p funk all stars hydraulic pump quotation

The album Urban Dancefloor Guerillas was reissued on CD by CBS records in 1989, and then by Westbound Records in 1995 under the title Hydraulic Funk (CDSEWD 097). Hydraulic Funk includes the original album plus the 12″ remix versions of “Generator Pop” and “Hydraulic Pump”.

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This article is about the musical collective. For the individual bands, see Parliament (band) and Funkadelic. For the genre called psychedelic funk or P-funk for short, see Psychedelic funk.

Parliament-Funkadelic (abbreviated as P-Funk) is an American music collective of rotating musicians headed by George Clinton, primarily consisting of the funk bands Parliament and Funkadelic, both active since the 1960s. Their distinctive funk style drew on psychedelic culture, outlandish fashion, science-fiction, and surreal humor;post-punk, hip-hop, and techno artists of the 1980s and 1990s,collective mythology would help pioneer Afrofuturism.Give Up the Funk" (1975) and "Flash Light" (1978). Overall, the collective achieved thirteen top ten hits in the American R&B music charts between 1967 and 1983, including six number one hits.

The collective"s origins date back to the doo-wop group the Parliaments, formed by Clinton during the late 1950s in suburban New Jersey. By the late 1960s, Clinton had gained experience as a producer-writer for Motown Records and, under the influence of artists such as Jimi Hendrix, Sly Stone, and Frank Zappa, he relocated to Detroit and enlisted musicians from his New Jersey days in his own two sister bands Parliament and Funkadelic; the first would go on to develop a commercially successful style of science fiction-inspired funk, while the second blended funk with psychedelic rock.the dozens of related musicians recording and touring different projects in Clinton"s orbit, including the female vocal spinoff groups the Brides of Funkenstein and Parlet. Financial and label issues slowed the collective"s recorded output in the 1980s while Clinton and other members began solo careers, with Clinton also consolidating the collective"s multiple projects and touring under names such as George Clinton and the P-Funk All-Stars. In the 1990s, their sound became the chief inspiration for the West Coast hip hop subgenre G-funk.

Prominent collective members have included bassist Bootsy Collins (who formed the spinoff group Bootsy’s Rubber Band), keyboardist Bernie Worrell, guitarists Eddie "Maggot Brain" Hazel, Michael Hampton, Garry "Diaper Man" Shider, and horn players Fred Wesley and Maceo Parker. Some former members of Parliament perform under the name "Original P". Sixteen members of Parliament-Funkadelic were inducted to the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in 1997. In 2019, the group was given the Grammy Lifetime Achievement Award.

The P-Funk story began in 1956 in Newark, New Jersey, with a doo-wop group formed by fifteen-year-old George Clinton. This was The Parliaments, a name inspired by Parliament cigarettes. By the early 1960s, the group had solidified into the five-man lineup of Clinton, Ray "Stingray" Davis, Clarence "Fuzzy" Haskins, Calvin Simon and Grady Thomas. Later, the group rehearsed in a barbershop in Plainfield, New Jersey co-owned by Clinton and entertained the customers. After having performed for almost ten years, the Parliaments had added a rhythm section in 1964 -- for tours and background work -- consisting of guitarist Frankie Boyce, his brother Richard on bass, and drummer Langston Booth; The Parliaments finally achieved a hit single in 1967 with "(I Wanna) Testify" while Clinton began commuting to Detroit as a songwriter and producer for Motown Records.

The West End of Plainfield, New Jersey was once home to the Silk Palace, a barbershop at 216 Plainfield Avenue owned in part by Clinton, staffed by various members of Parliament-Funkadelic and known as the "hangout for all the local singers and musicians" in Plainfield"s 1950s and 1960s doo-wop, soul, rock and proto-funk music scene.

By the late 1960s Clinton had assembled a touring band to back up the Parliaments, the first stable lineup of which included Billy Bass Nelson (bass), Eddie Hazel (lead guitarist), Tawl Ross (guitarist), Tiki Fulwood (drums), and Mickey Atkins (keyboards). After a contractual dispute in which Clinton temporarily lost the rights to the name "The Parliaments", Clinton brought the backing musicians forward. When the band relocated to Detroit, their guitar-based, raw funk sound, with its heavy psychedelic rock influences, inspired "Billy Bass" Nelson, who coined the name "Funkadelic".Westbound Records, and the five Parliaments singers were credited as "guests" while the five musicians were listed as the main group members. The debut album

Meanwhile, Clinton regained the rights to the name "The Parliaments" and initiated another new entity, now known as Parliament, with the same five singers and five musicians but this time as a smoother R&B-based funk ensemble that Clinton positioned as a counterpoint to the more rock-oriented Funkadelic. Parliament recorded Invictus Records in 1970, and after a hiatus in which Clinton focused on Funkadelic, Parliament was signed to Casablanca Records and released its debut for that label

By this time the original ten-member lineup of Parliament-Funkadelic had begun to splinter, but many others joined for various album releases by either band, leading to a collective with a fluid and rapidly expanding membership. Notable members to join during this period include keyboardist Bernie Worrell, bassist Bootsy Collins, guitarist Garry Shider, bassist Cordell Mosson, and The Horny Horns.

In the 1975-1979 period, both Parliament and Funkadelic achieved several high-charting albums and singles on both the R&B and Pop charts. Many members of the collective began to branch out into side bands and solo projects under George Clinton"s tutelage, including Bootsy"s Rubber Band, Parlet, and The Brides of Funkenstein, while longtime members like Eddie Hazel recorded solo albums with songwriting and studio help from the collective. The Parliament albums of this period had become concept albums with themes from science fiction and afro-futurism, elaborate political and sociological themes, and an evolving storyline with recurring fictional characters. Parliament-Funkadelic stage shows (particularly the P-Funk Earth Tour of 1976) were expanded to include imagery from science fiction and a stage prop known as the Mothership. These concepts came to be known as the P-Funk mythology.

By the late 1970s the Parliament-Funkadelic collective became over-extended and several key members departed acrimoniously over disagreements with Clinton and his management style. Original Parliaments members Fuzzy Haskins, Calvin Simon, and Grady Thomas departed in 1977 after becoming disillusioned with the influx of new members, and later recorded an album under the name Funkadelic. Other members departed and formed new funk bands that detached themselves from P-Funk and even criticized the collective, such as Quazar (formed by guitarist Glenn Goins) and Mutiny (formed by drummer Jerome Brailey). Due to financial difficulties and the collapse of Casablanca Records (Parliament"s label), Clinton dissolved Parliament and Funkadelic as separate entities. Many members of the collective continued to work for Clinton, first on his solo albums and later as Parliament-Funkadelic or the P-Funk All Stars.

In the early 1980s George Clinton continued to record while battling with financial problems and well-publicized drug problems. The remaining members of Parliament-Funkadelic recorded the 1982 hit album Atomic Dog". The following year, Clinton formed the P-Funk All Stars, who went on to record Parliament and Funkadelic after 1980. The name P-Funk All Stars is still in use to the current day, and group has included a mix of former Parliament-Funkadelic members as well as guests and new musicians.

As the 1980s continued, P-Funk did not meet with great commercial success as the band continued to produce albums under the name of George Clinton as solo artist. P-Funk retired from touring from 1984 until 1989, except for extremely sporadic performances and TV appearances. It was at this time that hip hop music began to extensively sample P-Funk music, so remnants of the music were still heard regularly, now among fans of hip hop. By 1993, most of the Parliament and Funkadelic back catalog had been reissued. The same year saw the return of a reconstituted P-Funk All Stars, with the re-release of Urban Dancefloor Guerrillas under the title Hydraulic Funk, and a new hip hop influenced album Lollapalooza festival and appeared in the film

The 1996 album Junie Morrison. It would be ten years before another album would be released. In the intervening time, successive tours would slowly restore some of the broken ties between the original band members, together with an accumulation of new talent. On July 23, 1999, George Clinton and Parliament-Funkadelic, including noteworthy former members Bootsy and Catfish Collins and Bernie Worrell, performed on stage at Woodstock "99. The collective continued to tour sporadically in to the 2000s, with participation from some of the children and grandchildren of the original members.

In May 1997, George Clinton and 15 other members of Parliament-Funkadelic were inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame, the largest band yet inducted. In 2004, 100 Greatest Artists of All Time".Spin ranked Parliament-Funkadelic #6 on their list of the "50 Greatest Bands of All Time". Besides their innovation in the entire genre of funk music, George Clinton and P-Funk are still heard often today, especially in hip-hop sampling. The Red Hot Chili Peppers video for their 2006 single "Dani California" featured a tribute to Parliament-Funkadelic. Parliament-Funkadelic"s musical influence can also be heard in rhythm and blues, soul, electronica, gospel, jazz, and new wave.

In December 2018, the Recording Academy announced that Clinton and Parliament-Funkadelic would be given Lifetime Achievement Awards. The awards were presented on May 11, 2019.

About the album White House. I figured another place you wouldn"t think black people would be was in outer space. I was a big fan of Cadillac, and we did all these James Brown-type grooves, but with street talk and ghetto slang."Sun Ra, Clinton wanted to see black people in space.

All the sci-fi aspects of P-Funk are what situate Clinton"s work in an afrofuturistic setting, but also the idea that he took the shared experience of African Americans – a negative one, at that – and gave it back, therefore giving them tremendously more agency than they’d had before.

The Parliaments as a doo-wop group in the late 1950s. The funk sound, socially conscious lyrics, and P-Funk mythology developed primarily by Clinton have been especially influential for later R&B, hip hop, and rock music.

Funkadelic after the release of their first album and became an integral member of the Parliament-Funkadelic collective thereafter. His classical training on piano and innovative use of synthesizers has proven to be extremely influential, particularly his pioneering use of the Moog synthesizer, which replaced the conventional electric bass on songs like "Flash Light" and "Aqua Boogie". He was responsible for many P-Funk rhythm and (with trombonist Fred Wesley) horn arrangements. Worrell left the band in 1981, but continued to contribute to P-Funk studio albums and occasionally appear live with Parliament-Funkadelic as a special guest.

Funkadelic and was a major force on the first several albums by that group. His Hendrix-inspired style has become very influential. After the early 1970s he contributed sporadically to various Parliament-Funkadelic projects. A key early Funkadelic song that captured both the band"s unique sound and Hazel"s talent was the ten-minute guitar solo "Maggot Brain" from the 1971 Funkadelic album of the same title.

James Brown"s band with brother Melvin Parker in 1964. In 1970, Parker, his brother Melvin, and a few of Brown"s band members left to establish the band Maceo & All the King"s Men, which toured for two years.

In January 1973, Parker rejoined with James Brown. He also charted a single "Parrty – Part I" (#71 pop singles) with Maceo & the Macks that year. In 1975, Parker and some of Brown"s band members, including Fred Wesley, left to join George Clinton"s band Parliament-Funkadelic.

Ohio Players and as a solo artist. Though primarily a keyboardist, Junie composed or co-wrote several of the band"s hits at the height of their popularity and served as a lead vocalist, producer, and arranger on many songs for the collective. Morrison stopped touring with the band after 1981, but contributed to many subsequent albums. During his time with P-funk, some of his work was credited under the name J.S. Theracon.

The Parliaments rehearsed and performed, and after some time with his own group United Soul, he was recruited by George Clinton into Funkadelic in 1972. Shider became a frequent lead vocalist on several Parliament and Funkadelic albums and along with his "gospel" vocal and guitar style, was most recognized for wearing his trademark hotel-towel "diaper".

The Parliaments in the band that would eventually become Funkadelic. Nelson then brought his friend Eddie Hazel into the band and coined the name "Funkadelic" when Clinton moved the collective to Detroit. Nelson quit Funkadelic in 1971 but contributed to P-Funk releases sporadically for the next few years. Starting in 1994, he toured with the P-Funk All Stars for ten years.

Give Up the Funk (Tear the Roof off the Sucker)" and on George Clinton"s solo hit single "Atomic Dog". Aside from Clinton, he was the only original member of the Parliaments not to leave in 1977. In the eighties, Davis recorded and toured with George Clinton and the P-Funk Allstars in support of "Atomic Dog" and with Zapp in support of "I Can Make You Dance", but his vocal range made him an obvious choice as replacement bass vocalist for Melvin Franklin in the Temptations. Davis left the Temptations in 1995 (after being diagnosed with cancer), but continued to perform with former P-Funk members Fuzzy Haskins, Calvin Simon, and Grady Thomas under the name Original P.

Parliament/Funkadelic. (2009). In Student"s Encyclopædia Archived April 21, 2009, at the Wayback Machine: "Combining funk rhythms, psychedelic guitar, and group harmonies with jazzed-up horns, Clinton and his ever-evolving bands set the tone for many post-disco and post-punk groups of the 1980s and 1990s.". Retrieved August 15, 2009, from Britannica Student Encyclopædia.

Echard, William (2017). Psychedelic Popular Music: A History through Musical Topic Theory. Indiana University Press. pp. 123–125. ISBN 9780253026590. Retrieved January 26, 2018.

Sammy Campbell and the Del Larks - Classic Urban Harmony. classicurbanharmony.net/wp-content/uploads/.../Sammy-Campbell-The-Del-Larks.pdf by T Ashley. The story of the Del Larks revolves around the extensive music careers of two individuals; Sammy. Campbell and Ron Taylor.

Unless stated otherwise in the description above, all items are in at least excellent condition - so please read our descriptions carefully. We try to sell items as close to Mint condition as possible, and many will indeed be close to brand new and/or unplayed. Others may be "used" - and all will meet our strict grading and are 100% guaranteed.

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This article is about the musical collective. For the individual bands, see Parliament (band) and Funkadelic. For the genre called psychedelic funk or P-funk for short, see Psychedelic funk.

Parliament-Funkadelic (abbreviated as P-Funk) is an American music collective of rotating musicians headed by George Clinton, primarily consisting of the funk bands Parliament and Funkadelic, both active since the 1960s. Their distinctive funk style drew on psychedelic culture, outlandish fashion, science-fiction, and surreal humor;post-punk, hip-hop, and techno artists of the 1980s and 1990s,collective mythology would help pioneer Afrofuturism.Give Up the Funk" (1975) and "Flash Light" (1978). Overall, the collective achieved thirteen top ten hits in the American R&B music charts between 1967 and 1983, including six number one hits.

The collective"s origins date back to the doo-wop group the Parliaments, formed by Clinton during the late 1950s in suburban New Jersey. By the late 1960s, Clinton had gained experience as a producer-writer for Motown Records and, under the influence of artists such as Jimi Hendrix, Sly Stone, and Frank Zappa, he relocated to Detroit and enlisted musicians from his New Jersey days in his own two sister bands Parliament and Funkadelic; the first would go on to develop a commercially successful style of science fiction-inspired funk, while the second blended funk with psychedelic rock.the dozens of related musicians recording and touring different projects in Clinton"s orbit, including the female vocal spinoff groups the Brides of Funkenstein and Parlet. Financial and label issues slowed the collective"s recorded output in the 1980s while Clinton and other members began solo careers, with Clinton also consolidating the collective"s multiple projects and touring under names such as George Clinton and the P-Funk All-Stars. In the 1990s, their sound became the chief inspiration for the West Coast hip hop subgenre G-funk.

Prominent collective members have included bassist Bootsy Collins (who formed the spinoff group Bootsy’s Rubber Band), keyboardist Bernie Worrell, guitarists Eddie "Maggot Brain" Hazel, Michael Hampton, Garry "Diaper Man" Shider, and horn players Fred Wesley and Maceo Parker. Some former members of Parliament perform under the name "Original P". Sixteen members of Parliament-Funkadelic were inducted to the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in 1997. In 2019, the group was given the Grammy Lifetime Achievement Award.

The P-Funk story began in 1956 in Newark, New Jersey, with a doo-wop group formed by fifteen-year-old George Clinton. This was The Parliaments, a name inspired by Parliament cigarettes. By the early 1960s, the group had solidified into the five-man lineup of Clinton, Ray "Stingray" Davis, Clarence "Fuzzy" Haskins, Calvin Simon and Grady Thomas. Later, the group rehearsed in a barbershop in Plainfield, New Jersey co-owned by Clinton and entertained the customers. After having performed for almost ten years, the Parliaments had added a rhythm section in 1964 -- for tours and background work -- consisting of guitarist Frankie Boyce, his brother Richard on bass, and drummer Langston Booth; The Parliaments finally achieved a hit single in 1967 with "(I Wanna) Testify" while Clinton began commuting to Detroit as a songwriter and producer for Motown Records.

The West End of Plainfield, New Jersey was once home to the Silk Palace, a barbershop at 216 Plainfield Avenue owned in part by Clinton, staffed by various members of Parliament-Funkadelic and known as the "hangout for all the local singers and musicians" in Plainfield"s 1950s and 1960s doo-wop, soul, rock and proto-funk music scene.

By the late 1960s Clinton had assembled a touring band to back up the Parliaments, the first stable lineup of which included Billy Bass Nelson (bass), Eddie Hazel (lead guitarist), Tawl Ross (guitarist), Tiki Fulwood (drums), and Mickey Atkins (keyboards). After a contractual dispute in which Clinton temporarily lost the rights to the name "The Parliaments", Clinton brought the backing musicians forward. When the band relocated to Detroit, their guitar-based, raw funk sound, with its heavy psychedelic rock influences, inspired "Billy Bass" Nelson, who coined the name "Funkadelic".Westbound Records, and the five Parliaments singers were credited as "guests" while the five musicians were listed as the main group members. The debut album

Meanwhile, Clinton regained the rights to the name "The Parliaments" and initiated another new entity, now known as Parliament, with the same five singers and five musicians but this time as a smoother R&B-based funk ensemble that Clinton positioned as a counterpoint to the more rock-oriented Funkadelic. Parliament recorded Invictus Records in 1970, and after a hiatus in which Clinton focused on Funkadelic, Parliament was signed to Casablanca Records and released its debut for that label

By this time the original ten-member lineup of Parliament-Funkadelic had begun to splinter, but many others joined for various album releases by either band, leading to a collective with a fluid and rapidly expanding membership. Notable members to join during this period include keyboardist Bernie Worrell, bassist Bootsy Collins, guitarist Garry Shider, bassist Cordell Mosson, and The Horny Horns.

In the 1975-1979 period, both Parliament and Funkadelic achieved several high-charting albums and singles on both the R&B and Pop charts. Many members of the collective began to branch out into side bands and solo projects under George Clinton"s tutelage, including Bootsy"s Rubber Band, Parlet, and The Brides of Funkenstein, while longtime members like Eddie Hazel recorded solo albums with songwriting and studio help from the collective. The Parliament albums of this period had become concept albums with themes from science fiction and afro-futurism, elaborate political and sociological themes, and an evolving storyline with recurring fictional characters. Parliament-Funkadelic stage shows (particularly the P-Funk Earth Tour of 1976) were expanded to include imagery from science fiction and a stage prop known as the Mothership. These concepts came to be known as the P-Funk mythology.

By the late 1970s the Parliament-Funkadelic collective became over-extended and several key members departed acrimoniously over disagreements with Clinton and his management style. Original Parliaments members Fuzzy Haskins, Calvin Simon, and Grady Thomas departed in 1977 after becoming disillusioned with the influx of new members, and later recorded an album under the name Funkadelic. Other members departed and formed new funk bands that detached themselves from P-Funk and even criticized the collective, such as Quazar (formed by guitarist Glenn Goins) and Mutiny (formed by drummer Jerome Brailey). Due to financial difficulties and the collapse of Casablanca Records (Parliament"s label), Clinton dissolved Parliament and Funkadelic as separate entities. Many members of the collective continued to work for Clinton, first on his solo albums and later as Parliament-Funkadelic or the P-Funk All Stars.

In the early 1980s George Clinton continued to record while battling with financial problems and well-publicized drug problems. The remaining members of Parliament-Funkadelic recorded the 1982 hit album Atomic Dog". The following year, Clinton formed the P-Funk All Stars, who went on to record Parliament and Funkadelic after 1980. The name P-Funk All Stars is still in use to the current day, and group has included a mix of former Parliament-Funkadelic members as well as guests and new musicians.

As the 1980s continued, P-Funk did not meet with great commercial success as the band continued to produce albums under the name of George Clinton as solo artist. P-Funk retired from touring from 1984 until 1989, except for extremely sporadic performances and TV appearances. It was at this time that hip hop music began to extensively sample P-Funk music, so remnants of the music were still heard regularly, now among fans of hip hop. By 1993, most of the Parliament and Funkadelic back catalog had been reissued. The same year saw the return of a reconstituted P-Funk All Stars, with the re-release of Urban Dancefloor Guerrillas under the title Hydraulic Funk, and a new hip hop influenced album Lollapalooza festival and appeared in the film

The 1996 album Junie Morrison. It would be ten years before another album would be released. In the intervening time, successive tours would slowly restore some of the broken ties between the original band members, together with an accumulation of new talent. On July 23, 1999, George Clinton and Parliament-Funkadelic, including noteworthy former members Bootsy and Catfish Collins and Bernie Worrell, performed on stage at Woodstock "99. The collective continued to tour sporadically in to the 2000s, with participation from some of the children and grandchildren of the original members.

In May 1997, George Clinton and 15 other members of Parliament-Funkadelic were inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame, the largest band yet inducted. In 2004, 100 Greatest Artists of All Time".Spin ranked Parliament-Funkadelic #6 on their list of the "50 Greatest Bands of All Time". Besides their innovation in the entire genre of funk music, George Clinton and P-Funk are still heard often today, especially in hip-hop sampling. The Red Hot Chili Peppers video for their 2006 single "Dani California" featured a tribute to Parliament-Funkadelic. Parliament-Funkadelic"s musical influence can also be heard in rhythm and blues, soul, electronica, gospel, jazz, and new wave.

In December 2018, the Recording Academy announced that Clinton and Parliament-Funkadelic would be given Lifetime Achievement Awards. The awards were presented on May 11, 2019.

About the album White House. I figured another place you wouldn"t think black people would be was in outer space. I was a big fan of Cadillac, and we did all these James Brown-type grooves, but with street talk and ghetto slang."Sun Ra, Clinton wanted to see black people in space.

All the sci-fi aspects of P-Funk are what situate Clinton"s work in an afrofuturistic setting, but also the idea that he took the shared experience of African Americans – a negative one, at that – and gave it back, therefore giving them tremendously more agency than they’d had before.

The Parliaments as a doo-wop group in the late 1950s. The funk sound, socially conscious lyrics, and P-Funk mythology developed primarily by Clinton have been especially influential for later R&B, hip hop, and rock music.

Funkadelic after the release of their first album and became an integral member of the Parliament-Funkadelic collective thereafter. His classical training on piano and innovative use of synthesizers has proven to be extremely influential, particularly his pioneering use of the Moog synthesizer, which replaced the conventional electric bass on songs like "Flash Light" and "Aqua Boogie". He was responsible for many P-Funk rhythm and (with trombonist Fred Wesley) horn arrangements. Worrell left the band in 1981, but continued to contribute to P-Funk studio albums and occasionally appear live with Parliament-Funkadelic as a special guest.

Funkadelic and was a major force on the first several albums by that group. His Hendrix-inspired style has become very influential. After the early 1970s he contributed sporadically to various Parliament-Funkadelic projects. A key early Funkadelic song that captured both the band"s unique sound and Hazel"s talent was the ten-minute guitar solo "Maggot Brain" from the 1971 Funkadelic album of the same title.

James Brown"s band with brother Melvin Parker in 1964. In 1970, Parker, his brother Melvin, and a few of Brown"s band members left to establish the band Maceo & All the King"s Men, which toured for two years.

In January 1973, Parker rejoined with James Brown. He also charted a single "Parrty – Part I" (#71 pop singles) with Maceo & the Macks that year. In 1975, Parker and some of Brown"s band members, including Fred Wesley, left to join George Clinton"s band Parliament-Funkadelic.

Ohio Players and as a solo artist. Though primarily a keyboardist, Junie composed or co-wrote several of the band"s hits at the height of their popularity and served as a lead vocalist, producer, and arranger on many songs for the collective. Morrison stopped touring with the band after 1981, but contributed to many subsequent albums. During his time with P-funk, some of his work was credited under the name J.S. Theracon.

The Parliaments rehearsed and performed, and after some time with his own group United Soul, he was recruited by George Clinton into Funkadelic in 1972. Shider became a frequent lead vocalist on several Parliament and Funkadelic albums and along with his "gospel" vocal and guitar style, was most recognized for wearing his trademark hotel-towel "diaper".

The Parliaments in the band that would eventually become Funkadelic. Nelson then brought his friend Eddie Hazel into the band and coined the name "Funkadelic" when Clinton moved the collective to Detroit. Nelson quit Funkadelic in 1971 but contributed to P-Funk releases sporadically for the next few years. Starting in 1994, he toured with the P-Funk All Stars for ten years.

Give Up the Funk (Tear the Roof off the Sucker)" and on George Clinton"s solo hit single "Atomic Dog". Aside from Clinton, he was the only original member of the Parliaments not to leave in 1977. In the eighties, Davis recorded and toured with George Clinton and the P-Funk Allstars in support of "Atomic Dog" and with Zapp in support of "I Can Make You Dance", but his vocal range made him an obvious choice as replacement bass vocalist for Melvin Franklin in the Temptations. Davis left the Temptations in 1995 (after being diagnosed with cancer), but continued to perform with former P-Funk members Fuzzy Haskins, Calvin Simon, and Grady Thomas under the name Original P.

Parliament/Funkadelic. (2009). In Student"s Encyclopædia Archived April 21, 2009, at the Wayback Machine: "Combining funk rhythms, psychedelic guitar, and group harmonies with jazzed-up horns, Clinton and his ever-evolving bands set the tone for many post-disco and post-punk groups of the 1980s and 1990s.". Retrieved August 15, 2009, from Britannica Student Encyclopædia.

Echard, William (2017). Psychedelic Popular Music: A History through Musical Topic Theory. Indiana University Press. pp. 123–125. ISBN 9780253026590. Retrieved January 26, 2018.

Sammy Campbell and the Del Larks - Classic Urban Harmony. classicurbanharmony.net/wp-content/uploads/.../Sammy-Campbell-The-Del-Larks.pdf by T Ashley. The story of the Del Larks revolves around the extensive music careers of two individuals; Sammy. Campbell and Ron Taylor.

The album Urban Dancefloor Guerillas was reissued on CD by CBS records in 1989, and then by Westbound Records in 1995 under the title Hydraulic Funk (CDSEWD 097). Hydraulic Funk includes the original album plus the 12″ remix versions of “Generator Pop” and “Hydraulic Pump”.

Unless stated otherwise in the description above, all items are in at least excellent condition - so please read our descriptions carefully. We try to sell items as close to Mint condition as possible, and many will indeed be close to brand new and/or unplayed. Others may be "used" - and all will meet our strict grading and are 100% guaranteed.

Serving Record Collectors since 1985, we are the world leader for buying and selling new, rare, vintage, used, pre owned & second hand vinyl records, singles, LPs, CDs & music memorabilia. We have over 250,000 items in stock available for you to order today. You may already know us as eil.com.

I’m really itching to get the tracks from these three releases. I confiscated a record player from a bad tenant who left some stuff behind. I don’t know if it even works. Probably doesn’t. But it makes me feel like buying these three releases just to see. I’ve found one of each for a reasonable price on Discogs. In total they would cost me $71CAD which is really not even that bad, but it drives me nuts that literally 85% of that is just the shipping cost. Plus, I might get them and find out I need to get a working turntable, or, if this one works, then I have to find new homes for these records when I’m done with them. Either way, not desirable. So hopefully you’re still watching these boards and you’ll help out with some rips soon!

George Clinton’s Parliament-Funkadelic collective isn’t always posed as a leading candidate for greatest or most important band of the ’70s, but try and imagine what music would sound like without them. You’d still have Stevie pushing forward R&B’s artistry, Kraftwerk doing their thing to turn synthesized pop into a mainstream notion, Donald Byrd finding innovative ways to modernize jazz, Led Zeppelin taking heavy metal to exospheric new heights, the O’Jays hitting the zenith of close-harmony soul, Pink Floyd fusing musical intricacy with concert theatrics, the Ramones injecting pop music with rebellious pulp-culture irreverence, James Brown and Sly Stone and the Ohio Players turning out a fine succession of funk-defining records … and yet you wouldn’t have that one core of musicians that could do all of that, and did so to stunning commercial success without compromising their sound, their look, or an essential perspective on post-civil rights America that still carries through today.

P-Funk were geniuses disguised as weirdos, sentimental populists under the guise of freaky outlanders, and it is damn near impossible to think of some strain of popular music or another that they have nothing to do with. George Clinton grew up in Plainfield, New Jersey, immersed in doo-wop when he wasn’t cutting hair, and by the late ’60s, he and his vocal group the Parliaments had followed that rhythm & blues lineage through Stax and Motown with a revelatory detour through Hendrix and Sly Stone. By the time Clinton had begun to internalize the impact of rock’s new counterculture — his time in the late ’60s was just as often spent in thrall to Cream and Jethro Tull as it was to Smokey and Diana — he was more upfront than anybody about his desires to shake down the “black group = soul/white group = rock” dichotomy. Soon enough, Funkadelic became just the band to crumble those barriers, recruiting Clinton’s Parliaments co-singers — Fuzzy Haskins, Calvin Simon, Ray Davis, and Grady Thomas — into a group that would eventually encompass one of the era’s most down-for-whatever ensemble casts. Throughout their peak, both Parliament and Funkadelic would feature a versatile show-band drummer who could play heavy or jazzy and all points in between (Tyrone Lampkin), a keyboard player with a thing for hi-tech experimentation who could sound like Mozart and Booker T. at the same time (Bernie Worrell), a succession of guitarists who took the precedent of Hendrix’s future-soul psychedelia into even further reaches (Eddie Hazel and Michael Hampton chief amongst them), and a bass player who started out stealing the show from James Brown and just got more spectacular from there (Bootsy Collins).

What Funkadelic and Parliament eventually accomplished in their initial 11-year prime was staggering: Imagine if a band that started as weirdo-niche as the Stooges somehow went on to become as big as Bruce Springsteen & The E Street Band, without having to compromise to go platinum and notch crossover radio hits. And almost as soon as they disbanded — a side effect of label woes and personnel frustration that only served to make Clinton’s vision even more modular — their effects started shaping the next three decades’ worth of music. Talking Heads, Uncle Jamm’s Army, Prince, Dr. Dre, Mike Watt, Red Hot Chili Peppers, Dinosaur Jr., Fishbone, Beastie Boys, Public Enemy, Prince Paul, Snoop Dogg, OutKast, Missy Elliott, Meshell Ndegeocello, D’Angelo, Dam-Funk … those are just the artists who are the most obviously indebted to P-Funk in some way or another — stylistically, thematically, philosophically, or otherwise. And with Clinton still keeping the P-Funk spirit alive as a rapidly shifting ensemble cast of both original players and younger musicians who came of age looking up to them, it’s become nearly impossible to imagine even a contemporary pop music culture that would be unvisited by the Mothership.

Just as a forewarning, this list doesn’t cover every single album featuring a significant portion of Parliament, Funkadelic, or some mixture thereof. (If it did, we’d be here all week.) Individual members’ solo albums like the Bootsy’s Rubber Band LPs or Hazel’s Game, Dames, And Guitar Thangs are excluded, and that covers solo George Clinton records, too — though exceptions are made for the scattered post-’81 releases that are actually credited to Parliament-Funkadelic or the P-Funk All Stars, whether or not they follow the word “and…” There are no compilations or works featuring the band from multiple years (cf. the archival odds-and-ends Funkadelic collection Toys). And with as many P-Funk concerts as there are floating around out there in bootleg, semi-bootleg, or micro-indie form, we’ve had to limit their live releases to three — though they should provide a strong cross-reference of what made them such a spectacular live act in their various incarnations. With that said, let’s get started — there might be a roof over your head that hasn’t been torn off yet, and that should probably be addressed.

The general feeling among fans who bootlegged the bejesus out By Way Of The Drum was that MCA shelved the album in 1989 because the label didn"t get what they expected. And with the masters found a couple decades later, when the legacy of P-Funk felt far deeper than any late-"80s comeback attempt would hint at, you could say most fans who"d only heard rumor of it didn"t get what they expected, either -- at least not unless they expected an overproduced, laminated funk record that sonically lagged six steps behind Prince. The band"s vitally raw freakiness is tamped down by edge-dulling gloss; even the logo on the title track"s original "89 12" release omits the skull over the "i" in "Funkadelic".

This vault exhumation is technically more of a legit Funkadelic record than the infamous 1981 FINO hijack job Connections & Disconnections, thanks to the actual presence of George Clinton and a few P-Funk vets like Garry Shider and Dewayne "Blackbyrd" McKnight in the ranks. But with no sign of either Bootsy or Bernie, it"s still something of a ringer, especially in the moments Shider"s guitar isn"t wailing; the rest of the time it sounds like a bunch of hired hands concocting some okay-I-guess boogie funk driven by the kind of drum machines people like to invoke when they claim drum machines have no soul. A go-go take on Cream"s "Sunshine Of Your Love" is one of those unprecedented moments they stoop to the nostalgia-cover game, "Freaks Bearing Gifts" fails to dredge some party vibes from warnings of child-kidnapper come-ons ("little girl, do you want some candy/little boy, do you want to go for a ride"), the opening lines to "Yadadada" lifts the "Ricky Ricky Ricky, can"t you see" hook from Slick Rick"s "Mona Lisa" and turns it into an annoying, nasal ode to fancy liquor, and "Some Fresh Delic" is merely a string of uninspired chants and noodly shredding over an unchanging go-go beat. Weirdest of all is the title cut, which would make for a decent electro/New Jack Swing hybrid under a lesser group"s banner but sounds significantly further away of any right-minded notion of what a turn-of-the-"90s Funkadelic would sound like. Thank god Digital Underground were around to fill that duty for a while.

The title of this double-disc set comes from the fact that this was the first album Clinton put out in nine years, largely owing to his difficulty at the time in trying to balance making music and schlepping through court dates trying to reclaim ownership of his recordings. So, hey, absence and the heart"s fondness capacity and all that, right? Yet there"s a lot of slapdash stuff here, an accumulation of work he"d recorded since 1996 but felt unmotivated to release due to his frustration with the record industry. There"s no real theme, not much of a consistent aesthetic throughline, and not a lot worth nominating as career highlights -- it"s a two-CD snapshot of nearly ten years spent in limbo, careening from gangsta rap crossover to noodly hard rock and hard-to-grasp points in between. Even the promise of Clinton and the All-Stars collaborating with Prince (the bouncy if chilly "Paradigm," which plays like a Musicology outtake) and Bobby Womack (the processed bar-band rock of "Whole Lotta Shakin"") falls a bit short, and the wafer-thin lyrics actually somehow find the breaking point for how long the average person can tolerate Clinton singing about butts. One song, "I Can Dance," is basically a stripper"s comedic monologue over a loop of well-worn sample source "Nappy Dugout" -- and it goes on for more than 15 minutes.

Still, there"s enough decent material to glean an hour"s worth of not-that-bad from two-and-a-half"s worth of eh-whatever, and a lot of it comes from the women in the All-Stars" ranks. Singer Belita Woods, a Detroit-area veteran of "60s soul and "70s disco, joined up with Clinton around "89 and became a regular in the ranks; her sharp yet soaring voice elevates the watery production of ballad "Saddest Day" and pop-R&B cut "Don"t Dance Too Close" into something sneakily resonant. And Kendra Foster, who became an integral piece of the collective in the early "00s before going on to co-write much of D"Angelo"s Black Messiah, brings a welcome dose of that Brides of Funkenstein spirit -- g-funk torchy one moment ("Bounce 2 This"), sweetly sultry the next ("U Can Depend On Me"). Even if Clinton wasn"t at his best here, he at least made an effort to ensure some of his most unsung collaborators were.

There"s something remarkably deceptive about this record, which came out literally one year to the day after the fantastic Motor Booty Affair and, at least on the surface, has some of the promise of that simultaneously provocative and silly masterpiece, right down to its giddy Overton Loyd artwork. But there are a combined 19 minutes and change on this record that flash some deeper problems in vivid neon. The first is "Party People," an uptempo borderline-Hi-NRG cut with a pace/energy imbalance that makes it feel like the band"s obligated to rush through an empty-meaning "all about having fun" autopilot mission. Then they forget to stop -- it goes on for more than ten minutes, churning away like an example of what Funkadelic meant that same year when they invoked "that one-move groovalistic/ that disco-sadistic" on "Freak Of The Week." "The Freeze (Sizzleanmean)" is the other drag, a midtempo slog that squanders an excellent Maceo sax performance on maybe their most underwritten song ever ("Can we get you hot?/ Can we make your temperatures rise?" Now repeat 100x.) As clear a Beginning Of The End moment as you can find in the circa-"79 tangle of events that eventually led to P-Funk"s dissolution, Gloryhallastoopid still has just enough power to move butts -- even if the two most propulsive cuts, "The Big Bang Theory" and "Theme From The Black Hole," could be picked up on the same 12" single. But when Clinton wails "Nothing has changed/ Even the bang remains the same" at the beginning of "Colour Me Funky," it"s a case of tell-don"t-show that doesn"t have the proof to back it up.

P-Funk in coasting mode could still crank out a couple gems here and there, even with the threat of a dozen-ish side projects cutting into their full artistic potential and threatening to stretch Clinton"s empire thin. Things were on well on their way to snapping in the early years of the "80s, but while the last Parliament LP is merely under-inspired rather than an embarrassing burnout, it"s also pretty hard to love. Hopping on a groove and riding it out for a while isn"t the worst idea in the world when the core of said groove is notoriously strong, but this is one record that"s severely Worrell-deficient, and the ensemble-cast arrangements shake the foundations into question -- "Humpty Dance" sample source "Let"s Play House" aside, side 2 sounds like Parliament Lite compared to the more cohesive and characteristic set in the first four cuts. And that waters down an already lyrically flimsy vibe. The concept on the record hints at jokes surrounding P-Funk mythos antagonist reformed anti-dance zealot Sir Nose, his newly discovered ability to pick things up with his titular trunk (complete with some groaner coke-snorting nod-and-wink references), and his plan to use his newfound knowledge to attempt out-funking Star Child himself. But the idea evaporates like so much sneezed-away marching powder after track two, after which we"re left with a mish-mash of generic dance-move paeans, half-baked puns, and non-sequitur cliches (ad-slogan-derived and otherwise). Only "Agony Of Defeet" and its ten-toed wordplay funks like they did just a couple years prior; it"s just as well the Parliament name wound up semi-retired after this one.

The "90s would be a tumultuous and crazy decade for Clinton: He would be canonized as a forefather of hip-hop, given the Otis Day & the Knights role in frat-laffs flick PCU, and invited to collaborate with everyone from Ice Cube to OutKast. But he was still struggling to get his due royalties from managers and working his way through a crack habit that somehow never stopped him from being productive. All this, and he was using his famously open-minded musical sense to engage with sounds that didn"t always fit preconceptions of what P-Funk was -- which led to contemporary R&B production tricks, further use of drum machines and synth-horns, and sampling which often did their self-referencing tendencies one better by actually looping pieces of their old work. Dope Dogs is what happens when all those new ideas are coursing through the minds of Clinton and his crew, but haven"t entirely solidified into something strong just yet. Not even after multiple attempts at it.

Initially released in Japan, this bewildering record wound up with three different configurations on three different continents; it"s generally agreed that the UK and American versions are better than the Japanese one, but there"s not enough difference between the three to really mess with the rankings here. The important thing is that in any configuration, it"s the most dedicated conceptual record of P-Funk"s post-"81 stretch. In short, it starts with the premise of drug-sniffing dogs that become addicted to the product they"re trained to search for, and gets even heavier on the canine metaphors from there on out. That Clinton finds a lot of ways to apply his Big Book Of Dog Puns to an itinerary that covers government conspiracy (New Jack Swing-turned-batterram "U.S. Custom Coast Guard Dope Dog"), psychological manipulation (the Pavlovian club anthem "Just Say Ding (Databoy)"), and the cosmic origins of existence (the Blackbyrd shredathon "Dog Star" (Fly On)") is inspiring, even if there"s at least a few too many butt-sniffing metaphors.

That the jokes get a little redundant after a while is only part of the problem; it"s the budget-minded production flourishes that muddle things up. "Back Up Against The Wall," "Sick "Em," and "I Ain"t The Lady (He Ain"t The Tramp)" mix off-the-charts virtuosity with the kind of budget-Bomb Squad breaks and turn-of-the-"90s synths that make otherwise heavy-bouncing cuts sound a little too cheap, and the whole album suffers from the price of recording in a period where analog warmth was considered less important than digital efficiency. Look past that, and dive deep into the sometimes-wandering but frequently freaky lyrics -- including some close-falling-apple hip-hop verses from Clinton"s son Tracey "Trey Lewd" Lewis -- and it"ll feel a bit more forgivable.

Urban Dancefloor Guerillas, the first album credited to an entity called the P-Funk All Stars, was Clinton"s first major attempt to consolidate members of the assorted Parliament and Funkadelic entities into one headliner band (and circumvent name-rights issues in the process). This album gave them their first proper top-billing credit after 1982"s Computer Games, featuring most of the same personnel, was credited as a George Clinton solo album. If a circa "89 Funkadelic couldn"t get the hang of synthpop-infused electro-boogie and go-go rhythms, it"s not because they hadn"t tried -- Urban Dancefloor Guerillas, or at least its second side, was plenty proof they could pull it off. "Pumpin" It Up" and "Hydraulic Pump" are two distinct takes on where their sound fit in the "80s, with a squirrelly synth-bass provided by David Spradley in a fine pinch-hitting appearance for Bernie Worrell (presumably busy at the time with Talking Heads, who"d fit well on a less-segregated circa-"83 airwaves alongside these jams). "Hydraulic Pump" in particular is one of the Mothership"s best cuts of the "80s, a wall of machine-shop boogie funk that sets a thousand piston-churning hands clapping and is one of the decade"s few moments to catch Sly Stone still on his game. (If it sounds vaguely familiar to new listeners, that"s because it was later loosely interpolated by one of the Coup"s funkiest jams, "5 Million Ways To Kill A CEO.") And "Copy Cat" is more or less a self-answer to the canine counterpart "Atomic Dog," complete with ceaseless puns and harmonized meows in the service of calling out biters.

But something doesn"t quite click on the first side, and even with the talent involved -- scattered in all kinds of configurations throughout the record -- it sounds like they"re trying to work their way through other mutations of earlier ideas that don"t stick as well as the party jams on the flipside. "Generator Pop" and "Catch A Keeper" are decent if shaky melanges of "78 vibes that tailgate off some of their most transcendent moments; they respectively sound like a subtly reworked "One Nation Under A Groove" and an outtake that wasn"t wild enough for the undersea-themed Motor-Booty Affair. And while having DeWayne "Blackbyrd" McKnight handle all the instruments on "Acupuncture" but one is a slick feat, the instrument he doesn"t play -- a drippy lite-jazz sax seeped out by Norman Jean Bell -- sounds like it was airlifted in from a dentist"s office. Still, having one kinda-bad song isn"t this album"s failing: it"s that this record just isn"t outrageous enough. Aside from the Junie Morrison-driven duck-call/Moog-chirp R&B ballad "One Of Those Summers" and the sequel-itis-stricken "Copy Cat," there"s a noticeable shortage of the straight-up weirdness and conceptual depth P-Funk had made as much a part of their DNA as the instrumental virtuosity, hi-tech forward-thinking, and heavy commitment to the groove. Three out of four"s usually fine, but it"s a slump for a crew that spent the previous decade batting 1.000.

Not George Clinton, not the P-Funk All-Stars, not even Parliament-Funkadelic -- this is an actual Funkadelic record, something that nobody"d seen since 1981. Call it semantics if you want -- with the core members who"ve passed since The Electric Spanking Of War Babies (Garry Shider, Tiki Fulwood, Eddie Hazel, Glen Goins, and Cordell "Boogie" Mosson, to name a few), skeptics might consider this an All-Stars kind of effort anyhow, even considering the number of performances brought out from the vaults and stitched posthumously into the tracks. But as the most overstuffed and stylistically experimental thing to come out of the P-Funk camp possibly ever, pinning it down to any one idea of what"s previously been offered under the Funkadelic name is beside the point. It"s not out of the question to expect an uneven effort from a three-plus-hour triple album with thirty-three tracks (one for each year Funkadelic was in storage). And maybe it"s hard to cut through all that to separate the fine from the mediocre; there"s not much further on either end of the scale, whether it"s outright stinkers or mind-boggling brilliance. But it does successfully put forth the idea of a version of P-Funk that incorporates a lot of familiar trademarks -- beautifully dazed close harmonies, deathless roller-boogie bounce, a philosophical notion of funk that permeates everything, no matter how far away it strays from "One Nation Under A Groove" -- while remaining wide open to brand new ideas.

And no doubt, a lot of these new ideas are weird, which is just about right for a band that"s made weirdness one of their load-bearing structures. Clinton"s vision of Afro-futurism has always demanded taking in new styles and ideas, and he"s stated more than once that "whenever I hear people -- like older musicians -- saying about something new, "That ain"t music," I rush and find that music." So you get his weathered, gravelly voice filtered through Auto-Tune on multiple tracks, there are excursions into trap beats ("Get Low") and groove metal ("Dirty Queen", featuring his grandson Trafael Lewis"s band God"s Weapon), and the plentiful moments that feel like archetypal funk are deliriously warped into 21st century forms. A few cuts could be slipped into a playlist alongside current-gen heirs from Janelle Monae to Thundercat to Dam-Funk and sound like their contemporaries instead of their forebears -- soul-jazz fusion flight "Fucked Up," the floaty house-adjacent boogie slide "In Da Kar," the Organized Noise/Future-ist vamp "The Wall," and the Michael Hampton-laced g-funk ballad "Where Would I Go?" prove as much. The old-school cohorts from back in the day (including a game Sly Stone) generally pull cameo duty, while the prominence of 808 beats and guest MCs foreground the here-and-now focus. And if that sounds like an admission that it"d be impossible to perfectly recapture the spirit of Cosmic Slop, it"s just as well, since what they stir up here is its own kind of immersively sprawling 2010s kind of thing. Underrated upon release and overshadowed by the concurrent release of his essential autobiography Brothas Be, Yo Like George, Ain"t That Funkin" Kinda Hard On You?: A Memoir, this record"s a valiant, usually successful effort at proving that a man who was one of the sharpest creative minds of the "70s could still flourish in his 70s.

The irony about this album being Clinton"s last before his extended hiatus is that it"s a record rooted in his idea of legacy. That unwieldy acronym stands for "The Awesome Power Of A Fully Operational Mothership," and it comes from the fact that it"s the first record to feature most of the original P-Funk core since the crew drifted apart in the early "80s. It wasn"t cheap -- it reportedly took $40 grand apiece to bring Bootsy and Bernie back into the fold -- and their role on the record is brief at best, their warbling, burbling presence floating through gelatin on the woozy "Sloppy Seconds." Not that it matters much; T.A.P.O.A.F.O.M. really feels like more of a synthesis of (and response to) what P-Funk had become after the likes of Dr. Dre and DJ Quik got ahold of it, a recursive answer to their own phantom presence in other peoples" work.

Of course that presence was all over g-funk, and P-Funk"s repayment slides into that mode with comfortable familiarity -- they"re not quite impersonating themselves, but they do feel refracted through the knowledge of what they represented in the "90s and subsequently play up their most hip-hop friendly traits. "Summer Swim," "Hard As Steel," "Funky Kind (Gonna Knock It Down)," and "Rock The Party" all lean on the meandering Minimoogs and handclap-garnished, woofer-throbbing low-end rhythms that begged to be sampled (but, somehow, never really were). But Clinton"s willingness to collaborate with hip-hop artists gives us another angle: the lead cut and first single "If Anybody Gets Funked Up (It"s Gonna Be You)," co-produced by East Coast legend Erick Sermon and featuring featuring Flint, Michigan"s MC Breed, both of whom had their own acknowledged debts to the P-Funk. The bounce doesn"t rise far above waist level, and the most transcendent moments are its slower ones -- like the gorgeous "New Spaceship," featuring guest vocals from none other than Uncle Charlie Wilson -- but this album"s possibilities of a reinvigorated, contemporary-minded elder statesman George Clinton engaging fully with the two-way integration of hip-hop into his music only made his subsequent absence that much more frustrating.

Clinton admitted in his autobiography that the final Funkadelic album for 33 years "wasn"t exactly what I wanted." His coke-addled misadventures with musical collaborator Sly Stone, his struggles with getting his own ill-fated Uncle Jam Records label off the ground, and his squabbles with ship-jumping bandmates turned what could"ve been a fantastic concept record into an underfocused wind-down. Considering how massive his solo cut "Atomic Dog" was the following year, and given the overall strength of Computer Games as an album, Clinton clearly wasn"t out of ideas and hadn"t lost his commercial appeal. But there"s a reason that album was billed as a solo joint: the P-Funk empire was falling apart, and keeping it all together was more of a strain on the once-strong entity than it could withstand. It didn"t help that Warner Bros. lost their faith in the band -- they short-sold the LP (less than 100,000 copies were pressed) and made the unprecedented move of censoring Pedro Bell"s suggestive cartoon sleeve.

That"s tragic, given how right-place-right-time The Electric Spanking Of War Babies should"ve been -- a flirtation with New Wave that nailed every "80s corporate-government, mass-media manipulation shock doctrine fear while the decade was still in its Reagan-deregulated infancy. And it"s still strong enough to make a decent endcap to a stretch of decade-spanning wire-to-wire career greatness. First there"s the title track, an examination of the still-popular charges of Baby Boomer sellout syndrome, where a two-man operation (Hampton on guitar, Junie on everything else) bring up the formative experiences of nuclear fear, Vietnam, genetic science, and the Moon landing as media-mediated programming to mess up young minds."Oh, I," despite being originally slated for Parliament"s Trombipulation, fits the vibe well, too; Shider-wailed lyrics about escaping into memories of a lost love over a staggering blend of cocktail-jazz sax/piano and from-the-gut Hampton guitar give the album its wistful heart. The two-part "Funk Gets Stronger" stays defiant in the face of encroaching cultural defunkification, loping Mudd Club twitchiness giving Sly his most enigmatically compelling vocal performance since There"s A Riot Goin" On. Even the musically off moments have merit; hearing Funkadelic do extended pan-Carribean drum solos ("Brettino"s Bounce") and Blondie-adjacent reggae ("Shockwaves") feels out of character, but the communication to other reaches of the diaspora ("the third world is on the one... sending out shockwaves throughout the world") is worth the effort. And maybe the smutty satire "Icka Prick" is a bizarre note to go out on, but tweaking prudes years before the PMRC were a glint in Tipper Gore"s jaundiced eye is as good a legacy-cementer as anything.

There"s a reason this transitional Westbound contract-obligation release is generally considered an afterthought by fans, even with "Undisco Kidd" becoming a part of their set list during their legendary "76 and "77 tours. With material recorded concurrently alongside Hardcore Jollies (which is several clicks further along on this list), but not actually saved for their Warner Bros. debut, Tales Of Kidd Funkadelic is a misnomer in both album and song title. Guitarist Michael "Kidd Funkadelic" Hampton had his big coming-out moment with the astounding Let"s Take It To The Stage, as definitive an introduction as any newly-christened band member could hope for, while his instrumentation is relatively backgrounded compared to Bernie Worrell"s synthesizer. (That goes double for the wandering, thirteen-minute title track, which is the closest P-Funk"s come to the more indulgent Rick Wakeman-y side of prog.) In fact, the whole record feels weirdly enervated -- when you run across a song like the anthemic "Take Your Dead Ass Home! (Say Som"n Nasty)" or the truncated mini-jam "Let"s Take It To The People" and the immediate impulse is to think, "Man, I bet this sounds amazing live," it"s easy to fixate on how first-draft and b-side most of this record is. A little more polish, a little more oomph, and a little more getting in the ears of WB higher-ups, and this could"ve made a fine second LP in a Hardcore Jollies double-album set. As it is, it"s leftovers served lukewarm.

The first album to be released under the P-Funk aegis was a drastic break from the late-"60s singles that the Parliaments released on labels like Revilot and Atco, and the title signified as much: Osmium is the densest element on the periodic table, a transition metal found in platinum ore named after the Greek root word for "smell." Considering how much of a transition their early-"70s stank-riddled, heavy metal sound represented -- the platinum would come later -- it"s difficult to think of a more apropos title for the LP that would introduce the world to Parliament as we know it. Or at least somewhat know it: the last album released as Parliament until 1974"s Up For The Down Stroke thanks to a label dispute with Revilot, Osmium feels like a short-term hitch in George Clinton"s vision of a complementary two-band dichotomy. In other words, it"s a lot more similar to a circa-"70 Funkadelic record than tandem Parliament/Funkadelic LPs would be in, say, 1975; the main distinction is that it"s willfully, absurdly eclectic to the point where it"s clear they"re still getting their identity together.

You know that twangy yodel from De La"s "Potholes In My Lawn"? That"s from "Little Ole Country Boy," which features an honest-to-god steel guitar and a full-tilt wailing lament of a monologue from Fuzzy Haskins freaking out about being busted as a peeping tom after trying to find out if his girlfriend was cheating on him. "My Automobile" pulls Clinton and Haskins" doo-wop