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Dit artikel hoort bij het verhaal Parliament’s funk meesterwerk Mothership Connection. |
Liner notes
In 2003 werd Parliament’s Mothership Connection opnieuw uitgebracht. De uitgave bevatte, naast extra muziek, liner notes in de vorm van een essay. Deze wordt hieronder integraal weergegeven.
Mothership Connection is the ultimate step forward from soul and R&B into funk. But not any ol’ brand X funk. We’re talkin’ P.FUNK… UNCUT FUNK… THE BOMB.
George Clinton and his Parliafunkadelicment Thang had been on a roll heading into the summer of 1976. After losing the Parliament name in the late sixties, on the heels of their 1967 hit, “(I Wanna) Testify,” Clinton had regained it and signed the band to Neil Bogarts’s Casablanca label in 1974. Meanwhile, he had basically the same musicians signed to Westbound under the name Funkadelic. When their contract was up, he signed them to Warner Brothers. The funk was firing on all cylinders.
Parliament led the way. George utilized the act to do more conceptual albums, beginning with Up For the Down Stroke, exploring the freaky world of S&M, and continuing with Chocolate City, an Afro-centric political view tied around black performers taking over the government. With Mothership Connection, Clinton found his masterstroke. This is not just a loose concept album with one or two songs tied in to fit George’s funky worldview. This is George’s out-of-this-world view, and it struck a nerve.
From the opening rap of “P.Funk” that kicks off the album, you know that George wants to take funk to a whole new place. Using elements cribbed from the Outer Limits television show and radio advertisements for home remedies, interspersed with hip street slang, Clinton creates a new sound and language. It not only grabbed his core audience, but spread it wider and further than he, or anyone else, imagined.
“Give Up the Funk (Tear The Roof Off The Sucker)” became a Pop hit, peaking at No.15 and helping the album go platinum that funky summer. The crossover crowd was digging on the P, but some people still couldn’t quite get it right. I’ll never forget a Los Angeles pop disc jockey introducing the song as “Here’s the new one from Parliament, ‘Tear the Sucker Off the Roof’!”
P.Funk’s crossover appeal couldn’t be denied. But among Clinton’s core urban audience, the band’s quasi-religious aspect became almost a ghetto self-help movement. P.Funk concerts took on a spiritual fervor, especially when singer-guitarist Glenn Coins went into the “Swing down sweet chariot” refrain during “Mothership Connection.”
While the fans were embracing the musical and philosophical elements of the Mothership, fellow musicians were also tuning in to Bernie Worrell’s revolutionary keyboard sounds, Bootsy’s bouncing bass patterns, and Fred Wesley’s spacey horn arrangements. At this moment in time, George and P.Funk was the sound to beat. And though everyone was trying to, nobody did, nobody has, and nobody will. Funk On!
Tom Vickers, former Minister of Information for Parliament Funkadelic
