(A RANDOM SAMPLING OF) A PARLIAFUNKADELICMENT THANG
Welcome to the second installment of Blastitude’s new series “(A Random Sampling Of)…,” and #2 is really all about the genius vision and musical production of bandleader George Clinton and his Parliafunkadelicment Thang a.k.a. Parliament-Funkadelic a.k.a. P-Funk. (Uncut funk! The bomb!) I still don’t think he gets enough credit as one of the great Black American visionaries (and therefore great American visionaries), and as a writer and bandleader I believe him to be on the same tier as Duke Ellington, James Brown, and Prince, with just as great and important of an artistic legacy, if not more so. Much like the subject of our last (Random Sampling of), the Butthole Surfers, just how good George Clinton is tends to get overlooked because of all the surface chaos and craziness. To wit, going into this article I still knew very little about George’s output after 1982, and for a true random sampling (via this random-shuffled all-available playlist made possible by meager subscription to artist-unfriendly tech giant) all of that music must be included too. So here goes…
“Everybody is Going to Make it this Time” by Funkadelic from America Eats Its Young (Westbound, 1972). Ah, America Eats its Young. Why not start with this odd one out from 1972, Funkadelic’s fourth album, with the classic/creepy dollar-bill gatefold cover? Even with that cover, for those of us who became Funkadelic freaks in the 1990s it was a bit of a slick-pop head-scratcher to find in the back catalog, an odd turning-point anomaly between the super-grungy hard-rock albums before it and the increasingly discoid (in a good nay GREAT way) albums after it. There were many good and memorable songs on Eats, even a few classics, but they were all so long, and so lugubriously slow in tempo, with so many verses and repeated gospel choruses, and the whole thing so well-produced (maybe too well). Just a whole different slow-burn thing, music for your mothers indeed, and I didn’t make much time for it when there were so many more obviously great Funkadelic albums requiring repeat plays first. Still, over the years, so many memorable hooks and passages and bits have emerged: “just because you win the fight don’t make you right,” “if you don’t like the effects/don’t produce the cause,” “everybody is going to make it this time,” Bernie Worrell’s insane funky clavinet on “A Joyful Process,” George’s absurdly lugubrious and aching man-feelings ballad “We Hurt Too,” the “loose booty/loose butt” chant, Bootsy’s first ever lead vocal appearance on “Philmore” opening with his wild “STICK IT!” vocal stabs, the quite unnerving sob-scape (and “Maggot Brain” sequel/”Good Thoughts Bad Thoughts” prequel?) that is the title track, and then there’s “I call my baby pussycat spelled P-U-S-S-Y” as the slowest and slinkiest femme-sung downtempo dance number possible (which you just know drove Prince R. Nelson crazy as a 14-year-old). Also one of my particular favorites, “Biological Speculation” and its unique chunk of George Clinton wisdom: “we're just a biological speculation/sittin' here, vibratin'/and we don't know what we're vibratin' about/and the animal instinct in me/makes me wanna defend me/it makes me want to live when it's time to die/y'all see my point?/I don't mean to come on strong, but I am concerned!” And finally, there’s those last three songs on side four, all with monster hooks: “balance is my thing” . . . “Miss Lucifer’s love/she’s the devil and I like it” . . . and “you got to wake up/you’re in the presence of your future,” respectively. It’s still my least-listened-to Funkadelic album of their first seven or eight, but I did recently find a well-loved heavily-beat original at Hyde Park Records for $20 and spinning this copy has really put it in perspective as a monumental (if still not always instantly gratifying) work of art from the Black power movement of the 1960s and 1970s. Thick strains of protest soul, string/orchestral brilliance, and that startling blend of gospel and secular that the aforementioned Prince would next embody whole. Prince may have been waiting in the wings, but George Clinton in the 1970s was truly the Black visionary bomb.
“Quickie” by George Clinton from You Shouldn’t-Nuf Bit Fish (Capitol, 1983). Almost everything released post-Computer Games (November, 1982) is completely unknown to me. Before beginning this random listening exercise, I think I’d maybe heard two songs total by any George-related project from the entire ensuing 42 years. At most. And I can’t name either of them. (Okay, I can name “Why Should I Dog U Out?” which came out on Paisley Park in 1989 and was played on MTV a little bit.) Well, let’s start over with “Quickie” from the 1983 follow-up album to Computer Games, the album with the weird title (that I finally figured out is a fisherman taunting his catch). This track is George doing what he always did with Funkadelic, really from day one, which is to riff wildly on the hard rock styles of the day, whether it was Vanilla Fudge in the early 1970s or Van Halen in the early 1980s. In 1983 it’s obviously going to be the latter, a Hollywood hard rock cheapo/disco kinda thing going on, closer than you’d think to contemporaneous Black Flag wink-nudge parody-metal like “Slip It In.” Is that Michael Hampton with the ongoing electric guitar shredding? Or is it Blackbyrd McKnight like in this slammin’ live version from 1984 where George’s hair is dyed orange? Hot licks for sure, but more Eddie “Rock Box” Martinez than Eddie Hazel or Eddie Van Halen. Which is OK because “Rock Box” does shred, very few have gotten or will get as deep as Mr. Hazel, and despite thousands of imitators there is definitely only one EVH.
“Free Your Mind and Your Ass Will Follow” by Funkadelic from Free Your Mind… and Your Ass Will Follow (Westbound, 1970). Hard to argue with something this legendary, not to mention one of George’s greatest funk aphorisms, but man what a ridiculous track. Like the man said, “We did the whole album in one day, mixed it and all, on three or four tabs of yellow sunshine. Both the first and second albums we did in one day, tripping out of our minds like a motherfucker. When I heard ’em six months later, I said damn, this is sloppy.” That last sentence probably explains why America Eats Its Young happened, because “Free Your Mind” is true sloppy acid rock indeed, and not necessarily in a good way. I mean Funkadelic is a killer band, even when sloppy, but this is probably the most absurd (and even terrible!) stereo-panning ever committed to tape. George again, from the same classic interview quoted above, as conducted by the late great Greg Tate and published in 1985 by Spin magazine: “I’ve always said I really didn’t know what the fuck I was doing. That was the first time I was really turned loose in the studio. So I found out like, wow, I can pan. Well, shit, lemme pan the foot over here [laughs].” Talk about psychedelic excess, and there’s also some creepy cult vibes with that glassy-eyed “kingdom of heaven” call-and-response vocal thing, and P.S., after reading that whole Tate interview, I had to put this fascinating George quote about New Jersey’s role in great black music somewhere to be fact-checked later: “I went to school with Wayne Shorter and we used to laugh when he played that crazy shit in school. I went to school with Larry Young, the organist, too. Matter of fact, he used to sing bass with Parliament before he got seriously off into the other thing. I used to cut his hair.” Shorter and Young did both go to the same high school, Newark Arts (as well as Tisha Campbell, Savion Glover, Michael B. Jordan, Melba Moore, Tyshawn Sorey, and Sarah Vaughan, to name a few from the “notable alumni” section on Wikipedia), and George was in New Jersey at the time, so maybe he went to Newark Arts too and Wikipedia doesn’t know it yet. Clinton (b. July 22, 1941) and Young (b. October 7, 1940) were born less than one year apart, but Wayne Shorter (b. August 25, 1933) is eight years older, which I’m pretty sure makes it impossible that they’d all three be in high school together. And waitaminnit, spiritual jazz and fusion legend Larry Young used to sing for Parliament?
“Monster Dance” by Ron Ford from George Clinton’s Family Series Volume 3: Plush Funk (P-Vine, 1993). With this track we enter into the wide wild world of George Clinton’s Family Series, five compilation CD releases from 1993 that seem to represent a rights management minefield that would probably even make Coxsone Dodd’s accountants say “Hold on, I’m getting confused.” But, for your average funkateer who doesn’t really care what mysterious international record label they’re supporting, and which contract-signees are getting how much of a cut, these comps are great overviews of tracks from all over George’s mostly pre-Computer Games career, like how on this one Plush Funk you start with a Funkadelic outtake from 1981, then a track from 1982 by someone named Ron Dunbar (an interesting thread to pull as, before ending up in the P-Funk mob, he started out as a staff writer/producer for Detroit-era Motown, and then won a Grammy for co-writing the 1970 Clarence Carter smash “Patches”), some group called Sterling Silver Starship followed by a song by Jessica Cleaves, both from 1980, then a Horny Horns track from 1979, and so on, including this monster jam called “The Monster Dance” from 1980 by a name I don’t know, Ron Ford. He sings and raps on here, including another classic P-Funk punchline: “How do you like your dance floor? Over easy? Well, I like mine well-done. HOOOOO!” Ron may have come up with that line himself; according to an obituary in the Asbury Park Press (he passed away at age 67 on December 28th, 2015), he was part of P-Funk going all the way back to the barber shop at Third & Plainfield, and when reached for comment George himself said, “When I was getting ready to have a concept for an album, I always liked to bounce it off of him because he had the funniest jokes. We would do puns and synonyms about different words, and his version of what we were talking about would come from a street-Harlem-Lennox [sic] Avenue analytic perspective. It would penetrate and it would always be funny.” And to hear even more from George, another cool thing about the Family Series is that each volume closes with a few minutes of him talking about the tracks and his fond memories thereof. As good as a podcast!
“Tales of Kidd Funkadelic (Opusdelite Years)” by Funkadelic from Tales of Kidd Funkadelic (Westbound, 1976) Breaking shuffle to get out my Tales of Kidd Funkadelic LP (1992 British pressing) for the first time in years. Really vibing to the 12-minute-long title track right now, even more than I used to. Always did love this album and thought it was underrated, which made no sense, just for the peak Pedro Bell artwork and wild synthoid heavy metal opener literally called “Butt-to-Butt Resuscitation” alone. Then there’s the “everything is fair when you’re living in the city” Tribe sample on “Let’s Take It To The People,” and then “Undisco Kidd” with its “bad! the girl is bad!” hook, and then that great side-closing challenge, “If you ain’t gonna get it on/take your dead ass home,” a song that includes the very-fun-to-sing line “There was once was a freak from L.A./who came to New York to play/they were busted by the pussy posse and the prosecutor popped them in the pen!” Side two has the heavy ballad “Never Gonna Tell It” with its classical arpeggios via Bernie and lyrical subject that is “a playgirl . . . an infra-ray girl,” and then the aforementioned title jam, which I know is Funkadelic filler, but boy does it simmer and boil nicely with Bernie Worrell’s synth madness and those vocal chants dancing demonically in and around it all. Which makes it even more fun to hear George’s album-closing “Studio Memories” track on the aforementioned Plush Funk, where he talks about recording this track with then-new background singer Jessica Cleaves, who previously sang with Earth, Wind & Fire: “I think the first session she probably did with us was back on the Tales of Kidd Funkadelic album. The ‘hoy hoy hoy hoy,’ ya know, ‘Opusdelite Years.’ We scared the hell out of her. She took the session, but we’s in there singing that “hoy hoy hoy hoy” and backwards stuff so she said, “this must be the devil!” She ran out of the session. She didn’t wanna finish the record with us!”
“Just For Play” by Brides of Funkenstein from George Clinton Family Series: Testing Positive 4 the Funk (P-Vine, 1993). Another from the Family Series, a track from 1980 produced by George Clinton and the aforementioned Ron Ford, yet another Clintonian (or is it Fordian?) title pun for a song that is indeed about sexual foreplay. An unreal elegant funk production, with a crazy funky bass-and-drums backing track onto which so much can be built: melodies, harmonies, vocal stacks; keyboard, horn, and electric guitar sweetening. The Brides of Funkenstein were Dawn Silva and Lynn Mabry, who jumped from Sly Stone’s group onto the P-Funk Earth Tour in 1977, then went into the studio with George et al and released their first album Funk or Walk in 1978. By 1979 and their second album Never Buy Texas From a Cowboy, Lynn Mabry had left and was replaced by two vocalists, Sheila Horne and Jeanette McGruder, whom I assume are on “Just For Play.” The song was probably intended for their recorded-but-never-released third album.
“Ride On” by Parliament from Chocolate City (Casablanca, 1975). There were two singles from Parliament’s 1975 album Chocolate City, the first being the all-time classic title track, one of the single greatest works of the entire Black American Renaissance (started in Harlem ca. 1918 and I would say is still going strong and even still peaking over 100 years later). “Chocolate City” made it to #24 on the Black charts and #94 on the Billboard Hot 100, not bad for a progressive-jazz standup-comedy black-power proto-slam-poetry performance piece. The second and only other single was this one here, “Ride On,” which made #64 on the Black chart. Just funky as hell, about 90% chorus, but still with a good three killer hooks. Just the sound of the group chorus vocal blend is a hook all by itself, but specifically the “RIDE ON/mama do the ride on” chorus sung over and over again, and then George’s quivery solo “ooh, doin’ the ride on” breakdowns, and then the way the group sings “shake your sacroiliac” on the occasional verses, because a wordplay master like Clinton knows that even just including the word “sacroiliac” is a hook all by itself.
“Mother May I?” by Brides of Funkenstein from Never Buy Texas From a Cowboy (Atlantic, 1979). From the Brides’ second album, and first as a vocal trio, more of that suave and elevated funk. No huge hooks — even George didn’t come up with a great one every single time — but the band lays down such a sophisticated and funky backing track the singers don’t even have to have hooks for the song to slap. You could (and I did) say the same about “Just For Play” a couple tracks ago. Impossible to tell who’s really playing the instruments. I like to think the guitar solos are by Eddie Hazel. They’re very dreamy.
“New Spaceship (feat. Charlie Wilson)” by George Clinton & the P-Funk All-Stars from T.A.P.O.A.F.O.M. (Sony 550, 1996). The conventional wisdom when deep-diving into the long-running careers of any rock elder statesperson has always been to hate on the ‘80s, or at best file it away for later. (I’ve been known to refer to ‘80s Miles records like Decoy and You’re Under Arrest as “the last frontier” — doesn’t mean I’ve really gone there yet.) There is a lot of truth to this, as the artistic sparks that had started hot a decade or more earlier were understandably waning in the 1980s, at the same time production techniques were changing in questionable ways that indeed have not aged well, certainly not as well as the ‘60s and ‘70s vintage. In the case of George Clinton, P-Funk started the ‘80s with a bang thanks to “Atomic Dog,” but to this day that has really been their last hit. As I’ve said, I barely know any P-Funk songs from after 1982, but now that I’m hearing it all mixed together, whether it’s a classic like “Flashlight” or a lesser-known track from 20 years after that like this one “New Spaceship,” it all just sounds like one decades-long jam. Yes, the production technology and texture might change, but George always had the band do the same thing on the other side of the glass: vamp and groove all night long, and get it all caught on tape. Then as the tapes were edited down into the song structures, George would just vocally riff all over the grooves like any good emcee or deejay or hype man or poet/prophet/trickster/seer hanging around the village making everybody laugh and think and, oh yes, heal. Add a small group of other poets/prophets/tricksters/seers to riff and sing along with him, supplying choruses and harmonies and relief and variance, and next thing you know you’ve got a handful of tracks that are getting somewhere and maybe a couple sound like they could even be hits. And while this is going on with various core musicians, special guests and funky friends are stopping by here and there to join the party, like Charlie Wilson from the Gap Band did in 1996 to help make this track, and since it ain’t nothin’ but a party they might not have noticed how liberally they were borrowing from the melody of “Fantasy” by Earth, Wind & Fire. My first couple listens I wasn’t even sure which vocalist Wilson was among the usual phunky P-Funk genius-vocalist phalanx (remember, vocalists jam too), but now I can totally hear his deep funk growl going off throughout, and either way the groove is as great as it would’ve been in 1976, languid ballad style, with the bass guitar mu-troned the hell out (so you know it must be Bootsy). The credits list the usual multiple people for each instrument, nothing song-specific, and so many of the names were indeed in the band in 1976, because when you’re in Uncle Jam’s Army, the 1970s jam is the 1990s jam and is probably still going on right now.
“Jamaica” by Sweat Band from Sweat Band (Uncle Jam/CBS, 1980). Had to get to the Sweat Band LP sooner or later, right? I’ve got a story: back in the very early 1990s my sister was spending a summer in Minneapolis and I visited her for a few days. She drove me around to record stores, including Prince’s little New Power Generation boutique he had in Uptown at the time, and of course Cheapo Records, which always had a lot of classic used records for indeed low prices, but the Yellow Pages also took us to a warehouse pretty far east on some industrial highway (in fact it must’ve been in St. Paul) that was selling tons of mostly beat used records and probably had hundreds of killer jazz/funk/soul/hip-hop scores that I was simply too young and green to comprehend. I left without buying anything, but did ask the guys behind the counter what the wild record they’d been blasting the whole time was, and it was the Sweat Band. They gruffly showed me the cover but didn’t offer any further information, and I was a little shy about asking. Only later did I find out that this was for all intents and purposes a Bootsy’s Rubber Band album, except Bootsy had lost the rights to the name “Rubber Band” in 1980. That said, it doesn’t sound like a Bootsy’s Rubber Band album, a reinvention indeed, character-free, no front-person, and therefore fewer obvious hooks, which allows the grooves to be more open-ended, more African, more polyrhythmic, less syncopated. Perhaps even approaching some sort of Byrne-free Remain in Light territory, to compare it to another album released that same year.
“Lunchmeataphobia (Think! It Ain’t Illegal Yet!)” by Funkadelic from One Nation Under A Groove (Warner Bros., 1978). Jumping back to vinyl for this one, as it’s not on Stealify, via the 7” EP that came with the One Nation Under A Groove LP (pic below). Very heavy grooving, with a Sabbathian intro that shifts around the 1-minute mark into a wild and winding vortex of a Bernie Worrell keyboard bass line which is then joined by unison electric guitar while another guitar wails solos, and now it’s not just Bernie but the entire track spinning down Heldon-worthy vortices. I don’t know if the song is actually about lunchmeat, and being scared of it, or scared of it being a toxic over-processed school-to-prison-pipeline cafeteria staple, and that maybe instead of eating it, you should “think!” because “it ain’t illegal yet!,” which are really the only lyrics the song has anyway.
“P.E. Squad/Doo Doo Chasers” by Funkadelic from One Nation Under a Groove (Warner Bros., 1978). Just letting this “Special EP” — apparently we’re on “side 4” of One Nation Under a Groove — roll to its conclusion with an abbreviated instrumental version of the 11-minute track on side two “Promentalshitbackwashpsychosis Enema (The Doo Doo Chasers).” I can’t stress enough what a brain alteration even a song title like “Doo Doo Chasers” is when you’re in your formative years, and if you happen to learn that the “P.E.” in “P.E. Squad” doesn’t stand for “physical education” but for “promentalshitbackwashspsychosis enema” in a song that touches on concepts like “ego munchies” and “the prune juice of the mind,” well, the brain alteration continues apace. Deprogram, reprogram.
“Get Dressed” by George Clinton from Computer Games (Capitol, 1982). The opening song on Computer Games is one of the great opening-track band manifestos I can think of, about being young and hungry and blowing the opening act off the stage every time. The greatest since Grand Funk’s “We’re an American Band,” anyway, which George was probably trying to outwrite, and indeed just might’ve. “We’re the opening act/We can’t come back!/You gets no more/We gets no encore!,” demonstrating how George’s hooks could extend past a single phrase and into four-line statements with playful internal rhyming and sometimes fairly complex character-acting by the vocalists.
“Let’s Play House” by Parliament from Trombipulation (Casablanca, 1980). I’ve never actually listened to a single note of the final Parliament LP Trombipulation until this very moment. You know how it is when you intentionally ignore that one album in the discography, like the Floyd fan who refuses to listen to The Final Cut or the Clash fan who refuses to listen to Cut the Crap? Maybe even the Television fan who refuses to listen to the self-titled LP from 1992? Well, that’s what I was like with Trombipulation, which means that not until now did I know that the “do me baby” and “gimme the music” samples from Digital Underground’s “Humpty Dance” were just sitting there on “Let’s Play House” the whole damn time. (Ha, and then this song shuffles right into “Get Off Your Ass and Jam” by Funkadelic from Let’s Take it to the Stage, which starts with a classic Bomb Squad sample . . . but I’ve got to stop this essay somewhere!)
ADDENDA:
“Parliament-Funkadelic - Full Concert - 11/06/78 - Capitol Theatre (OFFICIAL).” Please, know that you were alive at a time on this planet when entire three-hour Parliament-Funkadelic concerts from the band’s 1970s heyday could be viewable in full 50 years later on mobile hand-held computers. And though I do say heyday, this being the year of one of their most successful albums in One Nation Under a Groove, I do think this is a band operating through some degree of exhaustion. Still an epic and prime example of a true pinnacle of American music. I love this from the comments section: “George showed up 40 minutes late into the show. Nobody noticed. That's how you know a GOOD band.” Not only does this comment, and an accompanying rewatch of George’s resplendent Jack Smith-worthy entrance (indeed right at the 40-minute time-stamp), remind me of those immortal aforementioned lines from “Get Dressed” (“a good show starts in the dressing room and works its way to the stage”), it makes me realize that the reason “nobody noticed” is Garry Shider, and that George had the luxury of having his own touring understudy on stage every night. Shider had a strong enough identifying brand/persona/costume — the guy wearing diapers — that he could be perceived as the bandleader, or even just another one of George’s costume changes. I’m sure as the audience first started getting to know the band, they might’ve even wondered if Garry Shider was George Clinton, and vice versa. Speaking of which, I still don’t the names of half of these people. Like, is that Fred Wesley on trumpet, with a beard, the one time you finally see a well-lit shot of him at 58:34? I don’t know, and I can hardly name any of the background singers either. Ray Davis, yes, but I can’t put a face to a name for any of the ladies. This is the year the first Brides of Funkenstein LP came out, but I don’t recognize Dawn Silva or Lynn Mabry here, especially with everyone dressed down in military uniforms. I think it’s Eddie Hazel in the doorag playing the solos on “Cosmic Slop” and Michael Hampton in the sombrero playing the solos on “Red Hot Mama” but I’m not even confident of that. And I’m just now zoning in on “Into You,” and figuring out the guy in the beret who takes over the lead vocal after Junie Morrison and Ray Davis have taken their turns is none other than the aforementioned Ron “the Prophet” Ford! He was more prominent onstage than I thought. So much ego-free anonymity (or is it collective identity?) going on with these P-Funk performances, and wait, now I’m into the 30-minute rendition of “Flashlight” and I hear George spotlighting “Michael” on the rhythm guitar, and they keep showing the guy who I thought was Eddie Hazel, so that must be Hampton, which means it was Eddie in the sombrero or someone else entirely. Side note that Lynn Mabry, who may or may not also be in this video, as well as Bernie Worrell, who definitely is, both went on to be in the Talking Heads band that filmed Stop Making Sense in 1983, in which they played a song called “Burning Down the House,” the same phrase James Wesley Jackson, Jr. says here in his intro, 7 years earlier. And speaking of that James Wesley Jackson, Jr. intro, here it is in full (he introduces most of the band but it barely helps): “The first moon joint! God said ‘let there be grass,’ and he was Almighty High! Never mix LSD with chitlins, or you’ll get high on the hog. Happiness is Columbo without Peter Falk. I wanna put that right there for a moment. I pledge groovallegiance to the United Funk of Funkadelica, for which it stands, one nation under a groove. A divine rhythm for the liberation of mindsight. You will be hearing ‘burning down the house.’ That means burn down the ghettos of the mind. Think! It’s not illegal yet. On the drums we have Tyrone Lampkins [sic], Leo. In the blackground you hear Michael Hampton, lead guitarist, Scorpio. Greg [Thomas] will be on trumpet. Bennie [Cowan] will be on trumpet. Greg [Boyer] will be on saxo . . . trombone. Greg plays the trombone. See, I made an error. Bernie Worrell, keyboard, Ram/Taurus. Junie [Morrison] from the Ohio Players on the keyboard. Garry Shider lead guitarist, Leo. Skeet [Davis] on bass, Virgo. Larry Fratangelo, percussionist, Virgo. Boogie [Mosson]! Bad Boogie on bass, Libra. Funk get ready, funk get ready to go. James Wesley Jackson’s my name. Space.”
There’s also “PFUNK 1978.03.21 Houston, TX - Flashlight Tour.” This one’s a mere 1 hour and 48 minutes, but it’ll do. Or just say funk it and go to this page where someone made “the chronological full p-funk show on video list,” featuring these two shows I’ve posted and many, many others, going all the way up to 2012.
“The Atomic Dog,” George Clinton interviewed by Greg Tate and Wisdom in SPIN magazine, October 1985 issue (Keith Richards cover). I’m still stuck on this Greg Tate interview and it needs its own mention. Gotta be the definitive interview with George, if such a thing could exist. (Spoiler: it can’t. See also: Lee Perry.) Here’s the version currently at Spin.com, and the original on Google Books. There’s some wild stuff about the 1979 Mothership tour with Sly Stone (“we was like, give us a gram a night, you know, that was the joke”), and then just a few paragraphs later George drops this bomb about Michael Jackson: “Commercials made people dislike Michael Jackson. Like, they had a contest where they asked are you getting sick of Michael Jackson, but what they really meant was are you getting sick of his face. Michael needs to change his face again. Because they’ve shown so many pictures of him now that it’ll be beneficial for him to come up with a whole ‘other anti-Michael Jackson look. And he has got to do it for himself. Because if he waits for them to do it, it’s gonna be negative.”
For a much more recent interview that is also really good, check this Small Talk with George Clinton event hosted by South Carolina’s Richland Library. It’s from June 8th, 2022 and George drops all kinds of information and inspiration. There’s actually lots of long interviews with George all over YouTube. And, there’s always the crucial 1-hour One Nation Under a Groove doc from 2005.
And finally, for some closing remarks, how about these P-Funk poems by Thomas Sayers Ellis? They’re barely hanging on at that URL, a crumbling remnant of the website for the literary journal Grand Street, which ceased publication in 2004.