Carolina Chocolate Drops - Jackson download song

Lyrics

Aaaah… The Name is Bootsy Baby!
In Cincinnati in 1968 William 'Bootsy' Collins formed his first band,
the Pacesetters — with his brother Phelps 'Catfish' Collins, Frankie 'Kash'
Waddy and Phillipe Wynne — who were employed by King Records to back artists
like Arthur Prysock and Hank Ballard. In 1969 King signed James Brown,
who immediately sacked his backing band, and made the Pacesetters the new JBs
For three years Bootsy, Catfish, Kash and Wynne lived and toured as the JBs,
playing on classic hits like 'Sex Machine' (Bootsy was only 16 at the time),
but in '71, tired of «The Godfather"'s dictatorial style, they quit and
returned to Cincinnati to form the sartorially garish House Guests.
The Spinners approached the House Guests, wanting Wynne to become their lead
singer, and the others to be their backing band, but only Wynne accepted,
and so the House Guests continued along parallel lines to Clinton’s Funkadelic
Funkadelic had released three albums on Westbound — Funkadelic, Free Your Mind
and Your Ass Will Follow and Maggot Brain — when the inevitable collaboration
with the House Guests took place. The results appeared on Funkadelic’s 1972
double album America Eats Its Young, with the single 'Philmore' credited to W Collins. P-Funk was born, and from then onwards it was up, up and away
Let’s Do The Cosmic Slop!
Though it often appeared excessive to the point of overkill, and spawned
countless satellite projects, the P-Funk concept was brilliantly simple.
Clinton gathered around him an unlimited pool of the best musicians he could
find, and signed none of them to a record label. Instead what the labels signed
were group names, which meant that P-Funk could pursue as many musical projects
as they could think up names for, release as many albums as they could record,
and no player would be contractually bound if something went wrong.
To top it all, the labels involved (each secretly convinced that Clinton
favoured the others) were competing against each other to sell fundamentally
the same act
Although at one point Bootsy’s Rubber Band became the most commercial wing of Uncle Jam’s Army, the main strands of P-Funk were always Parliament and
Funkadelic, two distinctly different outfits whose live performances demanded a kind of musical schizophrenia from the players involved. Parliament were the
more disciplined, traditionally soulful party, with a blazing horn section,
razor sharp gospel harmonizing and an arsenal of spaced-out comic heroes and
villains. Funkadelic were the rockier, weirder, more political outlet,
with a pair of social X-ray glasses and a raw, intuitive musical feel that
Clinton likened to gospel
Old-fashioned as this may sound, the magic of P-Funk — behind all the anarchic
business scams, the fantastic linguistic swordsmanship and the spaceships — lay
in its musicianship. The concepts and spectacular visual antics of P-Funk took
priority over individual egos or rockstar personality-building, but the
Mothership contained some of the finest musicians ever to grace a stage.
Just look at the core players!
Bernie Worrell and Junie Morrison were left-field keyboard wizards,
and Eddie Hazell, Mike Hampton and Blackbyrd McKnight were hyper-expressive
guitarists who could effortlessly hold their own against the likes of Jimmy
Page or Angus Young. Fred Wesley, Maceo Parker and Rick Gardner were the horn
section to have (Maceo is the only musician James Brown has ever had the
humility to ask back), and no bassist has ever touched what Bootsy was capable
of As for the singers, what a goldmine! From the mike-wrecking superbass of Ray
Davis to the female Sly Stone/EW&F defectors, via soaring midrangers like the
late Glen Goins and Gary Shider, these were major talents. The Rubber Band
sprung to the bass/nasal harmonies of Mudbone and P-Nut, and Clinton himself
was no vocal slouch, alternating between radio jockular rap and a weirdly
emotional falsetto ('We're All Gonna Make It This Time' from America Eats…
still gets my tearducts going)
Clinton enjoyed the services of these and many other musical giants — spanning
every black musical style from church to Jimi Hendrix — cementing the whole
conglomeration with a psychedelic sense of freedom and adventure.
Whilst James Brown fined musicians for playing a note wrong, Clinton didn’t
rehearse them at all. After witnessing a P-Funk All Stars show in Germany in 1985, a stunned German TV presenter asked George how he could possibly organize
a 27-piece band: «The secret is to get cats who can really play.
Then you just have to offer them the possibility of chaos and order on the
same plate, and they’ll go for it every time.»
Anyone who has seen the James Brown Show on a good night knows that JB is the
pressure-cooking heart of funk, but what he does has never strayed outside the
relatively narrow parameters of his unique musical blueprint. Clinton declared
that «nothing is good unless you play with it,» and set about destroying the
soulman superpimp stereotypes, taking funk over the hump to a place where fried
ice cream was a reality. If JB was the arrogant King, George was the
humanitarian, irreverent Jester, with more fantasy in his little finger than
most of his contemporaries put together
Part of the credit for P-Funk's development must go to two label bosses:
Armen Boladian at Westbound, who — in stark contrast to Berry Gordy’s vision
of polished, production-line soul — gave Funkadelic carte blanche (and money)
to record whatever they wanted, and Neil Bogart at Casablanca, who backed
Parliament all the way (before his death he was planning a full-length feature
film of 'The Motor Booty Affair'). With friends like these, Clinton forged a rock’n’soul mind-trip of orchestral proportions, and pumped it out with 30,
000 watts of P-Funk power. Funk was never the same again
Think! It Ain’t Illegal Yet!
The imaginative density of the images, slogans, puns and perceptions that flew
from Clinton’s freewheeling mind, combined with his prolific output —
Parliament, Funkadelic, Bootsy and George Clinton alone released 32
action-packed studio albums-make it futile even to begin a serious study of P-Funk language and themes in this space. But if you’re a P-Funk beginner,
take it from me, every record’s a lyrical treasure trove. I’ll leave the joys
of delving and discovering to you
Songs like 'If You Don’t Like The Effects, Don’t Produce The Cause',
'Chocolate City', 'The Electric Spanking Of War Babies', 'You Shouldn’t
Nuf-Bit Fish' and 'R&B Skeletons (In The Closet)' display Clinton’s ongoing
sociopolitical analyses, but it was George’s myriad fictitious alter-egos that
really fired the public’s imagination. With Dr Funkenstein, Starchild,
Sir Nose D’Voidoffunk, Mr Wiggles, Lollipop Man and all the rest,
George was putting the black man where white folks least expected to find him,
in the White House, as an astronaut, a blond hippy, an army commander,
a scientist and even as the Jacques Cousteau of funk
George’s image of Washington DC as «a chocolate city with vanilla suburbs»
is the most poignant description I’ve ever heard of the American capital
(after 6 pm). I knew, when I visited the city three years ago, that Trouble
Funk’s 'Drop The Bomb' was a reference to Clinton’s uncut funk (as opposed to nuclear war), but still the imprint P-Funk mythology had left on the local
music scene stunned me. The Long-haired Sucker’s slogans were everywhere
Some People Say Is There Funk After Death? I Say Is 7 Up?
P-Funk's current circle of influence stretches way beyond go go and mainstream
funk, to include Philly rap, West Coast electro, Detroit house and white acts
like Was (Not was) and the Red Hot Chili Peppers. If this seems surprising,
remember that, along with its innovatory, wigged-out appeal, P-Funk was a massive commercial force in the '70s, and will be familiar to anyone who was
into dance music at the time
Though Funkadelic expected to make the bigtime with 'Cosmic Slop' and 'Standing
On The Verge Of Getting It On', it wasn’t until the internationally-distributed
Parliament album Chocolate City (1975) that the Funk Mob’s profile rose
significantly. But after the release of Mothership Connection later that year,
and the spectacular accompanying P-Funk Earth Tour, every Funkadelic,
Parliament and Bootsy album went to number one in the international soul
charts. Warner Brothers along netted a $ 30 million profit from Funkadelic,
Bootsy and the Brides Of Funkenstein, and by the end of the decade Clinton had
his own label Uncle Jam Records, distributed by CBS
Whilst certain acts had pursued spacefunk themes in tandem with P-Funk —
Masterfleet, War and, most notably, Norman Whitfield’s Undisputed Truth — a generation of younger bands like Raydio, Rick James and the Gap Band,
began to thieve their sound lock, stock and barrel. Captain Sky cloned Clinton
so thoroughly he should’ve been paying him royalties and, though Larry Blackmon
rarely mentions P-Funk these days, Cameo learnt the tricks of their trade
(Lazzer's attention-grabbing codpiece is a direct descendant of Gary Shider’s
nappy) as first support band on the Flashlight Tour — which, due to the release
of One Nation Under A Groove (Funkadelic's biggest hit ever) halfway through,
went on for a year and a half
So where did it all come unstuck? What was it that grounded the Mothership?
Firstly there was the chaos induced by their phenomenal success.
While George’s attention had been tied up with his hyperactive recording and
touring schedule since '75, certain legal and management associates had been
writing themselves enormous cheques from his funds. $ 900,000 advances would
dwindle to $ 30,000 cash, and sometimes the entourage would complete nationwide
tours — during which they headlined at 60,000 capacity stadium shows — with
just enough money to get home, leaving unpaid tax bills in umpteen states
Secondly, just after Clinton had cleaned the rotten apples from his
organization, he was disastrously stitched-up by Roger Troutman,
leader of P-Funk protégés Zapp. After the success of the Bootsy-produced Zapp
LP, Roger agreed to record a solo album for Uncle Jam, but when it was finished
he took the masters and finished artwork (all paid for by CBS) to Warner
Brothers, who signed him to a separate solo deal. The Many Facets Of Roger went
on to sell over 800,000 copies and spawn the hit single 'I Heard It Through The
Grapevine', and CBS were so furious with George (who they wrongly assumed to have been in on the scam) that they canceled Uncle Jam’s distribution deal and
refused to back his legal action against Warner Brothers
Now, after just two album releases (The Sweat Band and Wynnejammer by Phillipe
Wynne), George’s long dreamt-of label was dead, and he had to take his own
record company to court. Warner Bros lost the legal action, but it took two
years, cost Clinton $ 2 million, and meant the end of Warner’s contracts with
Funkadelic, the Brides and Bootsy. Meanwhile, Capitol had delayed the signing
of George’s solo deal by a year, and Casablanca president Neil Bogard had died,
leaving the 'Motor Booty Affair' film unmade and his label to be incorporated
into Phonogram, effectively stiffing Parliament
Computer Games, Clinton’s debut LP for Capitol, found him in top form,
and yielded the commercial hits 'Loopzilla' and 'Atomic Dog', but after a structural shakedown of the company, he found himself once again signed to an unsympathetic label. In 1984 CBS released a P-Funk All Stars compilation,
Urban Dancefloor Guerillas, but by now the Mothership’s momentum had fizzled
out
In 1985 Capitol released the superb Jimmy G & The Tackheads LP (Jimmy being
Clinton’s brother), failed to promote it and then dropped the group just before
LA radio discovered the album. It seemed that no matter how good the records
were, or how popular the live shows, P-Funk was doomed never to revive its
former glory. The following year Clinton delivered a barnstorming single,
'Do Fries Go With That Shake?', accompanied by a video which illustrated the
perfect compatibility of his cartoon sensibility with the promo-clip medium.
Again Capitol failed utterly to capitalise on the record’s potential,
and the two parties parted company by mutual agreement
One Nation On The Move Again! Can Nothing Stop Them Now?
Though the individual P-Funkateers have been making a passable living these
past years, their collective output has wielded little influence and aroused
little media fever. But, on the quiet, P-Funk has been bringing in fresh blood,
and sprouting new fighting units like the Hardcore Jollies, the Electric War
Babies and the P-Funk Jazz Quintet. Sneak previews of unreleased Bootsy tracks,
the forthcoming Tackheads LP and snippets of about 20 albums' worth (I kid you
not!) of George’s work-in-progress prove that their artistic well is far from
dry (since Nubian Nut George has become a murderous rapper). Now at last some
of these recordings are to come to light, in a barrage of P-Funk vinyl action
as intense as it was a decade ago
Any day now we’ll see the dynamite new albums from Bootsy (on CBS) and the
Tackheads — now, minus Jimmy G, renamed the Incorporated Thang Band — (on WEA).
MCA have signed Funkadelic, The P-Funk All Stars and the Brides (to be renamed), George’s son Tracey is being signed to WEA (as Tray-Lewd) and,
best of all, George himself has been signed to Paisley Park (who may later
take up an option on Parliament). With Prince, one of the only heirs to the
P-Funk spirit, at the helm, George may at last have found a label that
understands and deserves him
All that remains to be seen is how Joe Public will react to the returning
Mothership. But, the new Funk Mob’s commercial impact aside, one thing’s for
sure: the Good Doctor’s back, proposing another toast to the boogie.
I’ll funk to that!