The week started badly when Mitch Ryder, visiting to distract us from deadline, opined over his beer that James Brown had created disco years ago. Now, I can take bad news as well as anybody; when I'd picked the last particle of glass out of his face I begged to differ.

James Brown may attempt disco, I replied calmly ; he may assemble disco musicians to play disco for the benefit of disco dancers but he is incapable of disco becaused he is James Brown. So he recorded a song where he chanted "Jam" over and over with a lot of hihatting, thumping and small animal abuse in the background. He did the same thing ten years before disco, singing "Popcorn" instead.