Arguin' on the Funk

20 Jazz Funk Greats
That's actually the title of a Throbbing Gristle album that has absolutely nothing whatsoever to do with Funk, or Jazz for that matter, being one of the landmark scary industrial noise albums of the late 1970s. It just seemed like a good opener.

How does a middle-class white guy get into Funk? I'm not sure. An elementary school friend introduced me to James Brown when I was about 9 - I think it was actually his older brother who couldn't believe I'd never heard the Godfather of Soul. Around this same time, my Dad taught me to solder and our first project was a transistor radio. I think it picked up all of one station, which was the local Soul station. So while I'd sit around doing whatever it was I did at 9, I generally had my trusty radio tooting away with classic 60's and 70's soul and funk - "Jungle Boogie", "Keep On Truckin'", "Theme from Shaft", "Superfly". Whatever it was, by fifth grade I was infected.

On The One...
The word Funk is probably African-American - the dictionary says it means "a strong odor", especially used in a crude sense to mean the smell of sexual intercourse. Funk differs from R&B and soul by focusing on the groove(s) rather than the melodic or lyrical development. Extended groove(s). There are very syncopated bass guitar lines and often horn sections. The dominant musical element is the rhythm section - drums and bass, sometimes percussion- and the way they slip in and out and around the beat. The accented beat is on the 1st beat, which isn't common in most pop music. I hear it on traditional African music, so I guess that's where it comes from. Guitars do a lot of rhythm work and are often more percussive than musical. When they do solo, it's usually by channeling the spirit of Jimi Hendrix. There is a lot of hollered vocals and group vocals. Hard to articulate in words, easy to demonstrate in tunes.

Noteworthy practitioners include James Brown; "Papa's Got A Brand New Bag" is often brought forward as the first funk song. His band is certainly the template for funk bands, turning out future Funkadelics Bootsy and Catfish Collins and Parliament's Fred Wesley and Maceo Parker. Other big names are Sly Stone, Prince (sometimes), Earth Wind and Fire, Rick James, Larry Graham (Sly and the Family Stone , Graham Central Station). For my tastes, the The Funk Mob - which is a generic term for George Clinton, Bootsy Collins, Maceo Parker, Bernie Worrell, Fred Wesley, Eddie Hazel, etc. - is pretty much as good as it gets.

Mother Earth is knocked up
I could fill a dozen web pages with George Clinton related material. The man IS the funk. He's been in music since the 1950s and his original group of note was a doo-wop group called The Parliaments. Drugs and the late 1960s intervened and Funkadelic was born in 1970. A combination of Hendrix, Sly and the Family Stone and punk metal (MC5 is supposedly a Clinton fave), the first album was called Osmium (1970) and is the Parliaments doo-wop harmonies over a psychedelic rock album. Note that Osmium is credited to Parliament but it is closer to a Funkadelic album and in fact contains the same band lineup as the first "real" Funkadelic album released later that year - the distinction between the bands would get defined four years later with the first "real" Parliament album Up For The Down Stroke. Confused yet?

Funkadelic (1970) pushed the rock further into psychedelica and the doo-wop vocals started dealing with social and political topics. The same year also yielded Free Your Mind... And Your Ass Will Follow which opens with feedback, spacey effects, spacier synths, and voices speaking/shouting the mantra "Free your mind / And your ass will follow / The Kingdom of Heaven is within!" and eventually becomes an inspired psych workout. The title song holds its own against anything from the Amboy Dukes or 13th Floor Elevators, largely due to the amazing guitar work of Eddie Hazel. Elsewhere, Bernie Worrell starts to come into his own with great organ work, not to mention the swirling tack-piano of "Funky Dollar Bill". A great album but shortly to be overshadowed by their next release, Maggot Brain.

Released in 1971, Maggot Brain would be a stone classic even if it only contained the title song, which is 10 minutes of emotion-drenched guitar, famously "playing as if your mother had died" (legend gives that as Clinton's directive to guitarist Hazel). Elsewhere on the disc is "Super Stupid", the best song Hendrix never wrote for Black Sabbath and the tape-loop driven "Wars of Armageddon"; you'll be hard-pressed to find a better, weirder, funnier, more oddly satisfying album anywhere.

A steady stream of albums follows from here - some great, some merely good - and in 1974 Clinton breaks his material up into two groups - the hardcore funk to Parliament and the rock/funk/blues/psychedelic blends to Funkadelic. Basically Parliament has a horn section and Funkadelic doesn't. Funkadelic has guitar solos and Parliament doesn't. Parliament has "concepts", Funkadelic doesn't. 1976's Mothership Connection is probably the start of the high point for Parliament. The disc was made concurrent to Funkadelic's Let's Take It To the Stage and Bootsy's first solo album Ah... The Name Is Bootsy, Baby!, so the three together are a mighty Everest on the funk landscape. Mothership also begins the sci-fi framework that shapes most of the rest of Parliament's albums - a cousin to Sun Ra's Saturn natives, Clinton created a mythology of African Americans from outer space (Afro-nauts) complete with an outlandish stage show featuring a landing spacecraft and tons of funny costumes. The live Parliament Live: P-Funk Earth Tour captures the inspired lunacy of these shows nicely, as well as the powerful chops of a band in its prime. The recipe book for Clinton's funk universe includes comic books, potty humor, sex jokes, science fiction, militant Black politics, nursery rhymes mixed with a large chunk of scathing satire.

The mid-1970s saw album after album from Clinton and his various guises, which besides the two flagship bands also included The Brides of Funkenstein, Bootsy's Rubber Band and Parlet. As the end of the decade closes in, there is less difference between the bands musically though Parliament continues with the goofy Afro-space-science mythology. Standout releases from this era are One Nation Under A Groove and Uncle Jam Wants You from Funkadelic and Funkentelechy Vs The Placebo Syndrome and The Clones of Dr. Funkenstein from Parliament. As the 1970's came to a close, so did Parliament, ending with their weakest effort Trombipulation, and Funkadelic, likewise ending with their weakest release The Electric Spanking Of War Babies. [War Babies though, is noteworthy for the stunning appearance of Sly Stone into the Clinton camp on "Funk Gets Stronger/She Loves You".]

In the 1980s, Clinton released his albums under his own name featuring the same musicians from the classic P-Funk releases. In the early nineties, there was a resurgence of Funkadelica, with a release by O.G.Funk and Axiom Funk, both featuring Funkadelic alumni without Clinton. Bootsy continues to have an amazing career, having played on everything from Buckethead's metal shredding solo albums to Ryiuchi Sakamoto's worldbeat synth pop.

10 essential waxings unleashed from the Clinton Universe:

1. Osmium - Parliament. As above, this is Funkadelic and it's all over the place. R&B? Check. Psychedelic metal? Check? Country Western? Check. Gospel? Check. The Rosetta Stone for the next 40 years.
   
2. Live: Meadowbrook, Rochester, Michigan 12th September 1971 - Funkadelic. A recently unearthed live recording of the early Funkadelic monster. It's a bit sloppy -- the notes say the rhythm section was brand new this night -- but Eddie Hazel has his guitar set on stun. Psychedelic and funky and noisy and completely captivating.
   
3. Ah... The Name Is Bootsy, Baby! - Bootsy Collins. P-Funk's bass player steps out with the first of many great albums.
4. Mothership Connection - Parliament. Pretty much this entire album is still in the P-Funk live show. Nuff said.
5. One Nation Under A Groove - Funkadelic. This slice is definitely Bernie Worrell's show, which is not a bad thing, but this album marks the breakdown of the just established lines between Parliament and Funkadelic.

   For the beginner...:

6. Greatest Hits (The Bomb) - Parliament. The best introduction is this budget priced disc, which is really a singles collection. If you don't like this you don't have to go any farther.
7. Back In The Day: The Best Of Bootsy - Bootsy Collins. A really fine compilation of his best stuff including a truly amazing live version of "Psychotichumpschool".
8. "(Not Just) Knee Deep" - Funkadelic and "Flashlight" - Parliament. These two songs are among the most sampled and referenced in the funk/hip-hop/r&b cannon. They are both driven by mighty Worrell Moog bass lines. "Knee Deep" is a 15 funk odyssey with a killer bridge and 10 minutes of guitar soloing over the groove. "Flashlight" is perhaps the most perfect funk tune ever.
   
9. "Get Up For The Down Stroke" - Parliament. Insanely funky, it's the first true Parliment-Funkadelic thang, as it features the newly recruited Bootsy Collins, making the Funk Mob more or less complete.
   

The Offspring of the Mother Earth (whom ya'll knocked up...)

1. Praxis. Transmutation (Mutatis Mutandis) is the best place to start here. Funk fused with avant jazz and speed metal. Bootsy Collins, Bernie Worrell, Buckethead, and Brain are the mad-scientists behind this and it's a funky, shredding monster. Each album is a bit different but they all melt gray matter on contact.
2. Roger. British guys channel Funkadelic. This Is The Shit is best party album in many many years. Backing Off Is For The Other Band continues the groove with an even heavier Bootsy influence.
3. Digital Underground. One of the few rap/hip-hop/funk groups, DI were devoted to the Funk Mob and sample from them liberally. They are also the closest to keeping the party spirit of classic funk tunes and this album is their apex. Sex Packets is probably the best of their catalog.
4. Zillatron. Lord of the Harvest is a Bootsy-led sci-fi outing that borders on cyberfunk in its paranoid vision and metal content. And funny of course. Connected to Praxis but with Bootsy's sense of humor.