It’s scary to think that if doo-wop had stuck around for a little bit longer, the phrase “P-Funk” may have never been coined. George Clinton, aka the Godfather of Funk, may have never grown multi-colored dredlocks and fronted two bands that changed music forever.
After recording doo-wop singles for more than a decade, The Parliaments had a number one R&B hit with “(I Just Wanna) Testify” in 1967. But band member George Clinton realized that doo-wop’s time was over.
The Parliaments, who eventually dropped the “s” from their name, found a bass-heavy, hard-rocking rhythm section and renamed themselves Funkadelic in 1968. Their music was a psychedelic concoction of R&B and Motown.
While Funkadelic raged on, Parliament resurfaced in 1974. The bands had very similar line-ups and released records simultaneously. Parliament distinguished itself with prominent horn sections and complex vocal arrangements, while Funkadelic had a rock, guitar-oriented sound. The music of both bands gradually became more and more danceable – a sound that became known as P-Funk, which stands for Pure Funk and, of course, Parliament-Funkadelic.
It’s impossible to deny P-Funk’s influence on music. Not only did these bands make funk a whole lot funkier, but hip-hop pretty much owes its existence to P-Funk. In addition to setting the tone for hip-hop, P-Funk has provided music in tons of small doses to rap and hip-hop artists. Snoop Dogg can thank “Atomic Dog” for providing the melody to the catchy “Snoop Doggy Dog” chorus in “Who Am I (What’s My Name)?” A myriad of other hip-hop groups have had some help from P-Funk as well – everyone from NWA to Salt-N-Pepa. Even Jazzy Jeff & The Fresh Prince did some sampling.
P-Funk also used their music to focus on some political and social issues, such as justice, poverty and the environment. These days, Clinton targets the government and corporations for contributing to society’s ills. He believes the media only make things worse with their ability to influence an uneducated public.
“Anyone can point their finger and say the government’s messed up,” Clinton says. “But the average person hears so much bulls— that they go and do what they’re trained to do, so hardly anybody points their finger at anybody.” He is certainly not afraid to point his finger at the government, as he does in “Dope Dogs,” a satirical tune about the war on drugs.
“[The government] promotes underground drugs as being the drug scoundrels of the world when, most definitely, they just get in the way of profit for the bigger companies,” he says.
Parliament had a long list of characters and terms that helped them carry these messages to the audiences. Starchild, a creation of Dr. Funkenstein, came down from the mothership to bring funk to Earth. Starchild’s nemesis, Sir Nose D’Voidoffunk, came to stop the funk with the placebo syndrome, in which people stop thinking and stop dancing. But with funk on his side, Starchild emerged victorious five albums later.
Another prominent part of the P-Funk persona is WEFUNK, the radio station Clinton introduced on Parliament’s Mothership Connection.
“We started doing WEFUNK because we realized that this was missing from the radio,” Clinton says. “The mainstream media wants to control what you put out, how many fans you got, and they don’t want people to say nothin’ about politics,” he says.
But Clinton acknowledges this creates an enormous underground scene.
“Tool, as good as they are, most people don’t know who they are,” he says. “Or Phish, who people don’t even know nothin’ about, they’re probably one of the biggest groups ever along with The [Grateful] Dead.”
But being underground didn’t stop those bands, and it certainly hasn’t stopped P-Funk from kicking out the jams.
Now touring under the name George Clinton and the P-Funk Allstars, the band has about 30 members (as estimated by Clinton) and a lot of new material, some still waiting to surface. With the newly formed C Kunspyruhzy label came September’s How Late Do You Have 2 B B 4 U R Absent? The album is a collection of songs from the P-Funk family, including some unreleased Funkadelic material, but it mostly serves as a preview to upcoming solo releases from several All Stars.
Clinton will also unveil previously unreleased live recordings with the Uncut Funk series, which he expects to span P-Funk’s entire touring career. But in 2006, one can still go “get their funk on” live, and expect a four hour-plus show of pure funk straight from the mothership.
George Clinton and the P-Funk AllStars perform at Ram’s Head Live! in Baltimore tonight. Tickets are $30, doors are at 8:30 p.m. and the show starts at 10. The show is 18+.
Contact reporter Marc Shapiro at shapirodbk@gmail.com.
