Martin's funk thread

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I loved some of the Betty Davis, but I am certainly far less keen on the rock end of funk.

― Martin Skidmore (Martin Skidmore), Friday, 3 February 2006 20:23 (eighteen years ago) link

Maybe you will be converted by the time you've listened to all those albums...

― Last Of The Famous International Pfunkboys (Kerr), Friday, 3 February 2006 20:27 (eighteen years ago) link

I didn't like that Betty Davis album much. Good bass playing by Larry Graham but a bit lumpen on the whole and she can't really sing.

― Dadaismus (Dada), Friday, 3 February 2006 20:37 (eighteen years ago) link

Betty Davis can't sing = you are insane. I love her voice.

― Shakey Mo Collier (Shakey Mo Collier), Friday, 3 February 2006 21:07 (eighteen years ago) link

maybe i'm kinda over straight funk, but there's not a single album on this thread so far that i really love. the baby huey is probably the one i like the most

― team jaxon (jaxon), Friday, 3 February 2006 21:24 (eighteen years ago) link

Funkadelic - Live in Houston - The Summit
Another bootleg. I guess this is going to get repetitive to read, but these tracks go on forever (one is over 27 minutes), and sometimes they are grooving on a funk tip and it works, and sometimes they are doing rock freakout stuff and showing us how fantastic they are on their instruments and it doesn't work for me. This starts too much in the latter category, but blessedly has plenty of the former thereafter, and is really good. Bit short on my favourites of their tunes.

― Martin Skidmore (Martin Skidmore), Friday, 3 February 2006 21:27 (eighteen years ago) link

Zapp - s/t
Mixed feelings. The first track's excellent, and the rest is all good but I've never liked the vocoder (it's why I love Daft Punk less than everyone else), and that's all over this. It rather spoils it for me, mostly, and maybe it's also what made it seem as if it was leaning towards a more electro '80s funk sound. I've several more by them, and I'm not sure if I'll adjust to the vocoder or get increasingly bored with them.

― Martin Skidmore (Martin Skidmore), Friday, 3 February 2006 21:27 (eighteen years ago) link

Cameo - Cardiac Arrest
I was expecting a lot from this, and maybe I am disproportionately disappointed. It is a good album, often strong and raw, often interesting. It's a bit less distinct from the obvious funk forebears than I expected, I guess, and I wanted something more from it. I suspect it's one I'll come back to, and I think there's half a chance I'll grow to like it enormously, but it fell a bit short today.

― Martin Skidmore (Martin Skidmore), Friday, 3 February 2006 21:28 (eighteen years ago) link

Fatback Band - Let's Do It Again
I had this on while commuting. I was only really aware of hearing the last few tracks, which were rather lovely, smooth and sinuous. I'm inclined to think that the rest was as good, but it didn't exactly grab my attention. I must give it another go sometime.

― Martin Skidmore (Martin Skidmore), Friday, 3 February 2006 21:28 (eighteen years ago) link

I guess this is going to get repetitive to read, but these tracks go on forever (one is over 27 minutes), and sometimes they are grooving on a funk tip and it works, and sometimes they are doing rock freakout stuff and showing us how fantastic they are on their instruments and it doesn't work for me

And my reply will be just as repetitive ;)

Thats why I love the bootlegs because of the rock freakout stuff. Stretching out from the studio stuff. It means i could never tire of Parliament/Funkadelic.

I just wish I had some bootlegs of the 1969-74 period. 1 1972 bootleg is just not enough (plus the official boot from Live- Meadowbrook, Rochester, Michigan 12th September 1971)

haha I can't wait til martin hears that one!

― Last Of The Famous International Pfunkboys (Kerr), Friday, 3 February 2006 21:52 (eighteen years ago) link

Martin give me all the "too rock freakout" P-Funk bootlegs that you don't like k thx bye

― Shakey Mo Collier (Shakey Mo Collier), Friday, 3 February 2006 22:18 (eighteen years ago) link

Bit short on my favourites of their tunes

What are your favourite funkadelic/parliament tunes?

― Last Of The Famous International Pfunkboys (Kerr), Friday, 3 February 2006 22:49 (eighteen years ago) link

I'm guessing not "Alice in My Fantasies" or "Super Stupid"

― Shakey Mo Collier (Shakey Mo Collier), Friday, 3 February 2006 22:56 (eighteen years ago) link

or "Free Your Mind And Your Ass Will Follow" or "Red Hot Momma"

Funnily enough...these are some of my faves.

― Last Of The Famous International Pfunkboys (Kerr), Friday, 3 February 2006 22:58 (eighteen years ago) link

yeah me too - listen sorry I haven't YSI'd you that stuff yet, I've been super-busy, should have time to do it tonight (and most of what I'll be sendin you I got from jaxon anyway - ha!) Def. lookin forward to hearing the Bootsy!

― Shakey Mo Collier (Shakey Mo Collier), Friday, 3 February 2006 23:04 (eighteen years ago) link

No worries. Theres no rush. Still got some newish cds and lps to play(non funk stuff so won't bore you with details) and i'm relistening to the funkadelic boots i have. Do you have any?
Enjoy the Bootsy boots!

― Last Of The Famous International Pfunkboys (Kerr), Friday, 3 February 2006 23:18 (eighteen years ago) link

coolio - I've got a few live Funkadelic boots, mostly from '76 on. Probably my most prized one is the vinyl copy of "Rocky Mountain Shakedown", which has an unbelievable version of "Comin Round the Mountain" (which I think made it onto that live P-Funk box set thing? not sure about that).

― Shakey Mo Collier (Shakey Mo Collier), Friday, 3 February 2006 23:23 (eighteen years ago) link

I never did get that p-funk live box set.
Theres only one bootleg from before 1976 that I have. They just don't seem to exist. I have about 9 from 1976 onwards.
Don't have any p-funk all stars boots at all.
I do have on videotape somewhere Funkadelic live at Rockpalast,Germany from around 85 or 86. the RHCP are on the bill and play on an awesome version of Cosmic Slop.

I got it from VH1 and i've never seen it on since.

― Last Of The Famous International Pfunkboys (Kerr), Friday, 3 February 2006 23:29 (eighteen years ago) link

yeah pre-76 boots seem like they don't exist. A huge bummer.

― Shakey Mo Collier (Shakey Mo Collier), Friday, 3 February 2006 23:32 (eighteen years ago) link

Standing On The Verge Of Getting It On and One Nation Under A Groove are probably my favourite Funkadelic songs. Maggot Brain, Get Off Your Ass & Jam, Free Your Mind And Your Ass Will Follow. I like most of Parliament, but Up For The Down Stroke might well be my favourite.

― Martin Skidmore (Martin Skidmore), Friday, 3 February 2006 23:45 (eighteen years ago) link

I'm sure if George had early live recordings he would've released them by now.

What do you think of the official live album on Wesbound from 71?

― Last Of The Famous International Pfunkboys (Kerr), Saturday, 4 February 2006 00:26 (eighteen years ago) link

I like it quite a bit - but it does suffer cuz of it being their first set with the new drummer, and without Tiki! :( The comments from the stage about how they're "gonna get it together anyhow" are funny tho

― Shakey Mo Collier (Shakey Mo Collier), Saturday, 4 February 2006 00:33 (eighteen years ago) link

George has boxes of stuff he recorded in the studio but never released, i'm sure he has a fair amount of early live recordings, someone just needs to find his stash

― mentalist (mentalist), Saturday, 4 February 2006 04:03 (eighteen years ago) link

Martin, with all due respect, I don't think you like funk at all. Do you? I've noticed with these reviews, the very things that make funk funk, you find fault with someway or another. I guess for me, the one-chord vamps and the acid-rock overtones are a given with this music, so dismissing funk for those reasons is like complaining that all gospel songs are about God, or that all metal is loud. It just goes with the territory. It is what it is.

No offense, but were you expecting something like the O'Jays? Or did you think that all funk is just jazz with a backbeat? Just wondering if you're getting what you're looking for.

Don't get me wrong, still enjoying these reviews...

― Rev. Hoodoo (Rev. Hoodoo), Saturday, 4 February 2006 08:14 (eighteen years ago) link

I don't know how to answer such idiot questions, really. I'm not much of a jazz fan at all, and I do have some familiarity with funk. It's a genre with a bunch of tendencies, as I said at the beginning, and I am entitled to like some and not like others, to prefer certain blends over others. My preferences are the soul and James Brown and disco territories over the psychedelia and rock territories - and the jazz end is not too much to my taste either. That doesn't amount to not liking funk, it amounts to liking some funk more than other funk. I assume my tastes aren't yours, and that's why you think they are invalid.

Also, the trouble with gospel is indeed that the songs are about God. What is wrong with that standpoint?

― Martin Skidmore (Martin Skidmore), Saturday, 4 February 2006 12:50 (eighteen years ago) link

Graham Central Station - Ain't No 'Bout-A-Doubt It
I'm not sure how good this is, but I really enjoyed it. The first track is terrific, a Slyish groove, and although some of the rest doesn't get going in any comparably major way, I found it at the least pleasurable all the way through. I think bassist and leader Larry Graham had integrated his playing better into a band here, after a start where he was wanting to be a kind of lead guitarist.

― Martin Skidmore (Martin Skidmore), Saturday, 4 February 2006 12:59 (eighteen years ago) link

so kerr did YOU send martin all these cds? :-)

― Nathalie (stevie nixed), Saturday, 4 February 2006 13:02 (eighteen years ago) link

You dont get the funk, dont hate on it for not getting it. Its about dancing, making music from your soul, having fun, fighting the man, turning something bad into something good. I suggest you go back to your white classical music and leave black music alone.

― Kim Kenzo, Saturday, 4 February 2006 13:17 (eighteen years ago) link

yeah that's really STICKING IT TO THE MAN

martin plz continue to "give up the funk" or perhaps that should read don't give up the funk.

― m coleman (lovebug starski), Saturday, 4 February 2006 13:28 (eighteen years ago) link

I can assure you that martin does indeed enjoy the funk and trolls please fuck off.

― Last Of The Famous International Pfunkboys (Kerr), Saturday, 4 February 2006 13:45 (eighteen years ago) link

MARTIN: ain't nothing wrong with liking certain kinds of funk. But SINCE I HAVEN'T SEEN ANY REVIEWS OF YOUR KIND OF FUNK YET - everything we've seen so far, you've had reservations about - I mistakenly assumed that you stumbled into something that wasn't your thing.

Wasn't meant to be a slam, either. I DID say I liked the reviews, and I come in peace so you can put that damn shotgun away!!! :-) But like J.B. Hutto once sang: "I'm gonna speak my mind this morning..." Funk on, Martin.

― Rev. Hoodoo (Rev. Hoodoo), Saturday, 4 February 2006 17:22 (eighteen years ago) link

Okay, tell me how these reviews, from the first ten on the thread, suggest so much as noticeable reservations, let alone that they aren't my kind of thing (was it lines like "one of my favourite bands ever" that gave that impression?):
review 3: Martin's funk thread
review 4: Martin's funk thread
review 8: Martin's funk thread
There are a couple more in the first ten where any hint of reservation is small, and it's obvious I like the album a lot. I don't know why you want to believe I don't like this kind of music, but this opinion is hardly backed up by... well, anything at all.

― Martin Skidmore (Martin Skidmore), Saturday, 4 February 2006 22:18 (eighteen years ago) link

MARTIN: it wasn't those three reviews you excerpted that made me doubt your "funkitude," it was three more - Funkadelic, Betty Davis and Graham Central Station (their first s/t album), where you seemed very on-the-fence about what they were doing (I think the blatant rock influences may have put you off).

― Rev. Hoodoo (Rev. Hoodoo), Saturday, 4 February 2006 22:31 (eighteen years ago) link

I don't much care for the more obvious rock influences - I've certainly made that clear. It's your translating that into "I don't think you like funk at all" that is plainly ridiculous. And three reviews with real reservations is very far from "I HAVEN'T SEEN ANY REVIEWS OF YOUR KIND OF FUNK YET - everything we've seen so far, you've had reservations about". You can't expect me to respond to what you mean if the words you use are so distant from what you intend.

I have zero funkitude. I have no pride about liking funk music any more than I do about liking soul or rock or country or hip hop.

― Martin Skidmore (Martin Skidmore), Saturday, 4 February 2006 22:51 (eighteen years ago) link

Cameo - Cameosis
Having adjusted to Cameo not sounding the same so long before Word Up with a previous album (see above), that seemed to make it easier to just enjoy this, despite some lame slow stuff and some clumsy vocal phrasing. There is also some fun for UK listeners if Shake Your Pants reminds them of Trevor & Simon. I don't think this is a great album, but I did like most of it.

― Martin Skidmore (Martin Skidmore), Saturday, 4 February 2006 22:57 (eighteen years ago) link

Hurrah! back to the reviews.

― Last Of The Famous International Pfunkboys (Kerr), Saturday, 4 February 2006 23:21 (eighteen years ago) link

Foolish arguments were never going to slow the reviews down - they'll keep coming more or less in synch with my listening to all these funk albums.

― Martin Skidmore (Martin Skidmore), Saturday, 4 February 2006 23:42 (eighteen years ago) link

Ok a little treat for all you funkateers!
A great little track by Funk, Inc. From the album "Superfunk"
and believe me it's a prime slice of superfunk indeed!

hxxp://s52.yousendit.com/d.aspx?id=3CMBGS8PEQMR52QC36FCDQJD8A

All who download it please say what you think of it.

― Last Of The Famous International Pfunkboys (Kerr), Sunday, 5 February 2006 02:20 (eighteen years ago) link

Sounds pretty great to me.

― Austin Still (Austin, Still), Sunday, 5 February 2006 04:18 (eighteen years ago) link

that Funk Inc is an Axelrod production. one that i've wanted to hear for a really long time

― team jaxon (jaxon), Sunday, 5 February 2006 04:29 (eighteen years ago) link

Glad to be of service.

― Last Of The Famous International Pfunkboys (Kerr), Sunday, 5 February 2006 06:36 (eighteen years ago) link

hxxp?

― Martin Skidmore (Martin Skidmore), Sunday, 5 February 2006 15:24 (eighteen years ago) link

Bloodstone - Train Ride to Hollywood
As jawdropping a 'WHAT THE FUCKING HELL IS THIS???!!!' album as I've ever heard. Yes it's partly funk, with some very good James Brownish material, but most of it is a selection of picks from the rest of the cetury up to 1975, in style as well as songs, so we get As Time Goes By, Yakety Yak, Sh-Boom and much more - including one in an unmistakeably minstrel style, virtually Al Jolson. Some research (Dave Marsh writes about them on AMG) reveals that this album accompanied some sort of movie. I think it's a fine and highly entertaining album, and they certainly demonstrate versatility, but mostly it was too WTF for me to form much of a coherent view. I do want to see the film now!

― Martin Skidmore (Martin Skidmore), Sunday, 5 February 2006 15:26 (eighteen years ago) link

hxxp?

Just replaced the x with t. It's so the links can't be traced back to here.

The Bloodstone album I haven't actually heard yet. I saw it in someones shares and grabbed it.

Does anyone have the 1st self-titled album? It's not out on cd and 4 of the tracks are bonus tracks on the 2nd album which was released on cd.

― Last Of The Famous International Pfunkboys (Kerr), Sunday, 5 February 2006 15:49 (eighteen years ago) link

Con Funk Shun - Candy
I didn't like much of this. '70s soul ballads are of course very up my street, but late '70s and coming from a funk angle = almost always not my thing. When they play uptempo funk (and this has a relatively low proportion of that) they're very good, strong and punchy, but even then all of the singing is horrible, so there isn't that much that I cared for here.

― Martin Skidmore (Martin Skidmore), Sunday, 5 February 2006 19:55 (eighteen years ago) link

James Brown - Live At The Apollo (Vol.2, 1968)
This feels like history. People have, perhaps reasonably, claimed that I underrate Louis Armstrong in saying this, perhaps because of my own range of interests, but I see James Brown as the single most important figure in 20th Century music. Here we catch him at a period where he is doing old-fashioned ballads (That's Life) and his old R&B stuff like Please Please Please, and we get the beginnings of those extraordinary extended funk numbers. It feels like one of the key tipping points of music history - and that impression is reinforced by the concentration on funk that this thread records.

Anyway, he of course had a magnificent band (though I think they got even better over the next couple of years), and It's A Man's Man's Man's World was always one of the stellar moments of any JB set, and it's fantastic here, and very long, and there's a great sequence where the funk really gets going on CD2, with some fabulous guitar playing. At times the album doesn't know what it wants to be, but at times it catches the best of one world or another, and it's about as good as music ever gets.

― Martin Skidmore (Martin Skidmore), Sunday, 5 February 2006 22:40 (eighteen years ago) link

I thought you would like that one, Martin.

Did anyone else download that Funk, Inc track?

― Last Of The Famous International Pfunkboys (Kerr), Monday, 6 February 2006 00:04 (eighteen years ago) link

http://www.coolforever.com/temp/mezzoforte_observations.jpg

― Geir Hongro (GeirHong), Monday, 6 February 2006 00:36 (eighteen years ago) link

I downloaded but haven't listened yet...

― kit brash (kit brash), Monday, 6 February 2006 13:08 (eighteen years ago) link

Yes, James Brown is about as safe a bet as it gets with me.

― Martin Skidmore (Martin Skidmore), Monday, 6 February 2006 13:50 (eighteen years ago) link

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