#garry shider

[isisafrofairy]

Parliament-Funkadelic

[rodpower78]

Parliament-Funkadelic’s Glen Goins, George Clinton, and Garry Shider

[vinylspinning]

Funkadelic: Cosmic Slop (1973)

I’m still trying to make up my mind about this one ...

Cosmic Slop was Funkadelic’s fifth studio platter and it arrived half a century ago to mixed reviews -- many of them critical of the album’s oddball, genre-bending song selection, but then what else did they expect from the wild, wild world of George Clinton and his colorful troupe?

Could the album’s inconsistencies be blamed on the unusually pared-down line-up on hand: Clinton, keyboardist Bernie Worrell, guitarists Garry Shider and Ron Bykowski, bassist Cordell ‘Boogie’ Mosson, and drummer Tyrone Lampkin (plus the uncredited Mallia Franklin and Debbie Wright on backing vocals)?

Or might they be related to the previous year’s America Eats its Young, which had pushed its luck across four sides of vinyl, and thus left the band scrambling to complete half-baked leftovers (never as good as fully ‘baked,’ if you catch my drift) into a literal Cosmic Slop?

Well, I wouldn’t go to any of those lengths, because I still hear more music I like here than music I do not, specifically ...

Opener “Nappy Dugout” lays down an easy groove that successfully whets the appetite for funky singles (alas, none of them HIT singles) like the title track, “You Can’t Miss What You Can’t Measure” (an old, 1965 Parliaments tune, re-worked), and a Hendrix-redolent semi-rocker called “Trash a Go-Go.”

OK, so both “Let’s Make it Last” and “Can’t Stand the Strain” owe a little too much to Sly and the Family Stone, but I love the twisted country-and-western-backed jive talk of “No Compute,” and I even like the ‘power’ doo wop of “This Broken Heart” (check out that stinging lead guitar).

But the only track I really dislike is the creeping, unnerving “March to the Witch’s Castle,” whereupon a vocally distorted, molasses-slowed George narrates the horrifying plight endured by Vietnam fighters and returning veterans over the familiar strains of “When Johnny Comes Marching Home.”

Speaking of the lyrics, as per Funkadelic’s M.O., these rarely succumb to romantic banality and several offer a front-row seat to Clinton’s worst nightmares, be they political, racial, or personal, and I’ll use the title track as an example:

“Hear my mother call; I can hear my mother call; Late at night I hear her call; Oh lord, lord I hear her call.

Then the devil sang: ‘Would you like to dance with me? We’re doin’ the cosmic slop’ She was well known through the ghetto; Tricks would come and then they'd go; The neighbors would talk and call her Jezebel; But always with a smile, she was sure to try to hide; The fact from us that she was catching hell, hey!

She says, ‘Father, father it's for the kids; Any and everything I did; Please, please don't judge me too strong; Lord knows I meant no wrong -- Lord!’”

Yowza!

Notably, Cosmic Slop was the first Funkadelic album decorated with the hyper-detailed artwork and liner notes of Pedro Bell, who would go on to design all of the band’s colorful gatefold sleeves from this point forward.

Next up for Funkadelic was their sixth LP, the wonderfully named Standing on the Verge of Getting it On, while the long-dormant Parliament was finally revived via their sophomore classic Up for the Downstroke, on its way to becoming Clinton’s primary vehicle for the latter half of the ‘70s.

More Parliament/Funkadelic: Free Your Mind … And Your Ass Will Follow, Maggot Brain, Up for the Downstroke, Chocolate City, Mothership Connection, One Nation Under a Groove.

[spilladabalia]

Parliament - Up For The Down Stroke

[rainingmusic]

Parliament - Dr. Funkenstein

[youngtough]

[cricketwashburn]

[blackrockandrollmusic-blog]

BLACK UTOPIA: THE FUNKADELIC ART OF PEDRO BELL

For those who may not know, Funkadelic was a 1970s group led by conceptualist/ producer George Clinton that led the way in terms of musical, style and graphic innovation. Musically, if it wasn’t for Funkadelic there might not have been a Rick James, a Prince or a West Coast hip-hop sound, to name but three of the group’s sonic descendents. With the release of its 1970 debut album, Free Your Mind and Your Ass Will Follow, Funkadelic established its mission to reclaim the roots of rock from those who would deny that Black folks were the original rollers.

Clinton, along with a cast of cosmic characters that included keyboardist Bernie Worell and guitarist Garry Shider, merrily broke down the musical barriers that divided various genres. Although Funkadelic’s sound was often considered too white for Black radio stations and too Black for white ones, the group began to amass a considerable cult following that absorbed its groundbreaking albums. It promoted a ghetto-hippie-punk aesthetic that included digesting fistfuls of hallucinogens, toking devil dust and performing wild-styled live shows that blared on for hours.

Meanwhile, dwelling in Chicago, there was a young cat in his early 20s named Pedro Bell, who started sending Clinton illustrated fan letters that got everyone’s attention including the postmaster general. “He (Bell) doodled these intricate, wild worlds filled with hypersexual characters and strange slogans,” Clinton said in his memoir Brothas Be, Yo Like George, Ain’t That Funkin’ Kinda Hard on You? (2014) penned by Ben Greenman. It was through these postal exchanges that the young artist was recruited into the Funkadelic fold.

“Pedro’s correspondence gave me an idea for how we could move Funkadelic up a notch, how we could take what we were doing musically and onstage and capture some of that anarchic energy in album packages,” Clinton wrote. “I talked through ‘Cosmic Slop’ with Pedro on the telephone, and his mind translated it into a strange vision told in half-visual and half-verbal language. When he sent us his interpretation I was blown away. It was nightmarish and funny and beautiful, a perfect fit for the music.”

A decade before, both the Isley Brothers and James Brown had white models on their album jackets, but by 1973, the year Bell painted the cover of Funkadelic’s Cosmic Slop, America had entered the golden age of cover art. With illustrators like Corky McCoy teaming-up with Miles Davis the year before, for On the Corner, the time was right to introduce Bell’s visual mojo, which would soon cast a spell over us mere mortals.

“I think that coming out of the Civil Rights Movement and other socially charged issues around Black struggle in our country, we needed a space for Black joy,” says artist/professor John Jennings, illustrator behind the graphic novel adaption of Octavia E. Butler’s classic Kindred. “Not to say that Funkadelic wasn’t dealing with political issues. George Clinton and his crew had a lot subversive messages in their music.But, a great deal of what P-Funk was about was the power of Black celebration and Black joy in spite of being in an oppressive mode of existence. I think Pedro Bell’s work was a worthy visual index for that expression. He helped formulate the visual language of Funk and the semiotics of a Black future.” [Read More]