham) passed away this week.

And, again coincidentally, that’s when we discovered Juna Serita. We saw her first in a video by a band called Tokyo Groove Jyoshi (also very good) and it was clear she was talented. Then we saw this video: Princess of Funk.

Like Radar Love or Sex Machine, there’s no great message or anything. And it’s kind a ripoff of We Want The Funk by George Clinton.

That said, it’s just fun and she pulls it off. So please, give The Princess of Funk a listen. You might like it. Bootsy Collins did.