Thursday, July 17, 2008
1985 George Clinton Rockpalast Extravaganza
Hey digital cable subscribers. You have until the end of July to check out a classic 1985 German broadcast of George Clinton and Funkadelic on concert_tv. It is under the heading "Never Before Seen"
I sure have heck never have seen this. It is the best live footage I have ever seen of George Clinton in person. It was recorded at an outdoor festival and features some wild encore jam sessions with Funkadelic and Red Hot Chili Peppers, Untouchables, and Killing Joke.
It begins with a cherry picker and Gary Shider way up in the sky, singing Cosmic Slop, playing the 'which one is George Clinton?" intro. He lays down the "I can hear my mother call" choru. And then the master guitar army of Blackbyrd McKnight, Michael Hampton, and the great late Eddie Hazel frying, sizzling, and acting as the grand executioners of funk with a capitol F. Meanwhile the cherry picker has landed and George takes the stage garbed a bit alike Shider was in the picker, but up close we see he is doing the pimp fur coat thing with lots of big white (maybe faux?) minks hanging from arms and shoulders.
In 1985 it is a far different looking George than at present. In the late eighties he transformed physically, like Garcia becoming a white bearded old man in the mid sevenites. But he's pretty skinny here, in a white outfit that I believe was used for laser tag, reminiscent of Elvis at the first Las Vegas comeback engagement. But there is no way George is going to sing American Trilogy. He is in top form here, cajoling, funkleading, mugging from the camera, rolling on the floor and even humping the monitors once or twice. Gary "diaper man" Shider is in prime form as well.
This is an interesting time capsule document for Clinton. It is definitely Funkadelic, not the PFunk All Stars. Does it really matter. Like Sun Ra, the name will change but the band and experience is much the same (the Sun Ra short list on Wikipedia:" "The Solar Myth Arkestra", "His Cosmo Discipline Arkestra", the "Blue Universe Arkestra", "The Jet Set Omniverse Arkestra") Yet in this show, there is definitely a sense of all cylinders firing as Funkadelic, usually a more rock based attack to the funk, draws on the book of 15 years or so of various George Clinton lead projects
I remember a Rolling Stone profile of D'Angelo several year's ago where he was smoking blunts with his crew. It went something like this.
D'Angelo: Remember that George Clinton bootleg video, what was that worth?
Acoloyte: Everything
I'm not saying that this video is the Rosetta stone, holy grail or lost ark, but I'm sure considering that this is finally the motivation to get some research done and purchase a DVD recorder at long last. Here is an excerpt illustrating my reason why:
posted by well-executed buffet at 9:18 PM
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