Pop culture anniversaries are tricky things. Celebrate too many and you seem like a sap. Celebrate too few and you seem like you have no sense of history. You have to pick and choose. In that spirit, we bring you this thirtieth-anniversary video clip, taken from an August 20, 1983, James Brown concert at the Beverly Theater in Hollywood. Why this particular James Brown concert? Well, because it features guest appearances from both Michael Jackson and Prince, creating a holy trinity of soul music that has never been equalled.

How does the scene unfold? Wonderfully. During an extended jam and after an extended, somewhat coherent intro (“So much talent it’s running out his ears”), Brown calls Jackson out of the audience for some dancing and singing, which basically licenses Jackson to do his best James Brown imitation—which is, by the way, very good. Then, Jackson whispers something in Brown’s ear. What does he whisper? Let’s have Brown explain: “Give him a big round of applause because he just insisted that I introduce Prince.” Brown then scans the crowd as if he is Christopher Columbus looking for land. He finds land in the rear of the theatre, in the form of Prince, riding his way toward the stage on the back of his gigantic blond bodyguard, Chick Huntsberry.

Prince, somehow both shy and exhibitionist, straps on a guitar, plays a bit, takes off his shirt, dances a bit, and then shrieks Prince-like noises into the microphone. The performances are nearly perfect encapsulations of what made both men eighties superstars. Jackson is fully in command and fluid. Prince is more intense and sensual, if also more awkward, right down to the eternally embarrassing yet endearing moment when he tries to grab a lamppost that is revealed, via gravity, to be a flimsy prop.

At a thirty-year remove, the video is also a little sad, with both Brown and Jackson dead. Prince perseveres, though: just this week, he released a new single, “Breakfast Can Wait,” whose cover art (above) is Dave Chappelle in preposterous-impression mode.