Friday Full-Length: Funkadelic, America Eats its Young
Those who defend Funkadelic‘s America Eats its Young, their 1972 fourth album and the follow-up to the impossible-to-follow-up 1971 third LP, Maggot Brain (discussed here), often call it a lesson on the history of African American music, delivered by George Clinton and a massive swath of collaborators, from the by-now familiar likes of Eddie Hazel and Bernie Worrell, Ray Davis, Garry Shider and Calvin Simon, to five trumpeters, four violinists, four percussionists and no fewer than 18 contributing vocalists, including the aforementioned.
No question America Eats its Young is ambitious, and it may well have been Clinton‘s intent to show any white people who happened to be listening what it was all about — certainly Funkadelic‘s 1970 self-titled debut (discussed here) had its instructional aspects — but little comes through on the record to actually indicate that, and the sprawling, 69-minute runtime could hardly be said to be prioritizing direct communication with its audience in pieces like “Everybody is Going to Make it This Time” or the redux jam on “I Call My Baby Pussycat” that picks up a highlight cut from Parliament’s 1971 debut, Osmium (discussed here), slows it down and sexes it up accordingly at the start of the second LP.
In that track and others like the string-laced “If You Don’t Like the Effects, Don’t Produce the Cause,” Funkadelic are absolutely on-fire performance-wise. Recorded between Toronto and London, you get the taut persona showcase for Bootsy in “Philmore,” the classic shenanigans of “Loose Booty,” and the weirded-up ’60s-style soul of “That Was My Girl,” which indeed Clinton had recorded in 1965. But the thing with America Eats its Young is that there’s too much of it, and too much going on in it, for most listeners to properly appreciate in one sitting.
This is the story of double-albums of any era, and like records from The Beatles‘ White Album to Nine Inch Nails‘ The Fragile to opuses grand and unheralded, people get lost and music that should be appreciated isn’t, or is less so, because of the glut of material surrounding it. And like many other 2LPs and extended-edition whathaveyous, it’s actually to the benefit of everybody on a museum level that Funkadelic documented as much of this time period as they did. What I’m saying is that, especially these 54 years after the fact, the fact that America Eats its Young is too long is balanced out by the gratitude one might feel that there’s as much of it as there is. Like all times, it’s not a time that will come again.
Knowing that, however, doesn’t do much for the process of making one’s way through America Eats its Young front-to-back, and as with nearly all double-albums, 
there are songs that could easily have been held back either for other releases or just left on the cutting room floor, but the fact that Funkadelic pushed through with a work like this speaks to an outfit who were coming to realize the power they held in their hands, and starting to look to the future in terms of forming a point of view and, from there, extrapolating the Afro-futurist aesthetic that would come to typify P-funk once Parliament launched its Mothership and Funkadelic started to move closer in line after its initial, more rock-based era subsided.
But the horrible secret here, and I think it’s the part I’m not supposed to say, is that regardless of how the record was made or intended on the part of the artist/artists in question, you can listen to it however you want. There is a part of my brain to which this feels like utter blasphemy, I admit, but there’s no real counterargument to the assertion that, if you wanted to, you could put on the first half of America Eats its Young, listen, stop it, come back the next day and finish. You could do a couple songs at a time. You could do one. You could sit for 69 minutes and chart every single change from “You Hit the Nail on the Head” at the start to “Miss Lucifer’s Love” and “Wake Up” at the end. The choice is entirely up to you, and the options are a gamut.
That’s not to say that every record has the potential to speak to every person who hears it, or that you have to put yourself out in terms of time and place to find something to which to connect, but it seems to me an easier path than to hyperintellectualize yourself into roundabout liking a thing on some tertiary cultural level (not that I’ve never done so), not the least when Funkadelic have already done the thing you’re asserting they’re doing here. What are you even doing with your time if you look at the 69 minutes of a record like this as a mountain to climb rather than a world you’re fortunate enough to visit.
If you want to know, I broke America Eats its Young in half for this revisit, and I’ll tell you outright I vastly prefer the second half. I’m not taking away from the statement some of the earlier tracks are making — and I’d even include “We Hurt Too” in that for the might-be-even-more-relevant-now discourse on masculinity — but “Balance” hits on hard funk in a way that Funkadelic would soon enough refine to perfection and the title-track is a bizarre psych jam with a spoken word part that feels like a tie to the self-titled even as “Biological Speculation” opens up a sunny-day groove that seems to wash it all away before the sweet pop of “That Was My Girl” hits to refresh, “Balance” gives it crunch and low-end presence, “Miss Lucifer’s Love” reminds how much shred was a part of Funkadelic in this era and “Wake Up” is a fitting summary that gives over to oddball screwing around in its fade, so in other words as suitable an ending as one could ask.
That was my path on this one. Maybe you’ll find one and maybe you won’t, but there’s enough to choose your own adventure either way, and it’s my sincere hope that you find a path that, after the fact, was worth your taking. Thanks for reading.
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We’re almost there. Almost to the end of the school year. Crawling across the finish line of first grade. And I’m talking about me, never mind the kid.
She’s had a good week, it seems. The switch last weekend to Adderall was bumpy and that had me nervous going into Monday, but she’s held her own. She doesn’t need a midday dose with this, unlike the Ritalin, but I’ve still been going to the school anyway with a banana at noon to give it to her, because at least that way I know she’s eaten something and I get to check in midday with the para and see how she’s doing. I don’t know that I’ll continue to do so in second grade. If I need to, I will, but I kind of hope not, and for more than my own operational convenience.
But I think about my nephew who is very much on the autism spectrum, far more than The Pecan would be characterized as if we had pushed for that diagnosis, and he was about her age when we started to see how it was going to be. I think maybe school and her growing up is just going to be a series of moving targets. It’s not going to be smooth. It’s not going to be easy. Despite being academically brilliant to this point, she’s going to have challenges along the way that she’s already begun to see and that, at least for now, we as parents have to help steer her through. We had a couple really good months at the start of this year, and I honestly thought we might just get through like that, at least for first grade. That didn’t happen.
Barring disaster between this Friday morning and the three half-days next week that end the school year, she’ll have made it, though, and that’s a thing to celebrate. It’s not about adjusting your expectations — yes it is to some degree — but more in framing and being able to recognize achievements when they’re there. She’s worked unbelievably hard this year, and she has to work harder than every other kid in that class of 26 just to sit still long enough to do a fucking math problem. She is a warrior in this regard, and deserves any and all honors accordingly.
This evening is a Girl Scouts moving-up ceremony, where she goes from being a Daisy to a Brownie. I’m sure it’ll be fine, but I’d probably prefer not to be around that many normal people.
Next week is Freak Valley, which snuck up on me again this year. Good lineup, will be a good time as always. I didn’t do any writing for the program this year, but I look forward to getting back and seeing friends and killer sets. My Sleeping Karma play the first night and I’m thinking of it as a life event after wanting to see them for so long.
I have some stuff slated for before I go, of course, so stay tuned next week and all that good stuff. In the meantime, I wish you a great and safe weekend. If you’re protesting, stay safe. If you’re hanging out, listen to good music. Either way, don’t forget to hydrate.
FRM.
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Tags: America Eats its Young, Funkadelic, Funkadelic America Eats its Young, New Jersey, Plainfield, Westbound Records
