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| 07.27.1999 set list | musicians |
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| Back in the day,
when Parliament was scoring Top Ten hits, George sang a lyric
on the Funkentelchy album, "the bigger the headache, the
bigger the pill...call me the big pill." Well, George has been
curing America's headache for quite some time, ever since the
mid-1950's when he first came on the scene as a processed hair
doo woper with the original Parliaments. Stealing hula-hoops from
the local Wham-O factory gave him enough money to buy matching
sweaters with PARLIAMENTS stitched on the front. Corny, but cute,
and a way to look sharp, impress the girlies, and pick up some
weekend pocket change at the local record shops. Their little high school singing group did a couple of singles that barely got noticed, and George sang at nights, but kept his day job conking heads at a local barbershop. The guys from the group would practice around the barber chairs during the day, and gradually George replaced members until they were one of the coolest groups in Plainfield, New Jersey. But as the dawn of the Motown era approached, they decided to head to Detroit for fame and fortune. As fate would have it, a young Martha Reeves, who was working as a secretary at the time, saw this Volkswagen bus filled with these scruffy looking singers. They auditioned for her right on the street, and she said she'd try and get them inside to meet Mr. Gordy. Martha delivered, but Motown didn't. Already grooming the Temptations, Motown didn't need another five man singing group and they passed on the Parliaments. But hearing something unusual in the material, they signed George to a songwriting contract. The rest of the group decided to relocate to Detroit and while George was now toiling as a staff writer for Jobete, the guys would get together for gigs at various Detroit night spots like the Twenty Grand. The Motown era was in full swing, and true to form, the Temptations exploded while the Parliaments languished in the shadows. George continued to crank out songs, one even got covered by the Jackson Five, but the group couldn't get arrested. But the tide turned in 1967 when they scored their first national hit, a Clinton original, "(I Wanna) Testify." Released on the tiny independent Revilot label, the single became a top Five R&B hit in the summer of '67, and landed the Parliaments gigs on the chitlin' circuit of black theaters across America. Unfortunately, the label folded and the Parliaments name was tied up in litigation and the group wasn't able to use it anymore. Stranger still, when the group was playing Boston, George ventured across the river and fell in with some Harvard students who were experimenting with a new hallucinogenic drug called LSD. A few trips later, the costumes started getting crazier, the shows looser and more rock based, and when the group lost the Parliaments name, George had an acid induced brainstorm. He moved the back-up musicians to the front, rechristened the act as Funkadelic, and turned them into America's first black rock band. As the musicians and singers also joined in on the LSD trips, the stage shows got wilder and wilder. Instead of playing the black clubs, Funkadelic were now opening rock festivals playing in front of such Detroit rock luminaries as Iggy and the Stooges, the MC5, Bob Seger and numerous others. And instead of neatly tailored stage suits, with Funkadelic it was every man for himself. Paisley robes mixed with various costumes; an Indian, a clown, a genie all became part of the Funkadelic stage circus. In 1969, Funkadelic signed to Detroit's Westbound records and made a number of earth shattering concept albums with titles like Free Your Mind and Your Ass Will Follow and America Eats It's Young. Though they blew minds live and on record, none of the albums were getting much support at radio, and the band continued to tour and play to a multi-racial audience. In the meantime, the Parliaments name became available again, and in a moment of inspiration, George figured he would have two groups, Parliament (now without the "s" at the end) and Funkadelic, but both would consist of the same members. He signed Parliament to the fledgling Casablanca label and continued with the concept albums. The first two, Up For the Downstroke and Chocolate City, gathered some radio play, but it was the 1976 breakthrough Mothership Connection that took the whole Parliafunkadelicment Thang to a whole new level. The Space Age theme of the album was brilliantly matched to a stage show unlike any black audiences had seen before. "I wanted to do something on a par with Kiss or David Bowie," George said of the Mothership tour. "I wanted to take the whole theatrical rock experience and put a black spin on it." The P-Funk Earth tour with the landing of the Mothership was one of the most successful tours of the late 1970's and sold out arenas coast to coast. And with the tours came the hit albums for both Parliament and Funkadelic. This was George's most creative period and with musical cohorts like keyboardist Bernie Worrell, guitarist Michael Hampton, songwriter-arranger Junie Morrison, and singer-guitarist Gary Shider, the funk kept rolling with hits like "Flashlight," "One Nation Under A Groove" and "(Not Just) Knee Deep." The Mothership tour was followed by the Motor Booty Affair which simulated an underwater set with George as Mr. Wiggles the Worm. The tours and albums continued throughout the late 1970's, but as the dawn of the 1980's approached, the P-Funk empire was in disarray. Changing relationships at record companies, drugs, and the constant grind of touring, depleted the band's creative energy, and by 1981, both Parliament and Funkadelic virtually shut down. In 1982, George regrouped with the P-Funk All Stars and toured behind his solo hit "Atomic Dog." The barking dog sound that greeted the song every time it was played became a part of black culture, and has regenerated itself into the Dope Dog, found on George's latest release for the Dogone/Available Entertainment label. Date of Sessions Performance: July 27, 1999 Televised
Set List: |
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