On the scale of Funkadelic records, July 1973’s Cosmic Slop might be a rare favorite. It doesn’t have any real hits, and the sopping-wet psychedelia of the group’s earliest fare has largely evaporated from their sound, and this is the first Funkadelic outing to not feature Eddie Hazel on guitar. Garry Shider (returning) and Ron Bykowski hold it down, both playing lead and rhythm, while Cordell “Boogie” Mosson handles bass and Tiki Fulwood is again in on drums, with Bernie Worrell — whose ‘woo’ at this point is well under development — on keys and Tyrone Lampkin on percussion. George Clinton, Ray Davis the aforementioned Shider, Ben Edwards and Mallia Franklin and Debbie Wright contribute vocals, the latter two backing. And that’s it. There are 10 songs. It’s 39 minutes long.

Could hardly be more straightforward, right? No 10-minute sad solos starting off party records here. No sucking of souls or licking of funky emotions. And compared to the sprawling 1972 double-album, America Eats its Young (discussed here), that preceded, Cosmic Slop feels decidedly unslopped. Hindsight and the records that follow show it as a transitional moment in the band as ideas from their first four albums (not to mention the years in soul groups prior) codify into something new. The easy swing of “Nappy Dugout” at the outset reminds of any number of bluesy strutters, but is telling in its jam of the band’s emerging willingness to make instrumental sections in their songs specifically for dancing. “Wars of Armageddon” from 1971’s Maggot Brain (discussed here) was an earlier example of this, but the intent is clearer and elements like whistles and group vocals would become staples soon enough of Funkadelic operating in this mode.

The conversation with Parliament‘s 1970 debut, Osmium (discussed here) is vivid in “You Can’t Miss What You Can’t Measure” and the later stretch through “This Broken Heart” and “Trash-a-Go-Go,” the latter of which is really just a snippet of a captured percussion jam but that does well to separate “This Broken Heart” (with strings by Worrell) and the closer “Can’t Stand the Strain” (with a more vocals-centered rollout), coming off the guitar-solo-in-background nostalgia of “No Compute,” familiar in its storytelling not in such a way like “March to the Witch’s Castle” a short time earlier, with the slowed-down spoken word narrative over militaristic psych (!) buildup and a reference from Worrell to “Battle Hymn of the Republic” thrown in for good measure. At six minutes, with due instrumental takeoff, “March to the Witch’s Castle” is the longest song here, and while Hazel‘s presence is missed throughout Cosmic Slop, the guitar is still able to get the point across, to be sure.

I’ve jumped around a bit in the tracklisting between the front and back of the LP, and you can do that listening digitally or if you’ve got the CD (mine’s in storage, like most of my collection; I cannot see a time in my life when I’ll open those boxes and live with those records again, sadly). The front-to-back flow is certainly bolstered by the rampant base-level groove that permeates this period of Funkadelic‘s work, which is to say that while these songs go different places, the going is fluid and that makes the jumps between them in sound, mood, etc., easier to make. Cosmic Slop isn’t America Eats its Young and it isn’t Standing on the Verge of Getting it On, which would arrive the next year, but it helps bridge the gap between the ultimate reach of the album before it — the absolute plunge into an aural and stylistic Yet-Unknown, a band looking for hits even sacrificing accessibility in favor of exploration; admirably weird, if also somewhat confused in trade — and the self-aware, figured-it-out divulge of what comes next.

Part of it no doubt is the end of the psychedelic era. The music was changing, pop was changing, and the rock that had underscored Funkadelic‘s early going was becoming something else as the next decade unfolded. In some ways, they were keeping up with the times, but the way in which they did was also innovative. “Let’s Make it Last” is a crooner with familiar swagger, and in the title-track, Cosmic Slop finds both its crescendo and signature hook. In its acid-guitar flourish, it harkens back, and in its outward focus on dance — the “Cosmic Slop” itself is a dance, in the lyrics — it’s prescient of things yet to manifest in Funkadelic‘s sound. By and large, the songwriting throughout Cosmic Slop is moving toward a tighter rein on structure, but there’s no shortage of ‘go’ in the tracks regardless. Reality remains tweaked.

But they were figuring it out. Had figured a few things out. Were continuing to learn as they went. Who should be doing what, making what noise, how to speak to their audience, what the frame of their material would be. Cosmic Slop didn’t launch the Mothership, but by holding onto a ’60s-inherited aspect of space theme, they would go on to pioneer a style of Afrofuturism that remains relevant 50 years after the fact. A rare echelon of radness.

If you heard Cosmic Slop after America Eats its Young, though, and thought Funkadelic had lost the plot in 1973, would you have been right? It’s hard to say, but maybe. They were different after this record than they were before it, in terms of intention, and their hold on their songwriting grew tighter without giving up either the fun or the experimentation. Cosmic Slop ends up in a sweet-spot between the various sides of Funkadelic‘s approach, and while it’s missing the conceptual aspect that their work would foster as the mid-’70s turned late, the foundations of that are beginning to emerge from their sound here. It’s not really their most cosmic, it’s certainly not the most slop in the pejorative sense, but Cosmic Slop is a landing point in Funkadelic‘s evolution and documents the changes and codifications happening in their sound at the time. Thankfully its appeal goes well beyond such academics.

As always, I hope you enjoy.

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I have other writing to do. A bio project that I don’t think I’m supposed to talk about, but for which I need to get a draft done. I’m keeping this short accordingly.

Next week I was supposed to go to Croatia for Bear Stone. That isn’t happening. It’s on me. I’m doing a Quarterly Review instead. I haven’t told The Patient Mrs. that yet, but I figure if I just do the QR — nothing is double-booked, which given how the rest of June went for me scheduling-wise, unto the two full-album streams in a single day I did this week, feels like a miracle; nothing I know of is double-booked, anyhow — and the one or two news announcements that come in that I feel like will need to be posted, I can get through even though it’s summer and the house wakes up at like 6AM. Fuck it. If I could manage a QR last summer, I can do one this summer.

Look for that, I guess.

I got asked this week about a fest in August in Germany, but I don’t know if anything’s going to happen there. As of now, I don’t have a trip scheduled until January. If that’s how it plays out, so be it. No one ever said back-and-forthing to Eurofests was going to be my life, least of all me.

So, busy. Look for busy. Head down, keep working. I’m gonna go do that.

Great and safe weekend. If you’re celebrating the 4th of July next week, what the fuck for? Don’t blow off any fingers. Be safe, hydrate and all that and I’ll be back Monday.

FRM.

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