Visit: A Tale of Two Movies
Weather: A little light rain, some sunshine, and a cold wind all day.
Charity Alert: Animal Rescue Site
In The Community: We auctioned well over 80% of our miniature pieces for the Hockaday Museum's 4th annual benefit. Now I have to set up two more BIG shows, and tear down and relocate some others. Hockaday Museum of Art
I'm going to go crazy with teleconferencing and "Webinars" (web seminars) this week. I'm looking forward to cleaning chalk dust off the classroom equipment for a change.
Media Watch: I saw Searching For Debra Winger, which is actually a film made by Rosanna Arquette about 'Hollywood' actresses. Ageing seems to be an issue. (They ARE pressured to look like they're twenty years old, for about twenty years or so.) The film contains interviews with many famous women about their art, and the choices they made in their lives.
The Things You Find At Garage Sales: This morning I stumbled on a 1985 Island Records collection of Funk music from Washington D.C. entitled "Go Go Crankin' (Paint The White House Black) -- It features performances by Trouble Funk, E.U, Slim, Redd and the Boys, Mass Extension, and one tune by one of my favorite bands -- Chuck Brown and the Soul Searchers. The driving force behind these reissued records seems to be producer Maxx Kidd.
The phrase "Paint The White House Black" is also the title of one of my favorite songs by another of my favorite bands -- George Clinton and his whole crew of Funkadelic Parliamentarians. George even trades players with Chuck Brown sometimes.
Not too many weeks ago, I picked up an odd, oversized book called "The Year In Music 1978," Published in the Autumn of that year by Columbia House, a division of CBS Inc. (prepared and produced by Gladstone Books Inc.)
It's much more interesting to me now than it would have been 27 years ago -- there were a lot of photos of John Travolta, Shaun Cassidy, Leif Garrett and others whose music meant nothing in my life, and I doubt I would have read it.
There's a prophetic quote where UA president Artie Mogull laments: The Guy in the record company who has the authority won't listen to the tape; and the guy who listens to the tape doesn't have any authority. That's a syndrome that's going to kill the record companies. The deal has become more important than music. Can you imagine? The biggest irrelevancy in a record company today is music.
What's interesting is who's mentioned at all, and the context in which they appear:
"Sizzling" Tina Turner is mentioned once -- performing in New Orleans. She was starting her slow climb back to stardom, a year or so removed from getting a welcome hand-up out of the bar circuit by Olivia Newton-John and her manager. (Lotsa pictures of Olivia in this book -- she was at one of the peaks of her career!) The Rolling Stones' triumphant return to the top of the charts was photographically documented, while Lou Reed was noted as receiving a gold album for the 6 year old "Rock & Roll Animal," while "Street Hassle," his latest, was banned from the airwaves. Eric Clapton, although soaked with booze and heroin, did some of the nicest singles of his career with "Lay Down Sally," and Reed's own "Rock and Roll Heart."
I enjoyed seeing "Heavy" guitar rock doing so well in the huge arenas back then, but I didn't care as much for the overly-polished "product" that was pushed on the airwaves. There's a few pictures of Ted Nugent in this book, with and without his beard. Kiss gets many more -- even though they had just disbanded for what was to be twenty years. Many rock bands of the time who WEREN'T in this book had long careers -- like AC/DC, Judas Priest, Rush, Van Halen, and the Scorpions.
My favorite styles of music from these times were Reggae and Funk, the latter of which was incorporated into a lot of genres like Pop, Disco, R&B, and Jazz. As a matter of fact, Reggae is a first cousin of Funk too! Bob Marley and the Isley Brothers get their share of press and pictures .
Speaking of FUNK: Parliament, Funkadelic, Bootsy's Rubber Band, The Brides of Funkenstein, Parlet, and the Horny Horns were in their heyday when this book came out. Hard times and breakups were starting too, but here's a list of everything that this white-bread publication has to say about them:
Page 58: Black concerts this year were dynamite...
King of Funk George Clinton and Parliament-Funkadelic, his hard-working princes of that realm, zapped their audiences with ray guns, bombarded them with a flashily inventive stage show' and blasted them with non-stop R & B energy of the funk variety.
(Note: This article also mentions difficulties with black performers attracting white or middle-class black audiences.)
Page 61: Above: Funkster George Clinton in two of his guises: nomadic outer-space ace and slick-as-silk con man. (Full-page picture) Courtesy Casablanca Records
Page 64: Bootsy Collins and George Clinton received rather dubious awards on July 21 (1978) at a dinner sponsored by The Rod McGrew Scholarship Fund, Inc. Communicators With A Conscience gave them a slap on the wrist with the "Responsibility Award," challenging the musicians to do something more ambitious with their popular music.
Arcie Ivy, managing director of of Clinton's production company (called Thang Inc.) disputes the award's contention that Clinton's message is superficial. He claims that in Funkentelechy vs. the Placebo Syndrome Clinton is conveying a deep message against complacency and lack of spirit. He also pledged to donate fifty cents for every ticket sold for August and September concerts in dallas, Chicago, St. Louis, and L.A. to the United Negro College Fund.
In addition to sizzling live action, the soul scene blossomed with extravagent albums including ...
...Funkentelechy vs. the Placebo Syndrome by Parliament
...Player of the Year by Bootsy's Rubber Band
Page 66: Top soul songs for the year included:
... "Flash Light" by Parliament
... "Bootzilla" by Bootsy's Rubber Band
Right: (Full-page picture on Page 67) For Bootsy Collins and his band of renown 1978 was a year of superior, flashy concerts in support of his gold-winning R & B chart-topper Player of the Year. Courtesy Warner Brothers Records
Concerts and Events
Page 176: February ...on the eleventh ... Parliament-Funkadelic, Kool and the Gang, and Grand Jury played for 11,600 fans at Baltimore's Civic Center.
Page 177: April ... On April 8, Parliament, the Bar-Kays, and Cold Fire set Kansas City, Missouri, jumping with a dazzling show at the Kemper Arena.
Page 178: ...On the thirteenth, (of May) in the Forum at Inglewood, California, Parliament, the Bar-Kays, and Faze-o stupefied 17,400 fans with a knock-out show...
...On May 20, Bootsy's Rubber band brought its inspired musical lunacy to the Summit in Houston. Preceded by Stargard and Raydio, the band had the sellout croud of more than 16,000 dancing in the aisles.
Page 180: ...On June 8, George Clinton and his group Parliament-Funkadelic, gave funk lessons to New York City at Madison Square Garden.
Tours
Page 186: Bootsy Collins: Began October 5, 1977 in Cheney, Pennsylvania; ended November 25, 1977, in Kalamazoo, Michigan. Began March 17 in Greensboro, North Carolina; ended June 8 in Oakland, California.
Updates
Page 190: R & B chart toppers in the fall of 1978 included such songs as ... "One Nation Under A Groove: by Funkadelic, ...
Top Sellers (From October 1977 through September 1978)
Page 194: Platinum Record Awards Albums (Indicates sales of more than 1 million copies)
...Funkentelechy vs. the Placebo Syndrome by Parliament
Page 195: Gold Record Awards Albums (Indicates sales of more than 500,000 copies)
...Bootsy? Player of the Year
Page 196: Singles (Indicates sales of more than 1 million copies)
"Flash Light" Parliament
Page 215: BOOTSY COLLINS
"If you fake the funk, your nose gotta grow," proclaims the Pinocchio Theory of Funk Professor Bootsy Collins, who in the disguise of a not-too-mild-mannered bass player has single-handedly transformed the face of funk with his 1978 monster single, "Bootzilla," from the top soul LP (number one after only four weeks on the chart) Player of the Year.
Born and raised in Cincinnatti, the formerly shy, blue-jeaned bass player served an eight-year apprenticeship with master funkifiers James Brown and George Clinton. He took the flash of those inspired loonies, filtered it through his own cheerful, reckless madness, and emerged with a new sizzle -- funk-honed, refined, and raised to a spacey art form.
In 1976, Bootsy and some equally raunchy henchmen put out an album called Stretchin' Out In Bootsy's Rubber band, which quickly went into a golden orbit. His second album, Aah...The Name Is Bootsy, baby, also achieved gold status and won him the devoted fervor of the world's Geepies. As Bootsy explains them, "Geepies" are "younger kids who are turned on without drugs. They're so deep, they're past D all the way to G. That's what makes them geep."
1978 Discography: Player of the Year
Page 217: Bootsy Collins (Full-page picture) Courtesy Warner Brothers Records
Page 260: (Picture in lower right corner) Parliament's George Clinton Courtesy Casablanca Records
Page 261; PARLIAMENT-FUNKADELIC
Onstage, after a breathtaking arrival by flying saucer, dripping with ermine and feathers, swaggering on mighty giolden platform boots, George Clinton as Doctor Funkenstein leads his outrageous gang of zanies in a superflash, superfunk extravaganza. As the Doctor has said about his second platinum album, Funkentelechy vs. the Placebo Syndrome, "The message of Parliament on this album is YOU WILL DANCE." As the irresistable rhythms of advanced funk sail out over his audiences, the maggot brains (fans of p-funk) rise up and boogie.
Where does he come from, this insane perpetrator of funk-talk, funk-music, and -- if all goes as planned -- eventual supergroovalistic prosifunkstication (that is, funk taken to it's highest level) of the whole world? Clinton's madness began back in the fifties in a barbershop near Newark, New Jersey, where he and some teen-age jivers harmonized between haircuts. Out of these laid-back beginnings, the Parliaments were born. First signed by ABC, they then moved on to tamala/Motown and finally to the Revilot label, where they scored their first towering hit single in 1967 -- "(I Just Wanna) Testify."
Revilot was to pass out of existance in 1968, and with them went the Parliaments' name.Clinton renamed his band the Funkadelics and developed them into a show band with a more aggressive beat, an overt black philpsophy, and an irresistably demented stage show that never stopped jumping. When the Parliament name again became available, Clinton signed his group of musicians to Casablanca as the Parliaments and to Warner Brothers as Funkadelic. This duality may cause some confusion, but there's no need to fear missing out on one or the other band -- when Clinton leads, his pranksters are together.
In 1978, Clinton trucked his mammoth show to sold-out houses all around the country, raising his largely black fans to heights of delirium.
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