PCPL has got the "P"!

P. Funk, that is.

If you ever wondered just what P. Funk is all about, you can find out here at the library. Not only do we own a copy of Parliament's signiture album, Mothership Connection, but we also have two CD collections of P. Funk rarities to boot. If that ain't enough, Freegal has what is far and away my own personal favorite album of P. Funk available as well, Urban Dancefloor Guerillas by the P. Funk All-Stars. So get out your library card, and get ready to "blow the cobwebs out yo' mind."



The leadoff track from 1975's Mothership Connection will forever be my favorite funk song. Opening with a gentle, jazz-inflected groove and a sprinkling of the Horny Horns (led by Maceo Parker and Fred Wesley, formerly of James Brown's backing band), "P Funk (Wants To Get Funked Up)," establishes the groundwork for much of the Parliament mythology, as well as the virtuosity of the band's musicians. Bernie Worrel (who later toured extensively with Talking Heads) and Bootsy Collins each figure prominently on the song, with Bootsy's bass anchoring the groove while Bernie noodles around on the keyboard like a third encounter of the funky kind. After a few relaxed measures with George Clinton reassuring his listeners that he'll return control of your radio once you are groovin', the song explodes like a (P. Funk) bomb into its very catchy chorus.

The album's cover art is another essential element here. Back in the 1970s when Parliament and Funkadelic (the black rock version of the funk band) performed live, doing shows which regularly went on for three to four hours or more, the band's leader, George Clinton would arrive on stage in a UFO. The saucer would emerge from a cloud of dry ice-generated smoke, the craft's door slowly swing open, and Clinton, dressed in knee-high silver boots with big platform heels, gold shorts, and a silver jacket with a showercap/space helmet, would stride down a ladder sporting the biggest pair of shades this side of Mars. Think Disco Space Man bringing the funk to you.

As Clinton put it in an interview with Robert Hicks: "... we put black people in situations nobody ever thought they would be in, like the White House. I figured another place you wouldn't think black people would be was in outer space. I was a big fan of Star Trek, so we did a thing with a pimp sitting in a spaceship shaped like a Cadillac, and we did all these James Brown-type grooves, but with street talk and ghetto slang." There is no better discription of the album, its jacket cover and its message.

Mothership did remarkably well on the charts at the time, reaching number 13 on the Billboard Top 200 albums chart and eventually going platinum. The record also yielded a major hit single in "Tear The Roof Off The Sucker," which made it into the pop top 20 in 1976. All of which means a lot of people hopped onboard the Mothership when it landed back in the mid 1970s, and the P. Funk Mob is still here, waiting to blow yo' mind.

PCPL has several copies each of two P. Funk compilations on CD, Six Degrees of P. Funk and "P" Is The Funk. The former includes a couple of now hard-to-find treasures like "Freak To Freak" by The Sweat Band (a funky disco number by one of the many spin-off bands using members of Parliament) as well as Bootsy Collin's "solo" hit, "Party On Plastic," which in 4 minutes will change your credit rating. The album also features "Pumpin' It Up" by the P. Funk All-Stars, which is a hard-hitting funk tune complete with a wild guitar solo by Eddie Hazel, best known for his work on the epic Funkadelic guitar jam, "Maggot Brain." The second compilation is a more wide-ranging collection of songs released by Parliament and P. Funk spin-off bands, and includes a few choice treasures. Along with a few tracks by the Brides of Funkenstein (Sly Stone's back-up singers who ditched Sly mid-tour in 1976 when he went off the deep end of drug abuse), the CD includes "Bubble Gum Gangster" (a snappy little funk number full of hooks) and "Does Disc Go With D.A.T.?," a hilarious consideration of piracy in the wake of the introduction of digital audio tape in the late 1980s.

Saving the best for last, Urban Dancefloor Guerillas remains for me one of the great moments in funk music. Along with the aforementioned "Pumpin' It Up" and its simply perfect bass and rhythm guitar hook, this album of danceable funk is full of wonders. There's "Copy Cat," a rejoinder to Clinton's own massive '80s hit "Atomic Dog" (and the many imitations/samples it spawned), which is built on a classic funk/rock groove spiced by the Horny Horns. Both Eddie Hazel and Michael Hampton play some truly frenzied funk guitar on the track while George offers some of his most amusing rhymes:

"... catnip, not to be confused with catnap/
catsup--not to be confused with the latest sauce."

Also on the record, "Catch A Keeper" is a dark and funky keyboard-driven groove featuring Sly Stone in one of his last lucid moments, while "Generator Pop" is a great failed single mixing funk and pop music. There are several other fine moments on this record, ranging from quirky to sweet, and it's all worth a listen ... and perhaps a free, legal download.

A trip to Freegal with a search for "P. Funk All-Stars" in the search box should bring up Urban Dancefloor Guerillas (use the exact search term, i.e., with caps, a period and a dash).  For the CDs, you can reserve your funk by clicking on the titles of each album:

                                                    Mothership Connection



6 Degrees Of P-Funk

"P" Is The Funk