“Freedom is free of the need to be free.” – Funkadelic

Even by the rather significant standard of funkadelia, this is a weird one. Free Your Mind… And Your Ass Will Follow was released in July 1970, which put it at four months’ remove from Funkadelic‘s self-titled debut (discussed here). Unsurprisingly, a lot of the same players show up. Guitarist Eddie Hazel steps into a more significant role vocally, handling leads on four songs to the prior album’s one, and in addition to George Clinton as the presiding visionary producer and preaching that the kingdom of heaven is within like a satanic shaman in the 10-minute pan-this-way-no-wait-now-that-way leadoff title-track, the likes of Calvin Simon, Ray Davis, Grady Thomas and Fuzzy Haskins are back on vocals, and guitarist Lucius “Tawl” Ross (who plays and also sings on “Funky Dollar Bill”), bassist Billy Nelson, drummer Tiki Fulwood and keymaster Bernie Worrell return as the backing band. Three uncredited women appear on the album: Martha Reeves, Telma Hopkins and Joyce Vincent, the latter two known as Dawn.

So, less than half a year after putting out one record, Funkadelic belt out a follow-up, and while the first album had its share of strange and quirky moments — it does begin the band’s career by asking you to suck its soul, just as an example — Free Your Mind… And Your Ass Will Follow departs the narrative impulse that set the band’s forward-looking psychedelic heavy funk rock as an inheritance from the blues, aligned it directly to African American culture and music, and engaged with the social issues of its day. Lore has it that the sophomore LP was ‘composed’ as much as it was and recorded completely on acid, but whether or not that’s true — surely no one still alive who was there would be able to remember — and regardless of the chemical compounds involved in its making, Free Your Mind… And Your Ass Will Follow manifests its yearning for release in the Clinton-delivered mantra throughout the title-track’s ultra-freakout, which at 10 minutes takes up a third of the total 30-minute runtime.

The extended opener, a fluid, exploratory, probably-largely-improvised jam with an avant-ripper of a solo from Hazel as a backdrop to much of it, loops, vague echoes, even some groove once the second half gets going before the keys eat it. That’s somewhat different from the inevitably more straightforward “Friday Night, August 14th,” which readily swings around the repetitions of its titular hook until the drums take boogie flight on their own, delay adding to the trippery at hand. Comparatively, the clarity and forward placement of the riff at the outset of “Funky Dollar Bill,” with its wacky keyboard line, dug-in verse and what’s-the-point-of-that-dayjob-anyway lyrical stance unfolding from there, feels like another step away from the severity of the opener’s declarations. Worrell shines, and Ross leads the chorus in a finish that underscores the notion that, however far-out they went in terms of the album’s making, somebody was still thinking of putting out singles.

They’re not done with experimentalism, mind you. It’s a defining feature of this era of Funkadelic, and within “I Wanna Know if It’s Good to You” and “Some More” and extra-gone capper “Eulogy and Light” as side B unfolds following “Funky Dollar Bill,” there’s no shortage, but until that finale, they continue to work in balance between accessibility — funk as a music for people, to enjoy, to engage with, to dance to, to be part of — and the more high-minded artistry and willful boundary pushing. “I Wanna Know if It’s Good to You,” just under six minutes with a lead vocal from Hazel that presages some of the work he’d do in 1977 on his lone solo album, Games, Dames and Guitar Thangs (briefly discussed here), albeit with a more lysergic affect. It’s some form of pop, but it refuses to compromise the sharper corners of its tones, and the malleability of the mix once again becomes a part of the character in its jam, which is allowed to organically come apart at the end before the bluesy bump of “Some More” quickly takes hold.

Here, again, Worrell makes his presence felt. An easy swing accompanies and a watery effect on Clinton‘s vocal is the element that keeps “Some More” in line with the freakery surrounding. It’s like the normal version of the thing, but not. Prescient of rap, indebted to theatrical rock as much as blues for its over-the-top chorus, and smooth into its fade thanks in no small part to the keys out in front, it gives over to the swirl at the start of “Eulogy and Light,” which I’m pretty sure samples tracks from the self-titled amid its roiling melting pot of audio, which is topped with Clinton doing a spoken preach with the uncredited backing vocalists and Hazel (the latter backmasked) complementing the anti-greed treatise, echoing into a space left initially empty of instrumentation. It is peak weird, sneakily on-theme with “Funky Dollar Bill,” and transgressive in a way that if it came out today would probably result in death-threats owing to the various unhinged stupidities of the times.

While it wins outright in terms of titles, Free Your Mind… And Your Ass Will Follow has neither the legacy of Funkadelic nor of 1971’s Maggot Brain (discussed here). Compared to the former, it’s more insular in its approach — the first record tells you what funk is, the second immediately sets about pushing back on its own definitions; seemingly for fun, which is rad — but there’s still enough here to make you move, and considering it surfaced so soon after the debut, thinking of it as a complement to that offering isn’t a bad way to go, adding as it does to what the band had done months prior and finding new ground to cover on an nearly-impossible quick at the behest of Clinton as producer and the landmark group with which he’d surrounded himself.

Concurrent to the release of Free Your Mind… And Your Ass Will Follow, in July 1970, Parliament‘s first full-length, Osmium, was issued through Invictus Records, beginning the trajectory that would gradually bring the two projects together as Parliament-Funkadelic and lay out a cross-genre influence that continues to expand across multiple generations in exponential reach. I think we might hit that one up next week as this informal, unannounced, ultra-casual Friday Full-Length mini-series continues.

As always, I hope you enjoy.

—

Another week. We’re coming down to the end of the school year, which is good. The Patient Mrs.’ semester is over, which is good. Freak Valley is in a couple weeks, which I’m looking forward to.

The Pecan’s had two days of school so far this week, since she was off Monday and Tuesday for Memorial Day and a give-back snow day. We had family over for Memorial Day, set up a little tent in the driveway with the tables and I grilled burgers and hot dogs. Americana. Still eating leftover cheeseburgers, which is probably more red meat than I’ve had in my system in 20 years. Shrug. Life’s pointless anyway. Let it sit in my colon forever.

We were also in Connecticut last weekend and such as the kid was actually off for five days, so we had plenty of time. Her two days in school have been good by all reports, but we still got a notice from the principal this week that the team wants to discuss “other options” for next year, which I think means we need a lawyer. I asked my sister to put some feelers out yesterday since she, you know, talks to and knows humans, and sure enough she had someone to reach out to. We’ll see how that comes together and how the whole thing plays out.

It’s pretty clear the school she’s in can’t handle her when she loses her cool — and I get it — but it would be hard to frame getting kicked out of elementary school after first grade as a win on the day it happens, whatever better-for-her situation she might end up in eventually as a result. She has 25 kids in her class this year and there looks to be no relief in that regard coming. If the town wants to pay to send my daughter to private school from now through 12th grade where the classes will be half that and she’ll get a more personalized curriculum, well, I don’t think that’ll hurt her in the long run. But it’s not necessarily how you want to set out on the path to get there.

The last few months — like more than three at this point — have been pretty hard and intense for her. I lost it the other night and was yelling, just tired of being hit and scratched and the throwing things and whatnot. Not my best moment, but we actually sat and talked for a few minutes after that and it was okay. She had been fucking with my computer basically just to spite me after I told her not to, and I did the full “how dare you who do you think you are” rigamarole. I was pissed and I made sure she knew it.

I said I felt hurt and disrespected, that I don’t take orders from her, and like she didn’t care and that she treated me like garbage. All of which are true to some extent — I am the less-preferred parent and it can be a low rung sometimes — and which prompted the response from her, “I don’t want to.” We sat for a couple minutes and talked. I told her I loved her. She said I know. I wept tears of joy. We hugged. She and I will continue to butt heads, I expect, for the rest of my life. It was nice to have a moment that felt even like a sliver of resolution. She walked across the room to hug me. I never get that. Then I went and did the ‘calming yoga’ that she had disrupted the start of before the argument began, trying to control the wheres and whens of her mother, who was joining me in the practice. The rest of the evening was pleasant in the moderate way of things.

In about an hour and a half, I’ll go to the school to give her her meds bump. We’ll pick her up at 3 at the door to avoid issues at dismissal with the other kids — that’s definitely my job and not the school’s, right? — and then bring her home. Try to get some food in her before we have to go to the high school because tonight, wonder of wonders, is the elementary school talent show. Following up on her 2024 performance doing math-themed standup, my adorable little weirdo will be doing a science experiment with a compound known colloquially as ‘elephant’s toothpaste,’ having learned about it from obsessively watching Mark Rober videos on YouTube. We’ve done more practice concoctions than I can count and can’t quite get the vertical shoot-up we wanted, but the rehearsal looked good the other day, she’ll have fun up there, and since she goes fifth out of 30-someodd acts, I’ll get to leave early after to bring my mother home. Last year I stayed for three and a half hours and it was a special kind of hell.

To completely redirect, here’s a Zelda update: I finished a first playthrough of The Wind Waker and accidentally saved over the game with the start of a second quest. The game tells you not to. I was stoned, it was dumb. Give me a break. Frustrated, I decided to actually do the second playthrough (you get to keep the lobster shirt and there are some other light differences), and I’m back to having done all the dungeons except for the last one where you go fight all the bosses again before Ganondorf. I like it. There are some tedious parts and I’ve never been able to get 25 letters in the post-office mini-game, which is sad, but for something I wrote off 20-however-many years ago as a very dignified, self-serious 20-year-old, it’s a lot of fun, even though I accidentally left the Savage Labyrinth last night with just 20 levels to go before I got the last heart-piece in the game (not that I’ve gotten them all). Dumbass.

I’ve also started a playthrough of A Link to the Past on my phone on an emulator (can connect the Switch controller to that as well), and after doing the first two dungeons, I decided to use Game Genie codes to unlock everything. I piled on a bunch of items and abilities to basically make an open world version of the game where, at the start as I am, I’d otherwise still be really limited in where I went. Kind of a nerdy boink of a way to play, but I can check in for like 10 minutes when I’m bored and roam around and do whatever. I will probably bumble into progressing the story eventually.

I played a little Tears of the Kingdom with the older son of family friends who had a question about his game this past weekend — he brought the Switch over to ask how to get up to fight the monsters poking out of Death Mountain in the Goron main quest — and I was crazy rusty, which was kind of fun in itself considering how much time I’ve spent with that game over the last year and a half. Switch 2 comes out next week. I eventually hope to get one and import my TOTK game to it.

Next week at some point I’m going to review the Dwellers record. That’s my only goal. There will be more than that, obviously, but I’ll figure out what probably tomorrow morning with my coffee.

Thanks for reading. Apparently I felt like writing, so if you’re here, I appreciate it. Have a great and safe weekend and I’ll be back Monday.

FRM.

The Obelisk Collective on Facebook

The Obelisk Radio

The Obelisk merch

 

 

Tags: Free Your Mind and Your Ass Will Follow, Funkadelic, Funkadelic Free Your Mind and Your Ass Will Follow, Washington D.C., Westbound Records

This entry was posted on Friday, May 30th, 2025 at 12:04 pm and is filed under Bootleg Theater. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed.