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Rating: "Don't Call Me Nigger, Whitey!"
There are many paradigmatic live performances in the pantheon of rock, those that perfectly capture, sometimes even better than studio albums, the essence of a band, crystallizing the memory for future generations. There are many examples, roughly divisible between official recordings with all the quality hallmarks, and bootleg recordings of seminal groups captured in the brief span of their careers. Each of them is often a perfect testimony of a crucial moment, an expression of creativity that often will not reach those levels again.
Then there is a third category, the "lost" live performances. Fabled recordings that are whispered among fans, often remaining unreachable mirages if not outright urban legends. I can imagine the amazed face of the clerk at the Sugar Shack store in Boston, when in 1995, he found himself holding this tape that no one knew anything about. Yes, because there were scant if any audio documents of the first incarnation of the Funkadelic of George Clinton. For those (hopefully few) who don't know whom I'm talking about, meaning Clinton and the "Parliafunkadelicment thang", here’s a concise summary.
George Clinton formed the first nucleus of the Parliaments as a doo-wop group in 1955, only breaking onto the scene 12 years later, when in the height of the Summer Of Love the single "(I Wanna) Testify" reached the Top 5 of the R&B chart; at the same time, he moved the whole band to Detroit. It was in Detroit, during a forced hiatus of the Parliaments due to contractual disputes, that they transformed into Funkadelic. So, the same musicians or almost, even though it was in the studio that the musical difference between the two projects manifested. The Parliaments spoke the soul and R&B idiom in the style of their hometown Motown, while the Funkadelic were their avant-garde, making soul flirt with psychedelia, and the roughness of late '60s Detroit. And they had on their side possibly the best black guitarist after Hendrix, Eddie Hazel. A factor not to be underestimated, and a key to understanding both the music and the attire of our protagonists, was that Clinton had recently been introduced to LSD, and he wasted no time in proselytizing the whole band. To understand the effects on the band, without beating around the bush, just watch this "sober" television appearance.
Returning to our subject, wanting to summarize this overwhelming live performance from 1972 in an image, we could define it as a black monolith in the shape of a large African American penis, as it could have been immortalized by a Cynthia "Plaster Caster" of Pluto.
Nearly 80 minutes of ecstatic worship of the negroid phallus, thesacred ritual through which we pale asses should cleanse ourselves of our sins against black people, starting from slavery up through Mississippi and the theft of the blues; the only way (not painful) to fulfill this, is precisely to worship the repository of this blackness, on this occasion represented by Hazel's six-string.
From the intro of "Alice In My Fantasies", to the instrumental version of "Free Your Mind And Your Ass Will Follow" placed as the final seal, not a second is wasted on unnecessary lengthiness (because, although essentially a 15-minute solo, "Maggot Brain" is one of the best "on acid" tracks of all time), not a drop of sweat from the rhythm section is wasted in conveying a firm funkitudeness, that emulates the godfather James Brown as much as the dirtiest blues ("I Call My Baby Pussycat"), up to a strange form of secular gospel from a freak community ("You Got A Thing…"), not for a moment does Clinton lose control of the situation, when he screams desperately and blackly in "All Your Goodies Are Gone", or when he hints at the famous motto "More power to the pussy, more pussy to the power".
Above all, Hazel and his sexy and funk charge, true post-mortem incarnation of Hendrix and his possible evolution, had Hendrix, instead of meeting Miles Davis, ran into Dr. Funkestein.
Beware then, pale asses; acquire the monolith by fair means or foul, or sooner or later it will find you….
Tracklist Lyrics and Videos
01 Alice in My Fantasies (06:36)
Hey baby, be my dog!
Owwww!
Alice in my fantasies, uh
Promised to do all kind of freaky things to me
Said she would, uh, suck my soul, if I'd lick her emotion
The freak said I would even owe her my devotion
She said she'd, uh, cover me with, uh, strawberries
And pretend that I'm a shortcake
I said, "Uh, not by the hair of my chinny chin chin"
OWWW!!!
Yeah!!!
Hey!!!
Alice in my fantasies
Promised to do all kind of things to me
Said she would, uhh, suck my soul if I'd lick her emotion
And that I would even owe her my devotion
I said "Uh, lady, be my dog and I'll be your tree
And you can pee on me."
Mama said never eat yellow snow
So away we go!
Huh, huh, huhh, huhh, huhh, huuuuuuhhh, huuuuhhhh!!!! Heyyy!!!
Be my dog!
Hey!
Baby
They call it mental masturbation
?
02 Maggot Brain (14:01)
{spoken}
Mother Earth is pregnant for the third time
For y'all have knocked her up.
I have tasted the maggots 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.
Come on Maggot Brain
Go on Maggot Brain
05 Good Old Music (04:30)
(Shake your head)
Everybody's gettin' funky
In the days when the funk was gone
I recall not long ago
When the funk it was goin' strong
Now they were rocking upside the wall (to funky music)
Rockin' out in the hall (to funky music)
Now they were jumpin' up and having a ball (to funky music)
Music's got them beggin' for more
Give me more, give me more
Come on
Give me more
Give me more of that
Good old funky music, yeah
Good old funky music, yeah
Yes, indeed they're movin'
Yes, they are doin' it to and fro
Yes, indeed they're groovin'
To that music that will let them go
You know they started somewhere round about midnight (to funky music)
And they rocked it all night until daylight (to funky music)
Music that was groovin' my mother (to funky music)
It's groovy for my sister and brother
Give me more, give me more (come on, let's sing it together)
Give me more
Give me more of that
Good old funky music, yeah
Good old funky music, yeah
Music that was groovin' my mother (funky music)
It's groovy for my sister and brother
Good old funky music, yeah
Good old funky music, yeah
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