One of the wildest and influential groups ever. Till this day there are artist that grab up their style. Shit even me! After albums and albums these Funkateers still smash shit and create some fly music. Influenced by James Brown and Sly Stone, they were birthed in the acid era hence the freaky gear and shit but that is what separated them from everybody else. You tell from Magot Brain to Gloryhallastoopid. If you don’t know ‘em… get to know them. Free your mind and your ass will follow. Peep the Bio, FANGGGGGGGGG!!!
Bio:
Since 1955, George Clinton (a.k.a. Dr. Funkenstein, a.k.a. the Maggot Overlord, a.k.a. Uncle Jam) has headed a loose aggregation of musicians known variously as “The Mothership Connection,” his “Parliafunkadelicment Thang,” or “P-Funk All-Stars.” Composed of members of two main groups, Parliament and Funkadelic, and various offshoot bands, the organization made some of black pop’s most adventurous – and often popular – music of the ’70s. Since then, Clinton’s zany presence, as well as the Parliament Funkadelic, was being felt in the music of a wide range of postdisco and postpunk artists, from Prince to Public Enemy, Dr. Dre, and the Red Hot Chili Peppers. Clinton’s music mixes funk polyrhythms, psychedelic guitar, jazzy horns, vocal-group harmonies, and often scatological imagery. His lengthy concerts are unpredictable, characterized by extended, improvised jams, and sometimes compared in scope to those of the Grateful Dead. One of his many quotable mottoes is: “Free your ass and your mind will follow.”
As a teenager in Plainfield, New Jersey, Clinton straightened hair working in a local barbershop, where he also founded a vocal group called the Parliaments. They struggled through the ’50s and most of the ’60s, by which time Clinton had moved to Detroit to work as a staff writer for Motown. In 1967 the Parliaments had a major hit with Clinton’s “(I Wanna) Testify” (#20 pop, #3 R&B), a straight love song. The Parliaments’ next charted single, “All Your Goodies Are Gone” (#21 R&B), suggested Clinton’s future direction. Hanging out with Detroit hippies and listening to local hard-rock bands like the MC5 and the Stooges influenced Clinton’s approach to music, and he began to contemplate making a radical change in the Parliaments’ sound.
At the same time in 1967, a legal battle over the Parliament name ensued, so Clinton and the group’s singers began recording with their backup band as Funkadelic for Westbound Records in 1968. After winning the lawsuit, Clinton would record Parliament (the “s” was dropped) and Funkadelic separately. Initially Parliament was more commercially oriented and Funkadelic more experimental and gritty, though as time went on these distinctions blurred.
Early Funkadelic albums built a cult audience. Parliament/Funkadelic concert appearances featured Clinton jumping out of a coffin, musicians running around in diapers, smoking marijuana, and simulating sex acts. On both Parliament and Funkadelic albums, Clinton wrote about the dark realities of funk – which he had elevated to a philosophy – utilizing negative imagery from the Process Church of Final Judgment and clear-eyed wit; he wrote for denizens of “Chocolate City” surrounded by “vanilla suburbs.”
Parliament’s 1974 hit on Casablanca, “Up for the Down Stroke” (#63 pop, #10 R&B), introduced Clinton’s concepts to a wider audience and helped Funkadelic get signed to Warner Bros. Over the years, the group attracted top R&B instrumentalists, including bassist Bootsy Collins (ex–James Brown), guitarists Eddie Hazel and Gary Shider, keyboardist Bernie Worrell, keyboardist Junie Morrison (ex–Ohio Players), and reedmen Fred Wesley and Maceo Parker (ex–James Brown). Parliament’s Mothership Connection and gold single “Tear the Roof Off the Sucker” (#15 pop, #5 R&B) made Clinton and company a major concert attraction. With a weird, lengthy stage show that included a spaceship descending onstage from a huge denim cap, the P-Funk crew rivaled Earth, Wind & Fire as black America’s favorite band. From 1976 to 1981, Clinton’s salesmanship and success landed recording contracts for many P-Funk offshoots: Bootsy’s (Collins) Rubber Band [see Bootsy Collins entry], Eddie Hazel, the Horny Horns, Parlet, Bernie Worrell, the Brides of Funkenstein, Phillippe Wynne, Junie Morrison, and Zapp [see entry].
Parliament’s “Flash Light” (#16 pop, #1 R&B) – in which Worrell introduced the synthesized bass lines later imitated by many funk and new-wave bands – and the platinum Funkentelechy vs. the Placebo Syndrome in 1977; “Aqua Boogie” (#1 R&B) in 1978; and Funkadelic’s funk anthem “One Nation Under a Groove – Part I” (#28 pop, #1 R&B) in 1978 were Clinton’s commercial peaks in the ’70s.
Beginning in 1980, internal strife and legal problems temporarily sapped Clinton’s P-Funk tribe of its energy and key performers. And while P-Funk’s sound got absorbed into mainstream funk and hip-hop, Clinton’s many projects became entangled. Drummer Jerome Brailey left P-Funk to start his own group, Mutiny, which pointedly devoted its first album to imprecations against the “Mamaship.” Other ex-sidemen actually recorded as Funkadelic, although their album (the poorly received Connections and Disconnections) carried a sticker to the effect that Clinton was not involved. After Warner Bros. refused to release The Electric Spanking of War Babies (with guest Sly Stone) as a double album, Clinton cut it to a single LP and began proceedings to end his Warners contract. He recorded two singles, “Hydraulic Pump – Part I” and “One of Those Summers,” with the P-Funk All-Stars on an independent label, Hump Records. Then he reemerged with a name that was not in litigation – his own – on a George Clinton solo album, Computer Games (1982), which included P-Funk’s core members and the hit single “Atomic Dog” (#1 R&B, 1983).
In 1983 Clinton began a six-year sabbatical from the pop limelight, during which time his music showed up (both in spirit and as samples) in rap and hip-hop (as well as on albums of Clinton’s collected works); “Atomic Dog” became one of the most-requested dance-floor songs. In 1985 he produced the Red Hot Chili Peppers’ second album, Freaky Styley. Clinton returned to music making in 1989 with The Cinderella Theory(featuring guests Chuck D and Flavor Flav) on Prince’s Paisley Park label and regrouped the P-Funk All-Stars for concerts. In 1993 he and P-Funk performed at President Clinton’s Youth Inaugural Ball. Later that year he released Hey Man…Smell My Finger (with an all-star lineup of guests including rappers Ice Cube and Yo-Yo and members of the Chili Peppers), and, though the album was not a commercial smash (peaking at #145), it appeared as though Clinton’s career was back on the upswing. In the summer of 1994, he appeared on the Lollapalooza Tour. In 1997 the Parliament/Funkadelic conglomeration was inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame.
A followup album, T.A.P.O.A.F.O.M. [The Awesome Power of a Fully Operational Mothership], reunited Clinton in the studio with Worrell, Collins, and other original P-Funk sidemen for the first time in more than a decade. The record peaked at #121 in 1996 and was followed that same year by Greatest Funkin’ Hits(#138), which gathered modern remixes of his work and included such guests as Coolio, Digital Underground, and Ice Cube. Two years later Clinton returned with a concept album about dogs and the drug war called Dope Dogs.
from The Rolling Stone Encyclopdeia of Rock & Roll (Simon & Schuster, 2001)
(Here is a link to Parliament Funkadelic discography)
