Funkadelic

Certain Songs #484: Funkadelic – “Can You Get To That”

March 18, 2016 by Jim Connelly

Album: Maggot Brain
Year: 1971

An improbable mix of gospel, soul and folk-rock, and featuring a vocal round-robin that both Sly Stone and Kanye West spent their entire careers trying to recreate in ways both natural and artificial, “Can You Get To That” is a departure from the normal Funkadelic sound that stands as one of the greatest songs of the 1970s.

I first heard it in the mid-1980s on a Funkadelic compilation called Best of The Early Years, Vol 1 that I snagged from the Music Library at Fresno State.

Certain Songs #483: Funkadelic – “Maggot Brain”

March 17, 2016 by Jim Connelly

Album: Maggot Brain
Year: 1971

It starts with the sound of a broken speaker fuzzing out and a no doubt tripping George Clinton seriously “Mother Earth has become pregnant for the third time, for y’all have knocked her up,” and shortly after that, a slow guitar vamp in one speaker, like you’d hear at the beginning of a slow torch ballad.

Then Eddie Hazel gets to work in the other speaker.

Certain Songs #482: Funkadelic – “Funky Dollar Bill”

March 16, 2016 by Jim Connelly

Album: Free Your Mind … And Your Ass Will Follow
1970

So apparently, George Clinton has admitted/bragged that Free Your Mind … And Your Ass Will Follow was cut while the band was tripping on acid.

And yeah, even on the single “Funky Dollar Bill”, you can feel the LSD-25 dripping from every single echoed guitar riff, every single wah-wah workout, every single discordant piano note. They clearly had access to the good stuff.

20 Musical Moments to Die For

January 23, 2009 by Jim Connelly

Somewhere underneath all of that hair is Neil Young. This month, on Musical Moments to Die For: secrets, influences, and secret influences, all book-ended by the two best bands to ever come from Athens, GA.

We’ve also got the front-runners for greatest guitar and organ solos ever; Neil Young’s most despairing moment; and not one, not two, but three variations of the beat solidified by the late, great Ellas McDaniel.

As always, I’m not necessarily talking about hooks here, more like traps. The parts of these songs that bring me back to them over and over again.

This is the sixth in a series: The first one had 25, the second one had 24, the third one had 23, the fourth one had 22, the fifth one had 21.

And yeah, you probably see the pattern and think you know the endgame, but I can promise you that there’s a twist!