I Got the Feelin': James Brown in the '60s consists of three discs: "The Night James Brown Saved Boston," a VH1 documentary about Brown's Boston Garden concert the night after Martin Luther King Jr.'s assassination; the concert itself as it was broadcast over WGBH; and another concert, "Man to Man: James Brown Live at the Apollo Theater in 1968."

To truly grasp the through-the-looking-glass quality of the Garden concert, it helps if you know the sense of absolute otherness that Brown's music had then for most white Americans. It helps even more if you ever listened to William Pierce during his nearly 40 years as announcer of the Boston Symphony Orchestra. To hear the parched frostiness of that voice utter the words ''We're going to do something rather wild for television" and then refer to ''James Brown and his troupe" (his troupe!), well, it's beyond befuddling.

Brown was scheduled to perform on April 5. When King was shot, April 4, rioting broke out in about 200 cities. Boston's initial response was to cancel the concert. Then City Councilor Thomas Atkins (who died in June) realized that would only make the situation worse. In an inspired move, the city decided to televise the concert in hopes that prospective rioters would stay home to watch. Boston suffered minimal violence.

The documentary is well done, if overlong as well as weighed down by the world-class windbaggery of Cornel West. In contrast, his fellow talking head Al Sharpton seems positively cogent.

The concert is what matters. It's bizarre to hear Brown describe Mayor Kevin White as "a swingin' cat," and impressive to see him calm the crowd when it gets out of hand. What's indelible is his music.

Some technical difficulties aside, WGBH shot the concert very well. Much better, certainly, than the Apollo concert was shot. That filming violated the First Law of Entertainment Thermodynamics: You never, ever cut away from James Brown when he's performing.

Extras: Brown's legendary "T.A.M.I. Show" appearance, two mid-'60s songs from Paris concerts, additional interview footage with talking heads from the documentary (Shout! Factory, $39.98)

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