What to do when you’ve put out an absolutely groundbreaking record? Five months later, put out another. If you’re Funkadelic. No kidding – Funkadelic was released February 1970, and “Free Your Mind” was released in July. the initial release hardly tore up the charts, but it went to #8 on the R&B chart, and this follow-up is similar enough that no one buying it should have been surprised or disappointed. Well, unless they’re bothered by a group of musicians recording while tripping (this was 1970: not unusual). Are the Christian phrases genuine, or subversive? Or both? The title track is 10 minutes of I’m still not sure what, but it is endlessly listenable, and the rest of the album is more of that. George Clinton, Eddie Hazel, Bernie Worrell – it’s a lot like the debut album, only more so.
Once we start on Funkadelic, it rarely stops until we’ve been through all our discs. Or most of them, anyway; there are a couple that don’t resonate as much. But this one goes right on the turntable.
True progression to the height of Funkadelic would come with their next album, just one year later: 1971’s “Maggot Brain.” Now, here’s the thing: I bought a digital edition of “Maggot Brain” six or seven years ago, when I was finally taking advice regarding getting Funkadelic. So when I started filling in my Funkadelic collection with vinyl, I kept passing over “Maggot Brain” in the bins of my record store because . . I already have it. Not on vinyl, which is how I do most of my listening now, but I have it.
But as I was getting ready to write up this series of Funkadelic records, all added to the collection sometime in the past year or so, I went down to Forever Changes to see if he could hook me up with a copy. He looked at me, and talking to his brand new employee, said: “Anybody else, I’d be apologizing for it not being in stock . . . but this motherfucker! I saw it in his hands and he didn’t get it!” True. That’s on me. So I guess we’ll be back to talk about Funkadelic some more whenever he gets it back in stock.
One thing I particularly love about this one is that the players are the lead singers on most of the songs . . . Eddie (especially), Tawl and Billy Bass all get leads while playing the bejeezus out of their instruments. On the CD version, I am a HUGE fan of the “Fish, Chips and Sweat” single that’s included. One of the very best cuts of their Westbound era. ALL THE GOODNESS!! ALL OF IT!!!!
I’ll have to seek out that single, since this is one I only have on vinyl. One of the things that frustrates/confuses me when listening to these is having no idea who’s singing. I tend to treat things like it’s still the original vinyl era, so if it isn’t on the album credits, I don’t learn it – or if I look it up elsewhere, I forget by the next listen.
For a lot of the original Funkadelic albums, the Wikipedia pages do identify who sings lead on the songs. Dunno if it’s still widely available via shops, but this compilation was (to me) utterly essential, with all of the Westbound era singles . . . some overlap with the LPs, but a lot unavailable in any other formats back when it came out:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Music_for_Your_Mother:_Funkadelic_45s