• Funk is its own reward.
  • That means something; I’m sure of it.
  • Most of the shit George Clinton said was like that.
  • Ooh, lights.
  • And a big eyeball.
  • Is that a reference to The Great Gatsby?
  • Almost certainly not.
  • Cosmic Slop opener.
  • There’s been thousands of songs written about hookers, but none of them are as compassionate as this one.
  • Aerosmith wrote songs about hookers, but they were not empathizing with the women’s plight.
  • This is because Aerosmith was made up of semi-literate dirtballs.
  • Garry Shider with the Travis Bean!
  • This was 1976, so he and Garcia were playing the same guitar at the same time.
  • Garcia did not, to the best of my research, ever wear a diaper made from a Holiday Inn bedsheet.
  • Not on stage, at least.
  • Who knows what he got up to in the Hostility Suite.
  • Sounds more like a Billy thing, though.
  • Michael Hampton on Stratocaster and giant hat.
  • Seriously, look at this fucking hat.
  • It’s too early to dive into racial theories, but I will: a white man could not wear that hat.
  • Jerome “Bigfoot” Brailey on the drums.
  • This is 10/31/76 from the Summit in Houston, TX.
  • The Dead played the same venue three times: ’78, ’81, and ’88.
  • During those three performances, there were at most seven musicians onstage.
  • Whereas P-Funk has, like, 50 people up there.
  • At least seven vocalists, three guitarists, bass, drums, two keyboardists, horn sections, and assorted randos acting the fool.
  • Plus I think there’s a Brecker brother or two.
  • When it comes to P-Funk history, precision is often out of the question.
  • Sometimes Eddie Hazel would show up in the middle of tours, or drummers would get arrested and replaced.
  • Y’know Deadbase?
  • There is not a P-Funkbase.
  • The amount of scholarly attention paid to the Dead–or The Beatles or Queen or even fucking Zeppelin–was not and is not paid to P-Funk.
  • THERE’S A FUCKING NETFLIX MINISERIES ABOUT MÖTLEY FUCKING CRÜE.
  • And P-Funk is ignored, lost to the past.
  • Gosh, I wonder why.
  • Standing on the Verge, baby!
  • Heavier than anything most so-called rock bands ever did.
  • Fuzzy Haskins on the vocals, even though Garry Shider did them on the record.
  • That is not easy information to find out.
  • P-Funk records would just have a whole list of players and singers in the credits without detailing which songs they were on.
  • Of course, it might have been that no one wrote anything down.
  • Everyone was real high all the time.
  • Acid, then coke.
  • Which you might recognize as the Grateful Dead chemical progression.
  • She scream.
  • She shout.
  • She turn that sucker out.
  • Sucker.
  • Not fucker.
  • George Clinton’s lyrics and chants were almost always more suggestive than outright obscene.
  • He started singing “I call my baby pussy” as I was writing that last sentence.
  • Stop making me a liar, George Clinton.
  • He looks like this, by the way:
  • And if it’s a wig, it’s a good one; it bounces and wiggles and wafts like real hair.
  • Children of Production!
  • The Dead never mentioned abortion in any of their songs.
  • The Stones might have, but only obliquely.
  • Like, in a poetical kinda way.
  • P-Funk just comes right out with out: We are deeper than abortion, deeper than the notion that the world was flat when it was round.
  • Which means something; I’m sure of it.
  • >Mothership Connection.
  • (The “>” is another link in the chain that connects the Dead to P-Funk. Why? Because they were both dance bands.)
  • Glen fucking Goins on vocals.
  • He was the churchiest of all of the singers, plus he played rhythm guitar.
  • He looked like this:
  • Glen called the Mothership down every night with Swing Low, Sweet Chariot.
  • But he was really singing about Jesus.
  • All the best songs are about Jesus.
  • Glen Goins died less than two years after this show, of Hodgkin’s lymphoma; he was 24.
  • I think I see the Mothership coming…
  • I can feel the presence of the Mothership…
  • P-Funk only did one tour with the Mothership, which was technically obdurate, obscenely expensive, and difficult to transport.
  • Sound like a Wall you’re familiar with?
  • October of ’76 to December of ’77, that’s it.
  • It looked like this:
  • And maybe it’s for the best that there were no HD cameras at the time.
  • I got a feeling that sucker’s not supposed to be seen up close or in daylight.
  • The very first show of the Mothership tour was in New Orleans, and the gig started with the craft descending.
  • Which was a mistake.
  • You can’t open with a showstopper.
  • Bad pacing.
  • From then on, the Mothership arrived somewhere around the middle of the evening, dislodging the cool ghoul with the hip bone transplant, Doctor Funkenstein.
  • Who looks like this:
  • I do not know where Doctor Funkenstein did his residency.
  • I do know that he is super-loose with his prescription pad.
  • Coming Round The Mountain!
  • Love this shit.
  • This is the good shit.
  • The dope shit.
  • The bomb.
  • CRTM (yes, I’m using Dead-style initialisms; deal with it) is one of those P-Funk songs where the lead singer is “everyone.”
  • They had a bunch of those tunes.
  • So did the Dead, but P-Funk could actually sing.
  • Let’s face it: a lot of the Dead’s harmonies were accidental.
  • George Clinton may have been the worst singer in the group, and he couldn’t–that I know of–play an instrument; what the man could do was hire guitar players.
  • He was a genius when it came to staffing.
  • In a perfect and non-racist Rock world, Eddie Hazel, Michael Hampton, and Garry Shider would each be recognized as better than almost anyone else that picked up the guitar.
  • All three of those men would knock Clapton’s dick in the dirt.
  • Speaking of racism, why is the only visual historical record of this tour a shitty videotape?
  • All the other big bands got film.
  • Dead, Zep, Stones.
  • P-Funk played (and sold out) the same venues and sold the same amount of records (if not more).
  • The Band?
  • The fucking Band never sold out the Los Angeles Coliseum.
  • The Band got a three-fucking-hour tribute to their cracker-ass asses and their hillbilly bullshit directed by Martin dicklicking Scorsese, and P-Funk gets videotape with too much red in it.
  • Lena Dunham’s right: America’s racist.
  • Shit, I missed like three songs.
  • They are currently tearing the roof off the sucker.
  • …
  • No, I’m still mad about racism.
  • And The Band.
  • “Ooh, look at us. We’re wearing suits and hats, and playing fiddles. We’re old-timey.”
  • Goddamned hipsters.
  • Okay, they’re into Closing Jam.
  • P-Funk could Closing Jam for longer than the Dead could play Dark Star.
  • Every bootleg I’ve ever heard has a CJ that lasts at least 20 minutes.
  • (It should, of course, be noted that an actual Closing Jam would come after three hours of Funk, not the hour that preceded it in this expurgated video.)
  • Hey, it’s Bootsy!
  • The guy on the left is Bootsy.
  • I swear.
  • He’s on the cowbell because he was playing with the Rubber Band on this tour and leaving the P-Funk bass duties to Cordell “Boogie” Mosson.
  • Who looked like this:
  • And if you can be funky on a Rickenbacker, you can be funky on anything.
  • Because funk, Enthusiasts, is its own reward.