CHRISTGAU CONSUMER GUIDE

CHRISTGAU CONSUMER GUIDE

by Robert Christgau

Although Parliament-Funkadelic was more influenced by white rock (especially heavy metal) than any other black band in history, it was virtually unknown among whites until the late 70’s. No doubt that’s because one thing Clinton borrowed from white rock was outrageous belligerence, butlt’s still a racial disgrace (and not the last, I guarantee). As a critic who was on their labels’ mailing lists only sporadically, I was dimly aware of them—offended by the cover of Maggot Brain (still am), offended by America Eats Its Young (still am though the “C-” I dismissed it with was too low), and then educated into grudging respect by fellow critics, Vernon Gibbs, Joe McEwen, and Ed Ward (not to mention critic-turned-factotum Tom Vickers). I began listening seriously in 1977 and really got the Funk (after two dismal Madison Square Garden shows) at the Apollo Theater last fall. What follows is the aftermath of my conversion. Like all the historical stuff I’m doing these days, the conceit is that I’m writing contemporaneously with release, which is why some of these reviews have a naive tone. The idea is to unfold the history as I might have had I been smart enough to observe it without erroneous foresight, a journalist’s dream. As far as availabliity is concerned, the Westbound stuff is long out of print but still findable in the discount bins. The Casablanca is currently being discounted and quite possibly cut out, so buy it now. The \Warners is around, the Invictus long gone. Good hunting.

FUNKADELIC (Westbound ’70):: Q (Side One, Cut One): “Mommy, What’s a Funkadelic”? A: Someone from Carolina who encountered eternity on LSD and vowed to contain it in a groove. Q (Side Two, Cut Four): “What Is Soul”? A: A ham hock in your corn flakes. You get high marks for your questions guys.

C+

PARLIAMENT: Osmium (Invictus ’70):: What happens when a black harmony group names an album after the heaviest metal, depluralizes its name, and pluralizes the music? It may be pretentious bullshit, but it sure is interesting pretentious bullshit—bagpipes and steel guitars, Bach and rock, Satchmo as Kingfish, work chants as dozens, all in the service of world-view in which love/sex becomes frightening, even brutal, and no less credible for that.

B

FUNKADELIC: Free Your Mind and Your Ass Will Follow (Westbound ’70):: This is as confusing and promising and ultimately ambiguous as the catchy (and rhythmic) title slogan. Is that ass as in “shake your ass” or ass as in “save your ass”? And does one escape/transcend the dollar by renouncing the material world or by accepting one’s lot? Similarly, are the scratchy organ timbres and disorienting separations fuckups or deliberate alienation effects? Is this music to stand to or music to get wasted by? In short, this band (this black band, I should add, since it’s black people who are most victimized by anti-materialistic rhetoric) promulgating escapist idealism or psychic liberation? Or do all these antinomies merely precede some aesthetic synthesis? One thing is certain—the only place that synthesis might occur here is on “Funky Dollar Bill.”

B-

FUNKADELIC: Maggot Brain (Westbound ’71):: Children, this is a funkadelic. The title piece is ten minutes of classic Hendrix-gone-heavy guitar by one Eddie Hazel—time-warped, druggy superschlock that may falter momentarily but never lapses into meaningless showoff runs. After which comes 2:45 of poSt-classic soulgroup harmonizing—two altos against a bass man, all three driven by the funk, a rhythm so pronounced and eccentric it could make Berry Gordy twitch to death. The funk pervades the rest of the album, but not to the detriment of other peculiarities. Additional highlight: “Super Stupid.”

B+

FUNKADELIC: America Eats Its Young (Westbound ’72):: Their racial hostility is much preferable to the brotherhood bromides of that other Detroit label, but their taste in white people is suspect; it’s one thing to put down those who “picket this and protest that” from their “semi-first-class-seat,” another to let the Process Church of the Final Judgement provide liner notes on two successive albums. I overlooked it on Maggot Brain because the music was so difficult to resist, but here the strings (told you about their taste in white people), long-windedness (another double-LP that should be a single), and programmatic lyrics (“Miss Lucifer’s Love” inspires me to mention that while satanism is a great antinomian metaphor it often leads to murder, rape, etc.) leave me free to exercise my prejudices. Primary exception: “Biological Speculation,” a cautionary parable about the laws of nature/the jungle. Secondary exception: “Loose Booty.” Remember what Hank Ballard says, you guys: How you gonna get respect if you haven’t cut your process yet?

C+

FUNKADELIC: Cosmic Slop (Westbound ’73):: Thank, well, Whomever, the “maladroited message of Doom” inside the doublefold comes not from Brother Malachi but from Sir Lleb, and Whomever has rewarded the band with two definitively scary takes on sex and life in the future present—“Cosmic Slop” and “No Compute,” both of which combine humor, pessimism, incantation, and bullshit in convincing and unprecedented amalgams. Unfortunately, most of the rest is “interesting,” including one profundo Vietnam monologue and many parodies of harmony-group usage.

B

PARLIAMENT: Up for the Down Stroke (Casablanca ’74):: What seems to distinguish this mysterious alternate version of Funkadelic (same personnel, different label) from the original is that it’s more politic. Its excesses don’t offend. Gone is all the scabrous talk of holes and bitches, and gone too are the politics themselves—the nearest this comes to social criticism is to praise the brain. But what’s left is damn near a musical revolution. The material George Clinton had amassed over the years—the harmony-group vocal chops, the Jimi H. guitar, the James B. horns and rhythms—is here deployed in yet another audacious deconstruction/reconstruction of black pop traditions, and this time it works. All of the voice arrangements skew the original “I Wanna Testify” (which is reinterpreted for comparison) the way those of Big Star do, say, “Run for Your Life.” The horns and guitars weave and comment and come front. And the title cut kicks and jams. One more riff like that and they’d take over the world.

A-

FUNKADELIC: Standing of the Verge of Getting It On (Westbound ’74):: Although too often it lives up to its name, this is the solidest record this restless group has ever made and offers such goodies as Alvin Chipmunk saying “gross motherfucker” and a stanza that takes on both Iggy Stooge and Frank Zappa with its tongue tied. It also offers this Inspirational Homily: “Good thoughts bring forth good fruit. Bullshit thoughts rot your needs. Think right and you can fly.”

B+

PARLIAMENT: Chocolate City (Casablanca ’75):: On the first side a DJ who reminds me of Jocko Henderson jive-raps on the satisfactions of suffrage and then gives way to a dancable, listenable, forgettable groove. On the second side interesting but hookless off-harmony excursions, two of them too slow and/or too long, break into some heavy funk for the ages.

B

FUNKADELIC: Let’s Take It to the Stage (Westbound ’75):: The group that makes the Ohio Players sound like the Mike Curb Congregation still have a disturbingly occultish bent—“free from the need to be free,” indeed. But at this point I’m inclined to trust the music, which is tough-minded, outlandish, very danceable, and finally, I think (and hope), liberating. Including a Stevie Wonder rip-off and a Jimi Hendrix impression and a Black Sabbath love song and a long Bach organ coda (“Atmosphere,” by Clinton-Shider-Worrell) over a rap that begins: “I hate the word pussy, it sounds awfully squishy, so I guess I’ll call it a clit.”

A-

FUNKADELIC: Funkadelic’s Greatest hits (Westbound ’75) s: After “Can You Get to That,” “Loose Booty,” and “Funky Dollar Bill,” which really are great, I’m ready to believe that “A Joyful Process” is balanced on an Ellingtonian paradox rather than immersed in schlocky pretensions. But the selection could be even better, and because Funkadelic is a groove band rather than a song band it’s not very well-served by the “hit” format. In short, this is hardly the perfect Funkadelic LP. And in truth, neither are any on the others.

A-

PARLIAMENT: Mothership Connection (Casablanca’76):: That DJ from Chocolate City, or maybe it’s the Chocolate Milky Way, keeps the beat from going with nothing but his rap, some weird keyboard, and cymbals for stretches of side one. And later produces the galactic “Give Up the Funk” and a James Brown tribute that goes “gogga gogga, gogga gogga”—only believe me, that doesn’t capture it.

A-

FUNKADELIC: Tales of Kidd Funkadelic (Westbound ’76):: As with James Brown, whose circa-1971 J.B.s provided this band with its horns and rhythm section, there always seem to be waste cuts on George Clinton’s albums. The difference is that Brown’s are intended as filler even when they come out inspired, whereas Clinton’s feel like scientific experiments even when they’re entirely off-the-cuff. The title cut here, a 13-minute congas-and-keyboard reconnaisance decorated with a few chants, turns out to be fairly listenable. Which I noticed because it’s preceded by a catchy march called “I’m Never Gonna Tell It,” their greatest post-doowop experiment yet. Also out there: “Take Your Dead Ass Home!” Not to mention the horns and rhythm section.

B+

PARLIAMENT: The Clones of Dr. Funkenstein (Casablanca ’76):: The message seems to be that clones are cool, and the proof seems to be the predictable yet effective funktoons that dominate the album. But I remain an unreconstructed Yurrupean rationalist/individualist, and I wish there were a few more tracks as specific as “Dr. Funkenstein” and “Sexy Body.”

B+

FUNKADELIC: Hardcore Jollies (Warner Bros. ’76):: A good sample of their surrealistic black vaudeville, this offers none of the great climaxes of their Westbound albums—no come shots, you might say—but an abunda'nce of good old-fashioned raunch. As consistent as any album they’ve made, it’s dense with ensemble funk and catchy riffsongs, post-heavy Mike Hampton guitar and post-backlash soul voicings. And it rescues from the public domain not only middle-period Jimmy Page but “Comin’ ’Round the Mountain” and “They Don’t Wear Pants on the Sunny Side of France.”

A-

PALIAMENT: Parliament Live/P. Funk Earth Tour (Casablanca ’77):: Because it mixes music from all three George Clinton creations (including a new chant) and conveys a lot of the. anarchic, participatory throb of a P. Funk concert, this live double serves a real function. But the recording doesn’t do much justice to the music’s bottom, or its top.

B+

FUNKADELIC: The Best of the Early Years Volume One (Westbound ’77):: By cutting down to one track each from the first two albums, this upgrades Westbound’s (now deleted) 1975 compilation. The only essential addition is “No Compute,” but most of the six substitutions are improvements. And the one regretable deletion, “Standing on the Verge of Getting It On," serves a rough concept: to present a very strange vocal group rather than a funk or psychedelic band.

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A

PARLIAMENT: Funkentelechy vs. the Placebo Syndrome (Casablanca ’77):: This seems like your representative ’delicment LP at first, featuring one irresistable and quite eccentric (including one based on nursery rhymes), bits of inspired jive, bits of plain jive, and an anomalous slow one. But with familiarity the three rhythm hooks, that anchor the album start sounding definitive. And never before has George Clinton dealt so coherently with his familiar message, in which the forces of life—autonomous intelligence, a childlike openess, sexual energy, and humor—defeat those of death: by seduction if possible, by force if necessary.

A

FUNKADELIC: One Nation Under a Groove (Warner Bros. ’78):: I can’t figure out why some Funkateers profess themselves unmoved by this one. The 12-incher does come up a little short on guitar, but a generous Hendrix fix is thoughtfully provided on a 17-minute, seven-inch third side, and the title cut is as tough and intricate as goodfooting ever gets. Plus: “Who Says a Funk Band Can’t Play Rock?” and “Into You,” two manifestoes that bite close to the bone, and “The Doo Doo Chasers,” a scatalogical call-and-response cum responsivereading whose shameless obviousness doesn’t detract from fun or funk. Fried ice cream is a reality! Or: Think! It ain’t illegal yet!

A

PARLIAMENT: Motor-Booty Affair (Casablanca ’78):: In which George Clinton & Co. make a kiddie record that features the return of the Shipmunks as “three slithering idiots” doing their thing underwater. Irresistible at its most inspired—aqua-deejay Wiggles the Worm is my favorite Clinton fantasy ever—and dancable at its most pro forma.

A-

FUNKADELIC: Uncle Jam Wants You (Warner Bros. ’79):: This is fairly wonderful through the first cut on side two, but in a fairly familiar way. Bernie Worrell’s high synthesizer vamps sometimes seem like annoying cliches these days, and not even Philippe Wynne can provide the marginal variety that puts good groove music over the top—maybe because he sounds like a high synthesizer himself.

B+

PARLIAMENT: Gloryhallastoopid (Casablanca ’79):: At its stoopidest (“Theme from the Black Hole,” which features a “toast to the boogie” that goes—naturally—“Bottoms up!”) this makes Aqua-Booty Affair sound like The Ring of the Nibelungenlied. But at its dumbest (“Party People,” apparently a sincere title) it makes Aqua-Booty Affair sound like “Sex Machine” or “Get Off Your Ass and Jam.” And there’s too much filler. Stoopid can be fun, George—even inspirational. But mainly you sound overworked, and that’s a drag for everybody.

B+