Friday Full-Length: Funkadelic, Maggot Brain
“Mother Earth is pregnant for the third time,
For y’all have knocked her up.
I have tasted the maggot in the mind of the universe.
I was not offended, for I knew I had to rise above it all
Or drown in my own shit.” – “Maggot Brain”
No, I don’t honestly think I’m going to present any new or remarkable insight on one of the most opined-about guitar solos of all time — that being Eddie Hazel‘s melancholic soul-tear on the title-track — but honestly, it was the hook of the subsequent “Can You Get to That” that brought the album to mind, one of those things where you hear, say, think of a phrase and it associates to the song in your head. I’ve come to understand in recent years that’s an ADHD thing. For me it’s always been a lifestyle (therefore determining ‘my deathstyle’; see how this works?).
The emotional labor involved in its title-track notwithstanding — and I’m not taking anything away from it; it’s one of the best performances of rock guitar ever captured on tape and I’d sooner listen to it one thousand times than hear anything by the likes of Eric Clapton or Jimmy Page or whichever ’60s/’70s guitar hero you want to name who isn’t Tony Iommi — the bulk of Maggot Brain is much breezier, starting with “Can You Get to That” and moving into “Hit it and Quit It” and “You and Your Folks and Me and My Folks” before “Super Stupid” and “Back in Our Minds” ignite the party-rock vibe and “Wars of Armageddon,” though dark in its voice and mood, builds on the title-cut from Funkadelic’s second album, 1970’s Free Your Mind… And Your Ass Will Follow, and helps lay the foundation for Funkadelic excursions into longform instrumental dance music that would become part of the bedrock beats beneath hip-hop. That’s an influence inarguably still felt today, and something the George Clinton-led troupe would refine as they moved closer over the course of the 1970s to uniting the two projects Funkadelic and Parliament into the p-funk they’d become, out of the psychedelic comedown, through the disco years and into the arrival of keyboard-driven dance music, less emphasis on guitar and more on movement.
Of course, “Maggot Brain” remains the album’s defining moment as well as its longest track, and it’s right there at the front (immediate points), disorienting the listener with its slow tempo but this-needs-to-be-first creative urgency and human expression. Opening a funk record with a drifting improv navelgaze 
epic instrumental is counterintuitive — which is not to say brave — but this was Funkadelic‘s third album and they were no strangers by then to shirking expectations or genre boundaries. Preceded in 1970 by their self-titled debut (discussed here) and the aforementioned Free Your Mind… And Your Ass Will Follow, Maggot Brain follows the folk-funk-blues patterns of the first Parliament LP or some of the more easy-swinging material on Funkadelic, lysergic as that record was on balance. You can’t really argue that Maggot Brain is straightforward with the title-track up front pushing the limits of where pop can go and what it can do, but once you’re past that, the acoustic twang on “Can You Get to That” feels like a willful redirect, ditto the vocal arrangement, and it’s casual vibes and/or sing-alongs from there on until “Wars of Armageddon.”
Some of the psychedelia is still there, in “Maggot Brain” and the instrumental “Super Stupid,” but the latter is so much more about the swagger and shred in Eddie Hazel‘s guitar, the ringout of the organ and the gauntlet being thrown down by that solo, and after the gloriously riffy “Hit it and Quit It” and the centerpiece shuffle of “You and Your Folks, Me and My Folks,” which brings in a little Stevie Wonder-type piano and dares toward advocating for social justice, which perhaps feels more like a risk now than it might have in 1971. “You and Your Folks, Me and My Folks” ties in with “Can You Get to That,” and “Super Stupid” gives space between the middle cut and the sillier “Back in Our Minds” again, a bouncy jam with the title-line repeated, “We are back in our minds again” before they move into a verse. It’s under three minutes long and kind of goofy with what I think is a triangle, but well within this era of Funkadelic‘s weirdo wheelhouse, and after the freakout in “Super Stupid,” it’s another effective reorientation of the listener before “Wars of Armageddon” starts its strange litany of noises, samples, spoken parts, shouts and such over a dancey backbeat and instrumental jam.
And one could go on at length about the development of dance music from out of something like “Wars of Armageddon” being performed in a Washington D.C. club in the early 1970s to somehow it being reasonable to watch a person stand in front of a laptop and a couple turntables and mix live, but frankly that’s fodder for an entirely different discussion. Funkadelic‘s early period, from 1970-1975, is largely untouchable. In that span of five years and amid touring and lineup changes, legendary partying, etc., Funkadelic put out seven records and Parliament put out four, the last of which is the ultra-seminal Mothership Connection, so as runs go, there are few in pop or rock music that can compare, and that’s before you get into bringing the two sides together as Parliament-Funkadelic and affecting music such that here we are five decades later and the party is still going. Parliament-Funkadelic is on tour this month, going coast-to-coast before hitting Australia in September. Train doesn’t stop.
So maybe Maggot Brain is willfully uneven. In its title-track, it stands on the strength of Hazel‘s performance — which, again, is plenty — and for the rest takes on a brighter persona. The fact of the matter is Funkadelic were a good enough band at this point in time not only to make that leap from the opener to the rest of the LP, but to carry it off like it’s no big deal, with a super-easy, we-do-this-all-the-time-usually-on-Tuesdays groove. To acknowledge it as one of the best LPs ever made feels like calling the sky blue.
As always, I hope you enjoy.
—
Did you catch the Funkadelic reference in that Quasars of Destiny review that went up this morning? I said something in that post about “if you can get to…” whatever it was and my head immediately went to Maggot Brain. I wasn’t actually going to close the week with anything. I started writing that Quasars review yesterday and didn’t get to finish before I ran out of time in the day so I figured I’d wrap it this (Friday) morning and then just not close out the week, maybe put up a little post in case anyone came looking. Once I checked and saw I hadn’t already closed a week with Maggot Brain, it was a no-brainer.
There’s a lesson in there for me about rigidity though. I generally work a day ahead precisely so that when something like a day where I don’t have as much time comes up, I can still have some flexibility. I just so rarely use that flexibility that it took me a bit to recognize it for what it was this morning. Don’t get so stuck in a way of doing a thing that you miss out on something cool. In my case, that’s spending a morning listening to Funkadelic, which I can assure you has only had a positive impact on my mood broadly, even more so now that I’ve finished writing about it.
Limited time was kind of the theme this week, if you couldn’t tell by a few lighter-on-posts days. Three posts a day isn’t nothing. Four is kind of my standard these days — today was five — but I’m not willing to either half-ass some filler news post so there can be ‘content’ to feel some imaginary need for it or break my brain to the point where I don’t want to be on the laptop anymore. I’m working with what I’ve got in terms of faculties, and with The Pecan having trouble in school these past weeks, I’ve been doing a lot of early pickups and juggling various therapy appointments — she got kicked out on Monday for hitting a para who touched her and had to be evaluated before they’d let her back in the building, today is the psychiatrist virtual appointment that I’ll have to drag her off the playground after school to go to, I’ve been going in at noon to give her a bumper dose of ritalin to get through the afternoon (which helped the other day, it seemed), and so on — and it’s generally been hands-on-deck really since before I left for Roadburn. Which let me appreciate all the more being able to go.
Speaking of travel, this coming week is Desertfest Oslo, and I’m going to that. So Friday and Saturday look out for coverage. Before that, I’ve got streams and such lined up. Tuesday is a full premiere for the new Madmess record, Wednesday is a Northern Heretic track premiere (they’re playing with Paradise Lost and Trouble in NYC, you know) and Thursday is a fully for Cavern Deep.
I wouldn’t mind reviewing Clamfight, Witchcraft or Turtle Skull before I go, but it’s probably pick-one-and-make-it-happen with the rest of the schedule booked and, again, limited time. I’ll do my best, even if my best kind of sucks.
Zelda update: I still like The Wind Waker. I have the un-upgraded Master Sword and will enter the Earth Temple next time I play. In the meantime though, The Patient Mrs. both rented Super Smash Bros. Ultimate from the library — I destroyed The Pecan yesterday; we were told to stop letting her win games so she can get used to it with peers — and bought me a copy of Dragon Quest III HD-2D Remake, which I’ve been sweating since I played the original game on NES as a kid. It will come with me to Norway, for sure, as will The Wind Waker, since it’s on my laptop with the mods and such.
Oh, and I’ve been trying to build the habit since I got back from Roadburn of doing yoga every day. If you have a killer video you know of, drop the link. The more sympathetic, the better. Yoga for sore back, sore knees, etc., or “Hey I’m really sorry to hear about your ongoing existential crisis. Let’s do some cat-cows.” I like the comforting aspect before I get my ass kicked by stretching.
Thanks for reading and have a great and safe weekend. I’m gonna go change over the laundry, empty the dishwasher, and maybe peel an orange before I need to run to the school. The weather’s good, so have fun.
FRM. There’s no merch up right now, but if Brooklyn Dave’s got something up, support his ass anyway just to support it.
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Tags: Funkadelic, Funkadelic Maggot Brain, Maggot Brain, Washington D.C., Westbound Records
Excellent choice for the Friday full length!
DDP Yoga? Dude helped Lex Luger walk again. Seems like he knows his yoga ;)
Ahahah that song absolutely kicked its way into my head when I read that! Is that an ADHD thing? I just call it Brain Radio. Is sometimes difficult to explain the Knight’s Move connection to other people though, hmmm….
I can also speak to the positive impact on mood – earlier this year I pulled into the bike path on my way to work and the person in front of me had some sort of speaker in their backpack, played me fifteen minutes of Funkadelic while I made sure not to overtake, and set me up for the day.
Hilarious, I went right for “Night Moves.”
I call it the Mental Jukebox — it’s always on, whether you want it or not, and it takes requests, whether you want it to or not.
Was thinking I might go back and do the self-titled and up from there through this initial era. If a thing feels good, beat it into the ground, right?
Ach I’m a terrible sludge fiend so just read “run it into the ground”, and the Jukebox has its next request…
I had to look up Night Moves, which has led to another fifteen minutes of learning about US radio rock from an era I had overlooked in favour of the underground.
I think I have ‘knight move’ from a Cosmic Trigger connection