George Clinton & Parliament/Funkadelic @ First Avenue

The diapers may have been traded in for depends and the spaceship has long been put into storage, but that doesn’t mean that George Clinton and his nearly 20 member strong Parliament Funkadelic have lost any of their mojo that helped make them one of the most influential and entertaining bands of all time. The group, which had about as many crazy dressed people on stage as a Girl Talk concert, warmed up a large crowd that had stumbled in from the blistering cold with hits from both past and present, showing why after all these years people still bow at the altar of P-Funk.

The band, which at any given time employed bass, drums, two keyboards, 6 backup singers, 5 guitar players, two horn players and a guy in all white fur whose sole purpose seemed to dance around the stage, was a perfect mix of tight musicianship and loose, sloppy funk. The band came on stage shortly before 10:30 and played a “warm up” set of music for about 50 minutes. The early set, with funk and soul numbers from various P-Funk releases, highlighted some of the younger and lesser known talent that often times gets overshadowed when Clinton gets on stage. The current incarnation of P-Funk, made up of old men in crazy outfits and younger women in more, um, revealing attire, really got going over the course of that intro hour and had the crowds anticipation growing. Amidst a scorching version of “Cosmic Slop” finally saw the emergence of the man whose legend has grown to epic proportions over the years, not least for the fact that he has somehow survived years of brain frying drug consumption.

Once Clinton lumbered on stage, the band took it to the next level and started really busting out the gems. They played many of the stone cold classics, including “P-Funk (Wants to Get Funked Up),” “Give up the Funk (Tear the Roof off the Sucker),” “Flashlight” and “Up for the Down Stroke.” In the middle of the set the band cleared off the stage except for a handful of musicians so that they could play the epic guitar jam “Maggot Brain,” which was a pretty surreal experience. Although it is always dangerous trying to recreate a song of that magnitude, it still was a rousing success and had everyone, from the people in the back to George Clinton on the side of the stage, watching in awe of the guitar heroics of Michael Hampton, who has played his own version of the original Eddie Hazel classic for close to 30 years. Any doubts that George Clinton and Parliament/Funkadelic are a jam band was erased during the 3rd hour of their set. The music was focused and tight, but there was an ample amount of noodling and Clinton ordered horn and guitar solos at his own discretion (Any Phish fans out there should realize that their favorite band is at heart a whiter and less funky version of the amazing P-Funk machine). While the band was having no trouble soldiering on, I found myself falling fast and eventually had to throw in the towel when the set was creeping up on 1:00a.m. I am not sure how long they ended up playing, but George Clinton, who has been smoking crack longer than I have been on this earth, didn’t show any signs of slowing down as I slouched out of the venue into the cold and made my way home for a few hours of much needed sleep.

One thing that became strikingly obvious over the course of the show was that George Clinton is first and foremost a highly profitable brand. It didn’t matter that a handful of the band members probably were not even alive when Maggot Brain was released, as long as he was going to be there. The band, which sounded excellent, was there to serve as the musical reminder of the amazing historical nature of this cultural lexicon known as P-Funk. Anyone who has thrown down too much money to see a “classic” band knows that you are guaranteed nothing more than re-interpretations of songs from years gone by performed by artists who may or may not be doing it for the money. You occasionally get lucky, with still relevant performers like Neil Young and Bruce Springsteen wowing audiences, but for every Young or Springsteen, there are countless bands loitering on stages all across the country that have no business plugging in their instruments. Luckily for die hard P-Funk fans (and especially lucky for the brave souls who navigated the death traps we call roads last night), this band has not fallen to those lows, at least in my eyes. While I am not saying that this current group would rival the Bootsy Collins, Eddie Hazel, Bernie Worrell group that made some of the best songs of the 70’s, they definitely did nothing to denigrate the legacy of this amazing group. For those of us who were still about 10 years from being created when they were in their prime, it was just cool to see George Clinton onstage singing and (kind of ) dancing to the songs that have made such an amazing and lasting impression on a majority of popular music. P-Funk is one of those bands that, even with every word in the English language, cannot be accurately described. If you are a fan of any of the P-Funk catalog (and if you are not, you should be), check out this massively influential band the next chance you get.

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