RIP Garry Shider
Garry Shider, Starchild, Diaperman, dead at 56. One of the greatest figures in music history is no more.
Garry Shider embodied everything good about P-Funk - his eccentricity, outrageousness and childlike sense of unrepressed fun shone through every time you watched him perform or speak. His talents as a musician are self-evident and I don’t feel the need to recount the oft-told tale of how he came to the band but it needs to be reiterated that this man co-wrote some major songs ‘One Nation Under a Groove’, ‘Uncle Jam’, ‘Oh, I’, Let’s Take It To The Stage’ ‘Night Of The Thumpasorous Peoples’, ‘Unfunky UFO’, ‘Bop Gun’, ‘Atomic Dog’ amongst others. That he was one of the few major P-Funkers to remain a constant in the line-up since the heyday is surely an indication of how much he identified with the overall aesthetic project of the band. His importance to and identification with George’s general intellectual project cannot be overestimated, for instance who else would be Clinton’s co-writer on two of Funkadelic’s most disgusting and deepest statements of purpose and intent Promentalshitbackwashpsychosis Enema Squad and Icka Prick. He was George’s most trusted comrade-in-arms when it came completely undermining the rules of repression they call civilization.
By all accounts a man of great kindness and love, Garry Shider of course wore a diaper onstage for the entirety of his career, perhaps one of P-Funk’s most lasting impression in the conciousness of millions. Who else of such great talent would take themselves so unseriously to happily look that foolish. And who else would take their project so seriously to offer themselves as a symbol of the great values of this music – cosmic silliness, childlike openness, polymorphous acceptance, absolute equality and fun. And it always looked like fun for Garry. To a life that deserves all the applause the future can give it. Love ya Starchild.
