Funkadelic — Cosmic Slop
1973’s Cosmic Slop brings us a Funkadelic without Eddie Hazel, but with some more traditional song structures. If my 13-year-old brain had encountered this album when it came out, I would at least have recognized it as pop music of some sort – can’t say the same for the previous albums. Those would have just broken said brain. Luckily, music video wasn’t really a thing then, so I didn’t get to experience the video for this song, because that would have broken my brain. It may still – it’s some weird-ass shit.
Also, gotta say I don’t love the super-unrefined, disturbing cover art. That’s just not something I would want to stare at for very long. This is the work of Pedro Bell, who took an attention to detail reminiscent of Wally Wood and made it disturbing. But to me, without knowing what’s inside, that’s not a record I would want to own . . . and in 1973, I could never have brought that home.
I bought this late in 2021, possibly as one of the first records I bought when Forever Changes opened up a genuine storefront after a couple of years of pop-up life, and it gets a lot of play. These days, all my funk gets a lot of play.
Eddie’s gone and Billy Bass and Tawl and Tiki (except for a song or two) left too. Some terrible drug madness going down there. But, jeez, then you pick up Gary Shider and all’s alright again. I think if I could only take one Funkadelic song to the proverbial desert island, it would be this album’s title track. And I loved the Pedro Bell covers . . . so many little tiny funny/dirty things to warp the mind! Plus, they credited Ron Bykowski as “token white devil,” a tag applied to me when I was playing guitar in a band of high school Funkadelic fans a few years later . . . .
I think it’s just the roughness of the Bell covers that bugs me, but it’s a matter of taste. Those teeth on this one though! I do not wanna do the cosmic slop with her. But that track’s infectious and fun to try to thump the bass to…