Funkadelic - Maggot Brain (1971 Great Psychedelic Soul)

Funkadelic is a heavyweight psychedelic-soul experiment that pits rough rock guitar and instrumentals against soul chants. A collective of voices and musicians, who also double as Parliament, Invictus group, rock and soul, some of the funkiest, far-out flings in soul music. "Can You Get To That," "You And Your Folks" and "Wars at Armageddon" are typical Funkadelic freak-outs. (Billboard 1971)


I'll just say it up front: the title song of this album contains the best guitar solo in the history of rock music. You won't believe me, probably, because you have your own favorite solos clutched tightly to your chest, and anyway, isn't Funkadelic, well, y'know, a funk band? I salute your right to worship your own guitar gods; that's why we listen to loud music. But don't let the name of the band, or their color, or the age of this album fool you: Eddie Hazel recorded - in one take - the solo against which all other solos would be measured if he hadn't been African American. Sorry to play the race card, but it MUST be true.

The story on Maggot Brain is that George Clinton, out of his mind on Yellow Sunshine, told Hazel to play the first half of the song as if he had just heard that his own mother was dead, and then the second half as if he had found out she was alive. The result is beyond "astonishing" or "powerful" or anything else critics usually say; it's an improvised composition, of both deep blues purity and cold, hard, futuristic vision. There is a band backing it, but it fades out (reputedly because they sounded shitty next to Hazel), and it's pretty much just one man showing us what he's made of. If you've heard it, you know what I'm talking about. If you haven't, well, the record store is open and you just got paid.

The rest of the album is excellent, too, and diverse, with the soul of "Back in Our Minds" sounding great next to the Black Sabbath funk of "Super Stupid" (which contains, by the way, another stunning Eddie Hazel solo), and the Bernie Worrell organ burnout of "Hit It and Quit It." And the whole thing ends in perfect Funkadelic fashion with "Wars of Armageddon," a long-ass guitar workout featuring screaming, hilariously over-the-top crowd chanting, sound effects that make no sense (cows, farts, sirens, canned sitcom laughter), and the overall feeling that everything is coming apart. (Hey: it was Detroit in 1971.) This CD is not quite 37 minutes long, but it runs the gamut of emotions, musical styles, and points of view. And it contains the greatest guitar solo in the world.(Matt Cibula)

Funkadelic, a black group from the still riot-smoldering streets of Plainfield, New Jersey, pushed their energies into total freak-rock mind expansion beyond their riot-wrecked environs and heads and beyond the staid, tried and true frontiers/boundaries of what both black and white American culture demanded from black musicians. These said styles--soul, R&B, blues and doo-wop-- also operated to some extent as an imprisoning musical ghetto. So it was a true leap forward when George Clinton, Funkadelicís guiding light, vocalist, songwriter and arranger, synthesized elements from all these styles and fused them into a ghetto blast off that was Funkadelic, about as alien to the older black music establishment as possible.
All the Hendrix and Zappa comparisons are just that because early Funkadelic from this period was a far more casual and hungry a proposition. I mean, if you can ever get your hands on the original Westbound LP, just look at the group picture in the gatefold: A bald and eye-shaded Tawl Ross is holding a Belgian block in one hand, head tilted to one side, wearing a cheap and ugly multi-coloured leather jacket oozing nothing but attitude (And in a totally Iggy way, as a friend of mine pointed out recently). The other members are posed in positions of not street corner bullcrappiní, but stoned, thin, ready for everything and smiling out of their skulls, from the barren, rubble-strewn abandoned Plainfield lot.

The title track instrumental unfurls side one with a Clinton intonation and damply echoed drums slowly thud out against an ever-swaying, cradling rhythm guitar which guitarist Eddie Hazel begins to hang his delay, fuzz-wah and sustain runs against. Thereís even the crackling of unseated guitar-to-amp cord, which doesnít do anything but add to the real, stripped of all pretense atmosphere. Thereís soaring feedback trail-offs, and the guitar does gently disappear at times, only to reappear along with the drums, occurring unnoticeably often. A hi-hat is way in the background as Hazel reappears with a sprightly guitar run with all effects off, only to deftly slip back into a fuzz-wah double-tracked delay right before it rips through all the barbed wire stitches and into an ultra-psychedelic disjointed run that hovers over the waste of ghettos everywhere. Itís a wail of injustice, with nowhere to turn but to guitar and amplifier as cop, judge and jury. And the only judgment a soothing voice encouraging, ìGo, Maggot Brainî. Even at about ten minutes long, it still fades to soon, and this track holds some of the purest, expressive and unwavering guitar soloing ever. It is imbued and practically short-lists ALL THE SHIT from Hazelís personal experiences specifically and is a microcosm of all the flaming shit hoops blacks had to jump through not to just be accepted, but to SURVIVE. How these actions impacted psychologically over several hundred years worth of this treatment and manifested within members of this exploited and suppressed human race is unfathomable to conceive. And it was this experience that drove Clinton to create a mythology to catapult himself out of the white world, out of the USA and into the heavens with his ideas, music and stage presentation. Because only then was he was a free man.

The rest of side one is taken up with three songs. ìCan You Get To Thatî is gospel hour, with low, low Ruben & The Jets ìyou can come out of the closet nowî vocalizing against a group chorus with acoustic guitar and Bernie Worrellís first appearance, here on piano. ìHit It And Quit Itî is where Worrell is on genre-traversing Hammond leads as an echo-chambered Hazel solo, appear though at the fade out, burns on and on. The bottom heavy ìYou And Your Folks, Me And My Folksî features more of the drums echoed into almost metallic bursts as piano and percussion fill a dark and heavy night. The assembled vocal chorus of ìYeah, yeah, yeahî sways throughout in a gospel zone dub out.
Side two is where Funkadelic go completely over the top. There are only three songs, and they are relentlessly free of everything except for the ability to zap at two thousand paces. The first track, ìSuper Stupidî is about as heavy as Funkadelic ever gotówhich is to say, itís got a tighter stop and start groove than Bonzo on ìPresenceî and the most roaringingly out-of-control-yet-in-control and out there guitar Eddie Hazel ever laid down. His rhythm snakes through an entire scat-ass chorus, mimicking it, and never loses speed. In fact, Hazel, Fulwood, Nelson, Worrell, Ross, everybodyóis unconsciously so behind the groove, that the combined momentum pushes it ever so slightly and undetectably faster with every second (You only need to listen to it on CD repeat a few times. After it ends, compare it to the opening of the drums at the beginning. I donít know how they ever laid that down or made it work, but there was no thought behind it at all. Itís magic, sheer fuck magic). And Hazelís electric fence fry-out at the fade is some of the most O-mind French kissing of all time. ìBack In Our Mindsî is the necessary goofball percussion and piano sing-along, seeing as itís wedged between ìSuper Stupidî and the extended LP finale, ìWars Of Armageddonî, which is nearly ten minutes of ìTime Has Come Todayî cowbell, while Worrellís organ and the tight drums keep it all in the pocket as the sounds of crying babies, more extreme wah-wahíed soloing from Hazel, cries of ìGoddamn hypocrite!î all fly over the ever-steady Funkadelic rhythm section. In this case, the whole band is the rhythm section, so tight yet loose as it is. More muddled voices and then laughter appear. The groove has been heating up for four minutes with no sign of stopping when a cuckoo clock sounds, along with a goofy ìPoo poo pa doo!î as the Grandest Funk Railroad of all times is steaming down the tracks, not even stopping for the cow moo sound effects. The drums get all hammered into an ultra-compressed tinny din like King Tubby recording The Who in 1965, and then the whole ìMore Power/Pussy/People to The People/Pussy/Powerî proclamations start up, and pretty soon, farting. It all cuts off with multiple A-bombs going off, Clinton intoning as the last minute becomes nothing but silenceÖall the bullshit, along with the entire world, is goneÖuntil a human heartbeat appears.

Then the wildly giddy Funkadelic jam returns ever so slightly, just to blow your mind even further. Which their Westbound albums do at an alarming rate, but fewer still at this velocity. (Reviewed by The Seth Man, 24th July 2000)

01 - Maggot Brain - 10.20
02 - Can You Get To That - 2.50
03 - Hit It And Quit It - 3.50
04 - You And Your Folks, Me And My Folks - 3.36
05 - Super Stupid - 3.57
06 - Back In Our Minds - 2.38
07 - Wars Of Armegeddon - 9.44

Post by CGR