Idealism and Panpsychism in the bombed out embers of Black Power
When Norman Whitfield turned the Tempts funk it was the best recognition that Motown politic had become out of step with a Black America that had seen Detroit burn, Bobby Searle gagged and bound in the courtroom and the two greatest leaders of the African-American peoples assassinated. The focus on the urban ghetto was natural as the positivity of civil rights movement gave way to heroin, Nixon and Vietnam draft tours of duty. Sly gave Funk and Soul its first radical political icon. It was a stroke of genius to send The Temptations, classic Motown’s greatest male group, to the inner city to reflect on the state of Black America. As one who as always found Curtis Mayfield a bit too programmatic and pat those early 70s Temptations funk records - operatic yet with more forward motion than a northbound train - sum up that year zero after detroit from the point of view of the man, or the kid, of the sixties who really thought things were on the up, and the one who never believed they would. Where Mayfield (a wonderful artist no doubt) could only give us Curtis’ preachers lament The Temptations, Whitfield and lyricist Barrett Strong gave us a kaleidoscope of black male perspectives totally fictional and plausible.
It was around this time, decisively influenced by Sly Stone, the Temptations and the whacked-out Detroit rock like The Stooges and MC5 that George Clinton decided to give the talented kids backing his go nowhere soul band The Parliaments the musical initiative. No doubt vibing off the same buzz as Norman Whitfield he took the new venture in characteristically left field territory- hard drugs, ghetto slang, occultism and escapism. If a seriously unfunky German professor who probably wouldn’t have endorsed wearing diapers on stage or acid eating contests was correct in suggesting that ‘the veiled tendency of calamity of society cons its victims in the false revelation, in the hallucinatory phenomenon. They hope, in vain, that its fragmentary obviousness will enable them to look at the total doom in the eye and withstand it’. Then maybe that’s one reason why the band that a few years earlier in the upturn of social struggle were writing doowop and slighty left-field motown-alike ballads were now letting the Satanists of the Process Church of the Final Judgment write its liner notes. It’s as if the breaking of the sixties dream still left a tendency for antinomianism however deranged. It is probably necessary to say that the main plank of Funkadelic philosophy is the problem of naturalism – that of what is man’s place in nature – but I shall deal with that in a longer post in the future – so I just wish to note some more specific observations about early Funkadelic and their times.
The first (self-titled) album it is already notable that for a fully fledged aesthetical escapism. This band certainly didn’t care for the light approach to the popular druggy surrealism prevalent in rock and harder soul at that time. Despite talk of joints rolled in toilet paper and ham in corn flakes the album sounds extremely dark and foreboding. The first track, such a great introduction to the overall aesthetic of the band, is the classic ’Mommy, What’s a Funkadelic’ (answer: someone from North Carolina who saw eternity on acid and tried to contain it within a groove). It’s George Clinton’s first outing of using alter ego’s and fictional personalities, his announcer style patter later perfected on ‘Mothership Connection’ and ‘Funkentelechy’ this time as somebody called ‘Funk’ from another planet wanting the listener to come with him. The perfect little guitar figure is the take off point for some stretched out jamming under a great nonsense vocal line and a Clinton’s dirty come-on innuendo. ‘What is Soul’ similarly finds a groove that’s pleasurable and sticks with it, it’s a slow burning foot tapping piece with guitar and harmonica fighting it out for funky supremacy.
The second Funkadelic album ‘Free Your Ass… and Your Mind Will Follow’ is even more out there. The great title perfectly sums up the bands idealism (in both senses) in a beautifully concise phrase (though perhaps a materialist should reconfigure it to ‘Free Your Ass… and Your Mind Will Follow’, or even ‘With the Correct Ass / Mind Praxis You Could Be Free’) that without realising it takes conventional (that is to say the dominant) idealist thinking about human liberation to its nonsensical end point. Alongside that line we also get the group chanting Clinton’s classic line of being ‘Free from the need to be free’ and Tolstoy’s (?) ‘The Kingdom of Heaven is Within’ accompanied by jive talk, screams and stoned Hazel guitar work in a dirge that becomes more funky as it goes on. The many singers seem to be on the same page and the music is tight and addictive but the chatter and odd noises have a alienating effect too. Needless to say the result is pretty disturbing, utterly suggestive of a bunch of people trying to get away from social tumult even if their own minds (via chemicals means) is the only place to go. As often in George Clinton’s work subjective idealism is mixed with notions of togetherness and community – even when he edges towards solipsism he knows the only life is social life. In a way it sounds (if in form not content) reminiscent of some ceremony or religious ritual. There is an odd formalism to the monotony of the drums and keyboards counterposed to the soaring fuzzed-out guitar. The static alongside the ecstatic, the later necessitated by the presence of the former – a musical metaphor for the need for illusions in a painful world. Like the even more bizarre final track ‘Eulogy and Light’ which features the Lord’s Prayer read to electronics and feedback, the result sounds like a bunch of people who having lived with the reality decided that black America of 1970 was the last place they wanted to be. As if the decadent abyss was more desirable than the world they lived. If Detroit was a heartless world then music was the opium of Funkadelic with acid probably one of many enablers. These overall impression of these two albums can only be said to be that of a strange hedonism – essentially represented by the pace and repetition of the music - one that is the only adequate escape from the social misery and claustrophobia palpably expressed by the way the music itself sounds.
Maggot Brain, 1971, is a less downbeat album featuring a few top-notch soul and rock tunes, including the beautiful socially wise ’Can You Get to That’, the hard rocking cautionary tale ‘Super Stupid’ and the great ‘You and Your Folks, Me and My Folks’ a class conscious defence of interracial love. However, Funkadelic still deliver one of their weirdest and most crazed pieces of music ever. Whilst the subject matter of Vietnam takes it away from the escapist mysticism of the previous long form jams the treatment is characteristically bizarre enough to warrant note of kinship. The dirty funk groove ’Wars of Armageddon’ truly looks doom in the eye. The syncopated drumming, keyboards mixing chords with licks and fills, scratchy rhythm guitar and high-pitched soloing are mixed with screaming, mock protests chants (More power to the pussy!), tannoy announcements and weird noise effects. It’s like a veteran back home still living in the thick of battle inside their head, like splicing the dissent at home with the violence abroad. War is truly a madhouse here.
The final puzzle piece are Eddie Hazel’s long virtuoso guitar solos that are usually given a programmatic subject by way of a George Clinton ‘sermon’ (monologue), the most famous being ’Maggot Brain’:
Mother Earth is pregnant for the third time
For y’all have knocked her up.
I have tasted the maggots in the mind of the universe
I was not offended
For I knew I had to rise above it all
Or drown in my own shit
Whilst ‘America Eats It’s Young’ proclaims
A luscious bitch she is, true
But it’s not nice to fool mother nature
The proud mother of god like all ho’s
Is jealous of her own shadow
So who is this young Vic Tanny bitch
Who wish to be queen for a day?
Who would sacrifice the great grandsons and daughters
Of her jealous mother
By sucking their brain
Until their ability to think was amputated
By pimping their instincts
Until they were fat, horny and strung-out
In her neurotic attempt to be queen of the universe
Who is this bitch?
While ‘Good Thoughts, Bad Thoughts’ drops the fuzzed out tone for a clearer sound and more mystical message
The oak sleeps in the acorn
The giant sequoia tree sleeps in its tiny seed
The bird waits in the egg
God waits for his unfoldment in man
Fly on, children
Play on
You gravitate to that which you secretly love most
You meet in life the exact reproduction of your own thoughts
There is no chance, coincidence or accident
In a world ruled by law and divine order
You rise as high as your dominant aspiration
You descend to the level of your lowest concept of your self
Free your mind and your ass will follow
Needless to say these silly lines are just a runway it’s the music that takes you off to the heavens. These solos sound like an organic process. The way each guitar line evolves from the last is reminiscent of both the processes of nature and of associative thought. So it’s hardly surprising that George Clinton thought to present them as metaphors for nature and conciousness. However this is not just a sonic representation of abstract natural processes but also devastatingly emotional music. A lament for the pain and suffering in the world. This where Funkadelic’s retreat from reality reaches its peak in panpsychism. Finally the results of social inequality and oppression are naturalised, nature becomes one and all phenomena are themselves at the whim of the cruel necessity of its workings. Artistic lament is the only escape. Philosophical idealism reaches its logical conclusion - go with the flow and be taken where the world wills you. However it is not the world’s will but specific historical forces, class forces, that make and remake the world we live in.
So these early records Funkadelic show us a dialectic of the conciousness of a defeated side in a social struggle. The bitter fruits of the dream deferred is a regression in conciousness. Where outrage at injustices go from being a call to arms to a running away. The thought of ultimate defeat so terrible that victory itself becomes a chimera. However, artistically it makes for a breathless summation of a point in time and timeless music for the heart. Later both Parliament and Funkadelic would reconvene with a different, still radical, politics of pleasure but this early work makes for a thrilling, frightening tour of the bombed out acid-fried fag-end of the radical conciousness and social revolution of the USAs 1960s.
