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.

—

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.

The Obelisk Collective on Facebook

The Obelisk Radio

The Obelisk merch

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.

—

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.

The Obelisk Collective on Facebook

The Obelisk Radio

The Obelisk merch

“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

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

The Obelisk Radio

The Obelisk merch

“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.

The Obelisk Collective on Facebook

The Obelisk Radio

The Obelisk merch

Funkadelic, Let’s Take it to the Stage (1975)

To be completely honest with you, I don’t think there’s a single album I’ve listened to more in the last year than Funkadelic‘s 1975 seventh album, Let’s Take it to the Stage. The only real competition would be their sixth, 1974’s Standing on the Verge of Getting it On, but even that I don’t think has had the same replay factor as this one, which front to back is amazing in its go-anywhere-and-kick-ass sense of freedom. From the megahook of the opening “Good to Your Earhole” — “There’s a good time waiting for you/Come on let’s get free” — to the slammed drums of “Baby I Owe You Something Good” and the Bach-via-Bernie–Worrell keyboard solo that closes out on “Atmosphere,” not to mention Bootsy Collins‘ spot-on Jimi Hendrix impression on the innuendo-laden “Be My Beach,” the taught-Snoop–Dogg-to-sing “This Song is Familiar,” the frenetic pacing of “Better by the Pound,” Eddie Hazel‘s unreal guitar tone throughout, George Clinton himself the master of it all, grinning wide as he talks shit on James Brown, Sly Stone and Earth, Wind and Fire in the title-track and sets up dramatic vocal arrangements on cuts like “No Head, No Backstage Pass,” “Stuffs and Things” and the kick-you-in-the-ass side B opener “Get off Your Ass and Jam,” it is an unfuckwithable full-length stretch rife with groove, soul and good times. This album turns 40 this year and it’ll still race your ass around the track.

I’m a big nerd for Funkadelic‘s 1970 self-titled debut, and Free You Mind… and Your Ass Will Follow and Maggot Brain were worthy follow-ups — the latter of course boasts Eddie Hazel‘s defining moment in its nine-minute guitar solo opening title-track, probably the bravest opener I’ve ever heard considering the relatively lighthearted fare that follows — and while I’ve dug 1972’s America Eats its Young and 1973’s Cosmic Slop well enough, there’s a dip there until ’74, when Clinton won back the rights to use the name Parliament and used that band as a more commercial dance venture and set about gradually bringing the two sides together. Parliament‘s 1974 release, Up for the Down Stroke, is a party on a platter, and of course 1975’s Mothership Connection would become their defining hour, but at the same time, Funkadelic was digging into their best blend of psychedelic heavy rock and funked up groove. Standing on the Verge of Getting it On and Let’s Take it to the Stage are essential, and to think of them coinciding with what was also the peak of Clinton‘s work in Parliament — which also released the Washington D.C. tribute, Chocolate City, in ’75 — makes it even more of a landmark era for the two, soon-enough-to-be-one groups.

If you’ve heard it before, I hope you enjoy another runthrough. If not, I hope you dig in with an open mind.

—

Closing out the week early, yeah. Yesterday was The Patient Mrs.‘ birthday, so we’re going into Boston this afternoon to go to the Museum of Fine Art and look at paintings, because she’s an adult who cares about stuff like culture and art and politics and I’m a manchild who’s into riffs and Star Trek. Should be a good time, but if it seems like I’m in something of a hurry to get this done and head out, I am. Already getting the “let’s go already” stink-eye and would rather prolong the issue as little as possible.

Monday, a track premiere from Terminal Fuzz Terror, whose weirdo fuzz experimentalism is to be released by Robotic Empire, and Tuesday, one from Chiefs, whose riffs are mighty. Also reviews of Elder and Blut next week and maybe more but I’m not promising because I don’t like saying I’m going to do things and then not getting to them. If you want to know what’s next after Blut, it’s the Mansion LP. If that’s next week or the week after, I don’t know.

You may (probably didn’t but that’s cool) have noticed there are less posts on the frontpage. Down from 15 to eight. And the Facebook like button only appears at the top of posts now. If you haven’t noticed, click refresh. Anyway, it’s just an attempt to make the site load faster. Hope it works. Everything else is still there if you just click through to Next Page.

Alright, I’m off. Hope you have a great and safe weekend. I hear my area of Massachusetts is getting hit Saturday and Sunday with another foot of snow to go with the ungodly amount we’ve already received. If that actually happens, I might just spend all of Monday listening to Sólstafir and write about that, so we’ll see.

Please check out the forum and radio stream.

The Obelisk Forum

The Obelisk Radio