FUNKADELIC - UNCLE JAM WANTS YOU @ 45

 

Celebrating its 45th anniversary today is Funkadelic's "war on disco" concept album, Uncle Jam Wants You, which was released on September 21st, 1979. Band leader George Clinton is pictured on the front cover, African warlord style, in a rattan chair flanked by a giant "Flashlight" and "Bop Gun" (nods to the P-Funk songs of the respective same names). Flashing the "on the one" hand sign, combined with the album's subtitle, "Rescue Dance Music from the Blahs", it is a clear declaration of intent. "On the One" is more than just a credo of how to play funk music (accent on the first beat), it's a call to unite and harness the power of togetherness, and a fundamental acknowledgement of the spiritual "oneness" of the universe. It is the first Funkadelic album since America Eats Its Young in 1972 not to sport a cover illustrated by Funkadelic artist Pedro Bell, though Bell did provide artwork for the album’s back cover and interior.

The album's centrepiece, Not Just (Knee Deep), is a 15 minute monolithic groove that is so insistent and insidious, it feels like your brain is being surreptitiously rewired by some sort of "funkateer" subliminal manipulation, reprogramming your responses to get your groove on. The longer it goes on, the more helpless the listener feels in its grasp. That's worth the price of admission all on its own, but there are other treats as well, albeit perhaps not quite as inescapable. Freak of the Week offers up more solid P-funk groove, as does Uncle Jam, but the remainder of the album falls out into mostly filler. It's forgivable though, considering the other two thirds of the album is all winner.

Uncle Jam Wants You (a reference to the "Uncle Sam wants you!" US Army recruitment posters) may be a more militant sequel to the band's previous album, One Nation Under a Groove. As previously stated, it's all about countering the banality of mass marketed disco music, which had slathered the latter half of the decade in mirror-ball mediocrity and dreary dance dreck. On that front, it does what it says on the tin.

Uncle Jam Wants You was the second Funkadelic album to be certified gold.

FUNKADELIC - COSMIC SLOP @ 50

 

Marking half a century of funkin’ it up is the fifth studio LP from Funkadelic, Cosmic Slop, which was released in May of 1973. After staring their career as a fusion of psychedelic rock & R&B, the “Funketeers” were starting to refine their sound into something which would soon define ‘70s funk, landing the accent firmly on the ONE and building the foundation stones for the hip-hop revolution which would inherit their grooves in future decades.

The shift away from the heavier rock sound of their early albums into the smoother grooves of what would become classic P-funk had begun in earnest on their previous, sprawling double LP, America Eats Its Young, an uneven album, but one which put some key elements into place. The evolution of the band’s lineup had stabilized somewhat by this point with the addition of key players like Bootsy Collins and singer-guitarist Garry Shider. These changes fueled the collective for the remainder of the decade. Such a significant revamp, however, initially left their fan base and critics out of sync with the band at first, with the results being poor sales for Cosmic Slop, which failed to produce any hit singles. Since its release, however, it has been significantly re-evaluated and recognized for its virtues, which become clearly evident when the album is contextualized by the rest of the group’s output. Cosmic Slop clearly shows the band finding their creative feet and stomping them with conviction and confidence. The rest of the world simply needed to catch up to where they were headed.

This was also the first Funkadelic LP to feature the graphic art genius and liner notes of Pedro Bell, who assumed responsibility for the band's gate-fold album covers and liner notes until their collapse after 1981's The Electric Spanking of War Babies. This is where the mythology of P-Funk truly starts to take flight and flex its muscles, creating an identity and presence which outstripped any other funk outfit roaming the American landscape during this golden age of the groove. Cosmic Slop simply set the standard and the P-Funk gang kept upping the ante throughout the rest of their career, maintaining both Funkadelic and soon Parliament, as well as a number of other side-projects, in an ever expanding universe of funk dominance.

GEORGE CLINTON - COMPUTER GAMES @ 40

 

Marking its 40th anniversary today is the debut solo album from Funkadelic/Parliament founder, George Clinton, with Computer Games being released on November 5th, 1982. After dominating the R&B scene throughout the previous decade with the monster P-Funk collective in all its variations and manifestations, Things were starting to get dicey for Clinton in the 1980s. Computer Games was a brief commercial rally for Clinton before he’d be beset by grinding legal battles, personal struggles and lack of label support through the remainder of the decade. The album was conceived of as a response to the burgeoning electronic music scene which was rapidly infiltrating the funk/R&B/soul/disco dance music scenes. Rather than reject the insurgence, Clinton chose to embrace it and integrate it into his own methods of production. Though the album was listed as a solo work, the personnel for the project was largely the same musicians he’d been working with on the most recent Parliament and Fundadelic albums.

The centerpiece of the album is the epic Atomic Dog. Released as a single, it was created almost by accident by virtue of an inadvertently backwards drum machine recording in something of a drug addled miasma when Clinton stumbled into the studio one day in the middle of a blizzard. He could barely stand, but mumbled some incoherent instructions and then improvised his vocals, leaving the folks in the studio with the task of making some sense of it all. Miraculously, not only did they make sense of it, they turned it into pure dance floor gold. More than that, the song has become a template for countless grooves in the ensuing decades, which repeatedly sampled to the track’s riff to build upon as a foundation. It has become part of the DNA of hip-hop on the deepest possible level.

FUNKADELIC - AMERICA EATS ITS YOUNG @ 50

 

Marking half a century in the cosmos today is the fourth studio album from Funkadelic, America Eats Its Young, which was released on May 22nd, 1972. A sprawling double album with a notable identity crisis, it nonetheless set the stage for the emergence of the wider P-Funk universe in all its glory.

By the time this album began to gestate, the Funkadelic collective were undergoing many changes. Firstly, the core personnel were shifting and new players were coming into the fold, many of whom would prove to be critical contributors throughout its future. These included the likes of Bootsy Collins, Garry Shider & Bernie Worrell. Stylistically, they were leaving behind the acid fueled psychedelic rock influences of their early albums and moving into a heavily Afro-centric embrace of soul, R&B and gospel. Not that they were losing their weirdness, far from it, but they were much more focused on the blackness of their culture going forward.

Conceptually, Clinton was looking to create a pointedly political album with the heavy cost of the Vietnam war looming largest over its landscapes. Clinton also continued to showcase his obsession with the Process Church of the Final Judgement, a pseudo-religious cult offshoot of Scientology which was operating in the US and UK at the time. Many found that element objectionable, but I find it fascinating as it puts the P-Funk collective into a “strange bedfellows” kinship with what Genesis P-Orridge and Psychic TV would do a decade later based on the very same influences. It’s a connection that didn’t reveal itself to me until recent years, but which makes so much sense now in terms of how both communities functioned and presented themselves.

The 1970s was an era of some of the greatest decadence in the realm of popular music & culture that has ever been seen and the double album was, in this age, an exemplar of that indulgence. America Eats Its Young certainly doesn’t shy away from those excesses. As such, it’s a relentlessly mixed bag with soaring highs and baffling detours that left fans and critics befuddled and, more often than not, dissatisfied. Even with the benefit of hindsight, many still consider this a low point for the P-Funksters, but personally I find that assessment short sighted. There are simply too many touchstones in this set which were directly necessary for the futures of these artists. Much of what was laid out here was critical in relaunching the Parliament imprint, which had faltered in the early 1970s, but dominated in the latter half of the decade. The DNA which made them essential is totally starting to bubble up in songs like Loose Booty and the instrumental masterpiece, A Joyful Process.

One of the albums most emotional highlights comes from Everybody’s Going to Make It This Time. As a gospel revival, it remains one of the most moving songs in the entire P-Funk canon. It’s a song that embodies the deep sorrows of the past with an elevating optimism for the future. The tension between those poles rends the most heartfelt resonance from the listener. I can’t listen to it without getting choked up. It’s dazzling moments of perfection like this which make America Eats Its Young an essential piece of the P-Funk puzzle and so perfectly illustrate the overall feel of the album as a bridge between the band’s impressive past and its brilliant future.

FUNKADELIC - MAGGOT BRAIN @ 50

 

July 12th marks the 50th anniversary of Funkadelic’s third album, and last with its original lineup, Maggot Brain, released on this day in 1971.

The P-Funk axis is fundamentally known for it’s party anthems and their upbeat attitude infused with social conscience woven into intricate narratives. Within that landscape, Maggot Brain, a title believed to reference George Clinton’s discovery of his murdered brother, stands as the darkest, dankest, deepest well of apocalyptic despair and anger ever put forth by Clinton and his cohorts. Not that it doesn’t bring the grooves when it wants to, but those moments are book-ended by two mammoth slabs of sound that anchor the album in the very earth that buries the screaming head on its cover. From its music to its graphics to its themes, the “funketeers” never got heavier than this LP. It even featured liner notes lifted from the pseudo-Satanic religious cult, The Process Church of the Final Judgement. This is psychedelic acid-funk where you’re gonna need some counseling after your trip.

The album opens with a brief narration from Clinton where he states, “…I knew I had to rise above it all or drown in my own shit”, setting the stage for a 10 minute dirge of an instrumental title track focused squarely on Eddie Hazel’s mournful guitar histrionics. For most of the song, Clinton drops out nearly all of the backing instruments so that Hazel is left in the void of his grief, encouraged by Clinton to imagine how he’d feel to learn of his mother’s death. It’s a lonely, desolate beginning to the album, but also one of the most profoundly emotive pieces of music ever put to tape.

From there, the album kick into gear with some furious funky grooves until we get to the other end of the spectrum with the closing track, Wars of Armageddon, another near 10 minute epic which layers breakneck rhythms with a collage of sounds effects and voices, creating a cacophony of chaos. From beginning to end, it’s almost as if the album is a run through the “stages of grief”, with the finale reveling in the madness, and accepting our doom with one final apocalyptic explosion. The journey from there to here is fraught with anger, revulsion and frustration and perfectly reflects the cultural state of the times while still remaining relevant to current issues.

It’s an album of outrage and desperation and it’s not surprising that it marked the end of Funkadelic’s first phase of existence. Three of the core members ended up departing after it’s completion for various reasons. Some financial, but drugs were at the root of others. In the case of guitarist Tawl Ross, he reportedly got into an "acid eating contest, then snorting some raw speed, before completely flipping out" and has not performed since! What was left behind with their first three albums: Funkadelic, Free Your Mind… and Maggot Brain, is a legacy of psychedelic funk that remains a watershed canon of music for Clinton & crew and R&B music in general.

FUNKADELIC - THE ELECTRIC SPANKING OF WAR BABIES @ 40

 

April 14th marks the 40th anniversary for the album, The Electric Spanking of War Babies by Funkadelic, released on this day in 1981. It was their 13th studio album and the last album to be officially released under this imprint until 2007’s By Way of the Drum.

By 1981, George Clinton’s “Mothership” was looking pretty disconnected. Dissatisfied factions of the P-Funk gang were splitting off to form rival projects, like a competing version of “Funkadelic” and the aptly titled “Mutiny”. These creative woes were only symptoms of the legal ones as the web of side projects and contracts began to ensnare the entire operation in a morass of constraints and conflicts. All this business of trying to keep so many creative plates spinning was taking its tole on Clinton and his crew, resulting in some antagonistic attitudes towards him and his leadership. As these conflicts began to fester, the effect on the products released by the P-Funk organization began to show in the form of less than stellar albums that lacked the focus and consistency of what they’d put out at their peak. Yet with all this chaos and confusion going on, somehow War Babies turned out to be one of the strongest P-Funk releases in years.

By the time this album was recorded, the original 1970 Funkadelic lineup had dwindled down to only Clinton, Ray Davis and Eddie Hazel. But they did have the benefit of Zapp main man, Roger Troutman chipping in for these sessions, his only appearance on a Fundadelic album. Babies would also be the last album to feature P-Funk mainstays Garry Shider, Junie Morrison, Mallia Franklin, and Jessica Cleaves. The album also features numerous contributions from Sly Stone & Bootsy Collins. Although a lot of the old guard were soon to depart, the album did include numerous new faces who would become regular contributors throughout the coming years.

War Babies was originally conceived as a double album, so there was a lot of material recorded for the release, but Warner Bros balked at the idea and insisted it be trimmed down to a single disc. This resulted in a number of recordings being shelved, though some, like Atomic Dog, would find their way onto Clinton’s first “solo” release the following year, Computer Games, which would become a major hit. But it wasn’t only the size of the LP that the label took issue with. The cover by Pedro Bell, longtime artist for the P-Funk bands, set the executives into panic mode with it’s obviously phallic spaceship housing a barely clad, bare bottomed lady being paddled by robotic armaments. They refused to release it and the album ended up using a heavily censored version where all the “naughty bits” were covered over with concealing graphics. The title was an allusion to the Vietnam war and the “boomer” generation who were victimized by it.

Though this LP represented a kind of end point for the Funkadelic manifestation of the P-Funk crew, it was by no means the end of the line overall as they would morph into George’s backing band as well as transition into the P-Funk All-Stars for other releases. The mercurial nature of this collection of players always meant that they were too big to fit under one hat or even an oversized umbrella and the world would always have to pay attention to keep up with their next guise. This album marks the end of one era and does so by bringing things back up from the slump they’d been in and sets them on course for the decade to come.

INFLUENTIAL ALBUM - PARLIAMENT, TEAR THE ROOF OFF

Though I'd heard the odd track here and there and knew some standouts that I'd always perk up to when they hit the speakers, it wasn't until sometime in the early 1990s when I came across a 2nd hand copy of Parliament's "Tear the Roof Off" best of compilation that the floodgates of P-Funk fandom fully opened and gushed forth the groove into my musical life.  As I say, Clinton & crew had been on my radar for some time and I even had a couple of pieces of vinyl in my stash, but this compilation managed to put the scope of what they were doing out there for me to appreciate in some breadth, enough for me to eventually start assimilating anything to my collection that had the "P-F" stamp of approval. 

What fascinated me the more I started to dig into the Clinton canon was the mythology he'd built into his works.  It wasn't just a bunch of music to dance to.  It was stories and fables and allegories and there were messages of struggle and triumph and spirit overcoming oppression.  And it was all laid atop some of the fiercest grooves in the kingdom of funk.  Back in the 1970s, it was sort of a magical time for this genre as massive ensembles roamed the touring landscape, bringing the beat to the masses.  These groups were as majestic as dinosaurs and they've become just as extinct in the world of DJs and digitization.  None were more spectacular than Parliament/Funkadelic, The P-Funk All-Stars.  This amorphous array of aliens would descend from the heavens to impart their syncopated sermons of sublime funkitude. 

What was happening during the peak of their activities in the 1970s and 1980s was totally inspiring in that Clinton had assembled this free-wheeling circus of virtuoso musicians and dazzling performers who could reconfigure themselves like Transformers from one musical incarnation to another.  One minute they were Parliament, then they were Funkadelic, next a fragment would break off and become Parlet or The Brides of Funkenstein or someone would shoot out into orbit for a solo like the incomparable Bootsy Collins.  It wasn't fixed, it was trans-dimensional and transcendental.  This kind of flexibility would be a key guiding principal in several projects I'd undertake over the years. 

I wish I could point out one of their original albums for this, but I just can't narrow it down when there are so many great ones and they all deserve some level of acknowledgement, which is why I felt this "greatest hits" package would be appropriate as an umbrella to cover them all.  As the song says, "I like my funk uncut" and you ain't gonna find none more pure than the "P".