The Good Foot Was Gotten Upon

I'll be in recovery from last night's Body & Soul party for the rest of the week. After a couple of warm-up Manhattans at the Farmboyz' Upper West Side pied-a-terre, the seven of us cabbed down to Pacha in Hell's Kitchen to find the Will Call ticket line snaking down 46th Street. Thirty minutes outside, another 30 in the coat check line, and we finally hit the mobbed dance floor around 8PM, just in time for a mammoth James Brown tribute set. We got up offa that thing, we were sex machines, we were black, we were proud.

It was a very happy, very smiley crowd, with all the usual Body & Soul contingents in the house: Harlem ball queens, Japanese tourist-hipsters, bears, and Brits. Lots and lots of Brits. I met a few JMG readers on the dance floor, including a cute little bear wearing a Jewcy shirt and a handsome couple that told me they had met at one of my readings! How cool is that? The musical highlight of the night was Archie Bell & The Drell's 1968 anthem Tighten Up, quite logically played at the end of the James Brown set and resulting in me getting my freak on so wildly, that today my freak is quite sore. It's a price I gladly pay.

Tighten Up - Archie Bell & The Drells
Atlantic Records 1968.
#1 Pop, #1 R&B, #1 UK.
Download 3:14.

Below: The 2007 Body & Soul Dancers.
UPDATE: Dr. Jeff's account of the party, with pics.