George Clinton had a long history as a songwriter/performer, forming The Parliaments in the back room of a barbershop in 1956 and releasing singles on mostly obscure record labels, until a stint with Motown put him in the top 5 on the R&B charts in 1967 with the doo-wop classic “(I Wanna) Testify”.

Legal issues forced Clinton to abandon “The Parliaments” (who took their name from the cigarette brand), so he re-named his ever-evolving group of musicians ‘Funkadelic’, abandoning the doo-wop stylings of his old band and moving toward a much looser, funkier style. The result was nothing less than a brand-new counter-culture, with its own style, language and mythology.

If, like me, you were a white kid from the suburbs, this was a lot to absorb, and most of the socio-political aspects of Clinton’s creation spun around over (or under) my head, but that didn’t stop me from feeling the groove. Bouncing back and forth between Parliament and Funkadelic, using mostly the same musicians under either banner, Clinton made music that offered a freaky sense of freedom to anybody willing to get on board the mothership. The sky was the limit, and Clinton can now say that he created an entirely new subculture based around his music. How many people can say that?

Featured tracks:

P. Funk (Wants to Get Funked Up)

Mothership Connection (Star Child)

Unfunky UFO

Supergroovalisticprosifunkstication

Handcuffs

Give Up the Funk (Tear the Roof Off the Sucker)

Night of the Thumpasorus Peoples

December 1975 - Billboard Charted #13