This was the one that started it all for me – in 2019, when Forever Changes was still a weekly pop-up operating alongside a local coffee shop/bakery, I asked Shawn how to best get into the Funkadelic world, and this was the answer. He wasn’t wrong.
Released in July 1974, this is the most high classic Funkadelic lineup, doing the most high classic Funkadelic things. It’s got a front side of fairly standard song structures, with Eddie Hazel and Bernie Worrell all over them, and a back side with the title thumper, the somewhat progressive “Jimmy’s Got A Little Bit of Bitch In Him” (I said somewhat), and the epic 12:30 Eddie Hazel psychedelic masterpiece, “Good Thoughts, Bad Thoughts.”
When I was first learning bass last year, I spent a lot of time playing along to “Good Thoughts, Bad Thoughts.” A, it’s slow, and doesn’t require a lot. B, there is a structure, even if I needed Chordify to detect it. C, there is an insane amount of room to do almost anything inside that structure. It’s glorious for playing along to.
From here, I just went on down that Funkadelic rabbit hole. No regrets.
