as many of you know, i'm not a huge P-Funk fan...but they have some joints that i absolutely love.

Cosmic Slop is one of them. this video is fascinating, disturbing, funky, demented, frightening, innocent and freaky all at the same time. i'm transfixed every time i look at it. this is some wild shit.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=o8vBDET3kbI

the devil singing 'would you like to dance with me? we're doing the cosmic slop'

is a cold ass line

for me it's second to music for my mother in Funkadelic's catalog

I saw them live with George Clinton in april of 2009 and they did a rocking version of this song. Hampton was killing it on the guitar the entire performance. I paid 75 bucks for that tix at the variety playhouse in atlanta,ga and it was worth it.

this is before music videos were even thought of. everybody in the video being silly and bizarre all in one take. classic.....

That was the song and album that the whole Funkadelic thang really came together

(even though I still prefer their earlier, more primitive material)

but were still jammin.
everything...the bassline, the hook, the vocal performance...perfecto.
I'm a stan tho.

Well, I dig it but I prefer both the earlier records (excluding "America eats its young") as well as the next two; something about the album sounds a bit strange to me, songs like "You can't miss what you can't measure", "Let's make it last" and "Can't stand the strain" sounds almost like late 60's "psychedelic" Temptations. Basically, much of the record sound a bit behind compared with other funk/soul from the era. I think Clinton and Worrell needed people like Eddie Hazel, Bootsy Collins or (later) Junie Morrison to really give the music some vision and style and put it into a more contemporary framework...

Obviously not "cross over" completely because it's not like they had any intentions of being mainstream dressing like they did... But at least to get airplay on the Black radio stations that played Sly & the Family Stone, Ohio Players, EWF, etc.

Some of the guys in the band were very unhappy with the direction and the move to pander to Black radio but George said "Look, we might as well try to get on Black radio because it ain't like (white) rock radio is playing us anyway!"

It's interesting that you compare the sound to "psychedelic" Temptations because those Tempts records were quite influenced by George (who was still working at Motown at the time).

because it never sounds normal.
even when he tries to "act right" he just can't.

even their stuff as the parliaments is... off.

But even then... there's something that always fascinates me about this particular era in Black music: Like, we've gotten used over the past 30+ years to really freaky, vulgar, base, out-there shit.... so it's not all that shocking to us.

But can you imagine what it must have been like back then? I mean, not just for the audience but even the performers... One minute you're wearing matching tuxedos with your process slick with a gallon of oil and the next you're in a diaper and body paint?

Must have been an incredible jump into the void... how liberating that must have felt!

That's why I've spoken in the past about how despite the claims that there was never a generation gap in Black music until hip-hop arrived, I think Funk was really the line in the sand that cut a new generation off from the one before it.

you were looking a band that
lived through the sexual repression/ jim crow/
and shit good happening if you're black era...
a band that started out trying to conform their music to that
type of sensability...



that one day just apparantly stopped give a fuck
entirely aand just blew the door wide open.

then all of a sudden it's WIDE open.



it's infinitely fascniating.




and for the record, i scoff when people say
that hip hop was "rebellious."


the new jacks ain't got shit on p-funk
when it comes to being "free."

It was quite the opposite of that, in fact...

Hip-hop was the cats that was "cool... but had no groove" that George mocked in "Music For My Mother." And George later said that hip-hoppers (at least by the early 90s) reminded him of Sir Nose, or of white people and suburban Blacks.

Actually, I think I'll agree with you... Hip-hop was not rebellious per se, but it was revolutionary. It upturned the entire Black music status quo but I don't think it even did so deliberately.

It's from 68 or something and it sounds really garage-psych soul;supercool shit IMO, they were right up there with Sly Stone but he had albums out whereas they put those songs on b-sides on more commercial singles.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=av2qWFNgOq4

http://youtu.be/Nox1ch4j8zU

So funny that these early versions were grimier than the re-recorded versions.

It's hilarious how much stuff George not just re-recorded but also re-contextualized and took snippets/riffs/¤whatever from later in their career. It's almost 4as if he sto4pped writing *songs* after the late 60's-early 70's

curtis Mayfield and the Superfly buzz with the vocals.

oh yeah George Clinton wanted cross over and hits in the worst way and why not? I mean He had aruguably the most talented group of musicians in one band who could play any and everything, but yet they were not structured or presented as structured and it worked, but him being the mastermind wanted to throw things off and it worked.

Clinton wanted to be part of both worlds and yet keep an indy attitude. it worked because though they had big hits they still were able to be seen as doing there own thang and come out of there own bag.