I was walking home from school
when I saw a very unusual object lying on the side of the road. It was a record
album from a band that I had never heard of before. The thing that was even
more stunning to me was that someone would leave a record, any record, by the
side of the road. I have always treated books and records with the utmost care
and respect and I just couldn't imagine how this had happened. The cover was
intriguing and I decided that I had to take this home, and if the record itself
wasn't all scratched and ruined, I had to listen to it.
The record was Parliament's live
classic from 1977. My 14 year old lily white suburban life had been rocked a
few months earlier when I heard Richard Pryor's “Bicentennial N****r”, and now
this one made it clear to me that I was missing out on something. Listening to
both of these albums and discovering that there was a whole world out there
that I naively knew nothing about was a very good thing. But it was also a
shock to the system. Pryor spoke of experiences that I never imagined, he made
me laugh but also think about society, and made me realize that things were not
the same for everyone. Hey, I said I was naive.
Parliament was the musical
equivalent of Richard Pryor. There was stuff going on in this music that I had
never heard before. Dirty limericks, lyrics substituting “funk” for that other
“f” word, songs about funky extraterrestrials coming down to earth in the
mothership to teach us all how to groove, this music had it all for me. I was
already a lover of music at this point in my life, and this just blew the doors
open to a whole new world of music. I had never experienced funk before and
man, what an introduction this was.
The album itself was recorded
over two nights in January of 1977 and captures what a potent band they were at
that time. Some songs are really not much more than George Clinton
singing/speaking over a groove, but man what a groove. The audience sounds like
they are all having the time of their lives and its not hard to hear why. The
band just clicks and there are some monstrous extended jams with both the
vocalists and the instrumentalists showing off their chops. Even listening to
this today, more than 40 years later (that just can't be possible!) this is
music that is fun and funky, freaky and psychedelic, and just an outright good
time. I have somehow never done this, but I bet if you put this on at a party
the mood would change instantly for the better.
So thank you George Clinton for
introducing this naive white boy to the much wider world of funky aliens, one
nation under a groove, and the awesome power of a fully operational mothership.
On a more serious note, thank you also for opening my eyes and my mind to the
fact that people of different races did not have things the same. I did not
know many people of color at the time I discovered this album, but it gave me a
bridge that allowed me to connect with people who loved a good groove
regardless of what they looked like. Finding the funk made me a better person,
a more understanding person, a more compassionate person. All because of an
album I found by the side of the road.
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