You gotta hear this! That is what a friend yelled to me aboard the USS Portland somewhere in the Mediterranean Sea during the summer of 1971. We had just been to a port and had mail call and my friend got a package from home that included some cassettes one of which was this release from Funkadelic. I was somewhat familiar with the band as I had a couple of records from the Parliaments which was George Clinton's original soul band from the 1960's and Funkadelic was the backup band for that group. They had a couple of earlier albums that I knew about but had not heard yet. But of course nothing prepared me for the opening title track on this crazy psychedelic funk album. The guys that called me over were electrician mates and they had one of the few workspaces on a ship that could accommodate a stereo. They had a small but effective space in the electrician's shack and that is where we went to listen to music on the ship where we weren't bothering other sailors most of whom only wanted to listen to country music. Both of these guys were city folk and one was black and both were into a lot of the same music as I was... rock and soul music.
There were not a lot of city guys on the ship and most of the sailors were from the South, Midwest and West with a few from the East. As a city person I was naturally friends with a lot of the black guys and we were especially drawn together by our love of soul music and funk. I heard more cutting edge black music in the early 70's than anything else. When I got out of the Navy in late 1973 I had a lot of catching up to do with music.
But I did get to hear Funkadelic and this fantastic album in particular. You could certainly tell that the lead guitarist Eddie Hazel was a big fan of Jimi Hendrix. This was a serious rock album with a grimy veneer of funk. I've used the title track Maggot Brain on several mixes over the years. I listened to the album all the way through tonight which I hadn't done in awhile and played my digital version on iTunes which has a few extra tracks including an alternate version of Maggot Brain. When George Clinton made the album he mixed down the rest of the band and just let Hazel play the guitar unaccompanied and added effects and layers of psychedelic guitar sound. The alternate version at the end of the later release is actually how the song was originally recorded and sounds amazing itself.
It's hard to believe this album is 50 years old this month.
I would later add all of the Funkadelic albums to my collection and started with this one followed by the other early ones. My favorite was probably One Nation Under a Groove, Of course I also have all the Parliament albums too.
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