The Futuristic Lessons Of Dr. Funk
James Guida writes: ‘In 1976, George Clinton, funk music’s inadvertent impresario, got his spacecraft. On its maiden voyage in New Orleans, the ship, a staggered aluminum cone flanked by eyeball-like lights, emerged midway through a performance by Clinton’s twin bands, Parliament and Funkadelic. Summoned from the heavens by the singing of Glenn Goins, the vehicle’s door opened to release Clinton, a.k.a. Dr. Funkenstein. The timing was a mistake, Clinton realized later, because nothing they did afterward that night could top it. It was also hot under the descending ship, and some of the female singers on stage had to be careful not to get burned. Still, as Clinton recalls in his new memoir, “Brothas Be, Yo Like George, Ain’t That Funkin’ Kinda Hard on You?”, the Mothership came out just the way he had hoped: “like some kind of unholy cross between an American car from the late fifties and early sixties, a piece of equipment from a children’s playground, and a giant insect.‒
