Friday Full-Length: Funkadelic, Funkadelic
If you think of the ‘album era’ as something that began in the 1950s with the adoption of the 33 rpm 12″ LP as the standard format, and let’s just say right up to whatever it is that came out today, I don’t think you can get around Funkadelic‘s Funkadelic (previously discussed here) as one of the best albums ever made. In early 1970, it was late to the party on psychedelia, but it didn’t matter what time they showed up, the truth is psychedelia learned how to party in no small part from this band at this time.
I could run down the list of players on here, from George Clinton belting out “What is Soul” and “Mommy, What’s a Funkadelic?” — the opening line of the record, “If you will suck my soul, I will lick your funky emotions,” still as weird and someone off-putting as ever — to Eddie Hazel running a thread of guitar brilliance through “Good Old Music” that already by then isn’t the first jam he’s driven, Clarence “Fuzzy” Haskins doing a futuristic version of classic soul on “I Bet You,” lighthearted like a Motown single from 1959, but shimmering in sound in a way that pushed acid rock and soul music both to new places. Creating a sound that’s largely inimitable and a legacy and influence that continues to resonate across a multi-generational listenership, Funkadelic‘s self-titled debut is in a class of its own and represented a next step forward from the psych rock of the later 1960s.
And the future was part of the character of the group at the time as well. Using ‘we’re weirdo aliens’ as a vehicle for discussions of racism and the hope for a better world — “Man, I was in a place one time called Keep Running, Mississippi,” Haskins croons on “Good Old Music” — Funkadelic never feel heavy-handed so much as, in the way a first album might be naive, hippies on their way to being Afrofuturists, experimental in the studio as they’d continue to be for years but largely tied to the rock and soul arrangements of the time — guitar, bass, Hammond on the bluesy “Qualify and Satisfy” with Calvin Simon‘s ultra-swaggering lead vocal, and so on — with vocal flourish inherited from the soul group The Parliaments started as.
It’s a winning combination the same way you think of oceans as wet. That jam in “Good Old Music” building on the work the handclaps do in anchoring the sway of “I Got a Thing, You Got a Thing, Everybody Got a Thing,” or “Mommy, What’s a Funkadelic?”‘s immediate attempt to both immerse and confuse, not just with that opening line noted above, but with the sweet tone of the guitar and bass, a landmark vocal hook, and lyrics about being from another planet and being surprised at how uptight hoo-mans are. It is not every song, not every LP, that can get away with a line like, “Let me shove a yard of tongue down your throat” and still come out on the other end making any sense whatsoever, but as a whole work collecting individual pieces, Funkadelic puts the listener where it wants them to be for each of its seven original component tracks — various reissues have various bonus cuts — and makes staying there worthwhile.
“Mommy, What’s a Funkadelic?” and “What is Soul?,” both questions worth asking, bookend the proceedings in a way that feels purposeful and the lyrics to the latter reinforce, and in combination with “Music for My Mother” and its positioning of funk as something “ancient,” the opener and closer bring the audience into the world of Funkadelic‘s making. They tell you how to listen to it, how to frame it, but are never overbearing in that. A notion as complicated as the soul becomes “a hamhock in your cornflakes” or “rusty ankles and ashy kneecaps,” and funk and soul both become tied to the history of American Black music, rooted in folk-blues traditions and also from a different planet and here for both your ass and party drugs. All of them? Yes, all of them. And your whole ass? You betcha.
The opener being the longest song on the album (immediate points), “Mommy, What’s a Funkadelic?” runs nine minutes and meanders and jams and lets itself get lost a bit. “I’ll Bet You” takes that hypnotic aspect and pushes it forward, but is shorter, where “Good Old Music,” in embodying funk and introducing it to listeners, makes movement an essential part of its own extended jam. After the back-door-man slick lyric of “Qualify and Satisfy” — “Just tell the square to get his hat,” etc. — having “What is Soul?” to reinforce Funkadelic as something outside, something other, something “not of your world” as the album ends demonstrates how much individualism was the goal. The band basically spends 45 minutes of the album beating you over the head with the idea that you’ve never heard anything like this before but it’s always existed. The record better be good if you’re going to pull off that kind of thing.
It’s difficult to divorce Funkadelic from the progression it would set in motion. Coupled with Parliament‘s first album, Osmium, released in July 1970, it portrays a blossoming, singular creative voice that would continue to evolve for decades, even as it gives space to a number of actual voices and bases part of its freshness around the shifts between them. But the focus is always the future, always progress, always moving forward, and it’s hopeful in a way that, especially at this moment in history, comes across as daring.
The bottom line here is Funkadelic‘s Funkadelic exists in a space that makes it a perfect take-on for heavy rock heads. It’s trippy, it’s psychedelic, it’s got enough groove for six lifetimes, and it’s from 1970. What more could you ask? Even before you get to funk’s impact on the development of hip-hop and rap, Funkadelic is one of the best rock records ever produced. Beatles, Hendrix, Pink Floyd, Black Sabbath, whoever you want to put next to it, it stands up and it stands on its own.
As always, I hope you enjoy. Thanks for reading
—
Another week down. By Monday afternoon I was daydreaming of Thursday. The Pecan’s behavioral struggles continue at school. I’ve been running over there at noon and giving her a meds bump to get through the afternoon, and that was working for a couple days last week but I’m not sure as to the long-term efficacy in letting her stay balanced through the end of her day. When I got there yesterday, she came into the office where I was and started throwing herself into a door, pacing back and forth, and I just decided to sign her out and take her home. The school’s been really good to us and I mostly like the team — the behaviorist, school therapist, etc., though there have been a few changes over the last year that have me less stoked than I was this time in 2024 — but I’m starting to wonder if they can handle her or if she’s too much for them and we need to figure something else out.
Because right now, mostly it’s just miserable. Every day, I dread going to drop-off, dread doing that meds bump, and dread pickup. What’s the story going to be today, about how she didn’t get to win some game and ran across the room to punch somebody? Kicked her para in the shins after not earning the right to watch Mark Rober videos in the afternoon? It’s been something else every day for the last three months and it’s no way to live. I’m glad school is done in a couple weeks, and will spend a decent portion of the summer hoping that second grade can be a reset. What sucks is that going into first grade what I most hoped for was to continue the momentum from the end of kindergarten, when she was doing so well.
This is big in my mind. I’m distracted a lot of the day. Burnt out. I don’t know what to do and all the school seems to have in its arsenal is another behavioral chart that’s going to get nowhere because all of them get nowhere. Oh but this one has buy-in! Screw you for how many times I’ve sat in that meeting.
I’m double-booked next Thursday. Full album streams for Grin and Hexecutioner. That’s what I get for getting stoned and answering email. I’m going to review Witchcraft at some point in the week and Dwellers too if I can. I don’t know. It’ll be a week. I’ll fret about getting shit done but shit will get done. I’ll feel anxious about when am I gonna do Hungarian, but it’ll get done. It doesn’t matter.
Long weekend. Today, Monday and Tuesday, no school. We’re in Connecticut for at least today, at The Patient Mrs.’ mom’s place. We’re hosting Monday, grilling burgers, low key. Not really into the Memorial Day thing, what with the jingoism and such, but I’ll take a couple hours with family not doing other stuff.
I hope you have a great and safe weekend. Don’t forget to hydrate. I hear summer’s coming.
FRM.
The Obelisk Collective on Facebook
Tags: Funkadelic, Funkadelic self-titled, Westbound Records
