Cosmic Slop - fashion never dies

This is the probably the last post I make on Funkadelic (I promise!), but this has to be seen to be believed. Michael Hampton's hat is simply extraordinary.

Think I will get one for future job interviews. The hat would be ideal for Paddy's day also.

Didn't realise Gary Shider had such a great voice - maybe I was always distracted by his diaper/nappy, but he is really reminiscent of Curtis Mayfield on this.

Anyhoo, what is really staggering about this is how they seem to switch between 'Soul', 'Funk' and 'Hard Rock' at the drop of a hat (no pun intended)

As usual George Clinton shows up at the end, emerging with a young lady from a wigwam, wearing an outfit that only a female presenter of the late TV3 'Play TV' show would be seen dead in.  It's all good though...

Here is a promo clip for the same song (think a lot of LSD had been consumed by all):-

Michael Hampton wrecks 'Maggot Brain'

Think I posted another version of this tune previously.  This is Michael "Kid Funkadelic" Hampton burning the living sh*t out of the classic Eddie Hazel composition - P-Funk's gigantic instrumental masterpiece 'Maggot Brain'. 

Hampton had joined Funkadelic as a teenage prodigy in the late 70s, to accompany, then often replace Eddie Hazel, who was in and out of the group due to serious drug problems.

This is from a couple of years back.  There are loads more examples of this song on uTube - one where Hampton breaks 2 strings on his guitar but just improvises and amends his solo to workaround it.

The rythym section is occassionally a bit off on this, but that's really cos the whole Funkadelic family were (and probably still are sometimes) notoriously stoned/loaded on occasions (in an almost self-effacing cartoonish way).  I think as well they are under-rehearsed and are not sure how to keep up or slow down with Hampton.

The drummer, Rico Lewis seems particularly (ahem!) happy towards the end, and the bass isn't really locked in at times. Can't tell for sure who the second guitarist is (there may even be a third in the background)?, Looks like DeWayne McKnight on 2nd lead.  Must have been a time when money was tight 'cos normally P-Funk appear with at least 15 of their loose coalition wandering around stage on this number, even if the particular members are not playing.

Anyhoo, get the impression that Hampton would have played this solo all night if Lewis hadn't done the enforced wrap-up on the drums at the end. Maybe it was coming up to curfew time...

Great stuff anyway!

P-Funk do Maggot Brain

Anyone who doesn't appreciate P-Funk can never be my friend!

This is rare and from way back in the 80's, Parliament -Funkadelic doing their classic instrumental 'Maggot Brain', one of the most insanely simple, yet brilliant pieces of music ever made.

The 'P-Funk' name was only ever really used for complicated legal reasons. Essentiallty, this is Funkadelic, the more musical side of George Clinton's operations; Parliament was a doo-wop vocal group from way back in the 60s.

I don't know to this day how George gets away with it - he doesn't sing much as his voice is shot by D & A abuse, but he still leads the band, and they leave him regularly ( as he is known to be quite parsimonious when it comes to paying wages on time).

The tune's main composer, the very late Eddie Hazel and Michael Hampton do the honours on the guitars (Eddie starts it on the Les Paul and Hampton rips it up later on in a more eighties Eddie van Halen style).

Legend has it that, at the time this tune was originally being finished in the studio in the early 70s, Eddie Hazel was advised kindly by George Clinton to 'play it like you just heard your mother died' and then towards the end 'like you just heard your mother is actually alive'. So he did, and plays it like that here.

On this night, it's surprising that they can play at all as the smoke/dry ice machine seems to be broken, or more likely turned up to eleven and left unattended (this would make sense given the habits of the P-Funk entourage and family).

A third scenario is that the rest of the huge band is smoking stuff backstage.
It was rumoured that P-Funk members more or less kept the agrarian economies of both Columbia and Afghanistan going for 20 years, in terms of supporting the native crops of those countries!

Who knows? It's all in the past...

Anyhoo, George Clinton wanders onstage later in the song, to conduct and finish things, looking very fetching in a Blondie-type wig and a lovely white fur outfit.

When I saw them live a couple of months back, I recall that it took 4 guitarists playing together to even get close to replicating this tune. It reminds me a little of Neil Young's 'Cortez the Killer' (if only for the chord progressions) and especially 'Little Wing' by Jimi Hendrix, but I think it was Hendrix who was the obvious big influence on Hazel.

There have also been comparisons with Pink Floyd's 'Comfortably Numb' or, more bizzarrely, Frankie Goes to Hollowood's 'Power of Love', but both of these were produced years after the original version of 'Maggot Brain'.

I'm guessing also that this tune, and Hazel's other early work, must have been a major influence on a young Prince, leading to his guitar style on stuff like Purple Rain.

Eddie Hazel got this outfit, including the hat and briefs,  from a 1973 Xmas sale in 'Unique in the ILAC Centre'. It cost 3.99 in punts, which was a lot of money in those days. However, it helped Eddie place third in the 1974 World's 'Pimp of the Year' competition.

In 1997, a few years after his death, Eddie Hazel was posthumously inducted into the 'Rock and Roll Hall of Fame' along with George Clinton and the other core P-funk members who had come and went and returned over the years: Bootsy Collins, Bernie Worell, Billy "Bass" Nelson, Tiki Fulwood, Gary Shider, Michael Hampton and another 10 or so dead and alive P-Funk folks from past and present.

P-Funk was always so uniquely diverse though that they could probably have had at least 50 inductees.

Maggot Brain

Funkin' Excellent !

One Nation, under a Groove - Get your funk on, Funkateers...

Wahoo! The Mothership landed in town... Went to see the legendary George (no relation to Bill) Clinton and the current P-Funk incarnation at Tripod last night. Great gig, and perhaps the best collection of musicians I've ever seen live.

The show was as brilliantly eccentric and crazy as expected, with band members regularly inter-changing, taking impromptu individual breaks and wandering around the stage and wings at random. Probably due to the fact that the 20+ band couldn't all safely fit on the small stage at any one time...

Highlight for me was a scintillating version of 'Maggot Brain', which seemed to go on for a good 20 minutes.

One of the two drummers (Rico Lewis, I think?), whenever it wasn't his turn on the kit, spent a lot of the show lighting up the spliffs thrown onto the stage, sometimes climbing the ladder up to the adjacent sound desk to consume them. Hope the fire inspectors weren't in that night...

At one point an audience member rushed the stage (pursued, pretty quickly, by a very large bouncer) and went to try to shake George's hand, then proceeded to rip the multi-colored wig from George's head and exited stage left, captured in the bouncer's headlock, but with the trophy still firmly in his grasp.

George stayed cool, finished the duet he was doing and made some remark along the lines of "Motherf*cker trying to strip me naked!".

From what I could see, most of the band looked initially surprised about this incident, then seemed amused. The spliffer drummer was at the side of the stage laughing his ass off, so, I have an inkling that it was a 'Bruno/Borat-style' arranged stunt that at least some of them were complicit in... If it wan't a joke, then I hope the gatecrasher got a right good hiding backstage!

Anyway, George was back later in the show with a baseball cap covering his barren pate.

Hope the wig survived! If not, I'm sure he has a couple of spares in his suitcase. Some photos below...

Possibly, slightly stoned Rico Lewis in the white vest and no, that's not Prince crouching to his right

P-Funk veteran Garry Schider (centre) in his trademark diaper/nappy/incontinence pad thing. George Clinton with cap on. B.B. King's stunt double with trumpet in hand.


(left to right) P-Funk nemesis - Sir Nose, George Clinton (with hair) and Poo-Poo Man all keeping the groove going.

Just as an addendum, here is a list of P-Funk alumni/contributors over the years. It reads like a phone book... Even then, think there are quite a few missing from the list...