ILX 70s album poll - results

I remmber my sister brought this album home (along with Clones of Dr.Funkenstein) sometime in the summer of 1976 or so, whetting my ten year old appetite for it by saying they were "like the black version of Kiss". Well, they sure did look as equally otherworldly as my beloved, grease-painted superheroes....and were on the same visionary record label....but oof were they ever different! For a start, there seemed to be about forty of them, and the sheer production and instrumentation of Mothership Connection was dizzying (Kiss wouldn't manage as varied and vast a sound until Destroyer). But damn....having heard nothing of any semblance of "funk" in any capacity (James Brown didn't get a lot of airplay in our mid-to-late 70's household), this was just a whole different brand of beast.

For a start, Clinton's narrative skills on the first two tracks are completley hilarious and bizarre, hooking me right in. Secondly, the grooves just seem to flow so effortlessly, morphing from full-on punch and then off into jazzy subtlety, buffered by at least three different voices at a time (Lollipop Man, "the Long Haired Sucka" being my favorite). The precise moment during "Mothership Connection (Star Child)," when the band switches back into the "Swing low sweet chariot..." refrain and the giant saucer gently lifts off again (I'm talking bout specificaly 5:13 into the song), it is truly a transcendent bit of music. Damn I love that.

"Unfunky UFO" seems to abduct the riff from Stevie Wonder's "Superstitious" and takes it on a strange sci-fi episode involving an alien invasion prompted by a funk famine. Odd? You betcha, but it's wildy inventive and engaging stuff.

I remember especially enjoying "Handcuffs" as a kid, mistaking the chorus for being "Do I have to put my handcuffs on your mama?", which made precious little sense but prompted big laughs. The song, in retrospect, is actually a tad misogynist, but hey....this was the 70's after all.

"Give Up the Funk..." is of course a massive classic, and there's nothing I can say about it that will further its status as utterly brilliant. Even the arguable filler tracks ("Night of the Thumpasorus Peoples") are still completely awe inspiring.

If you don't own this record, you're exiling yourself in a world devoid of fun.

Who agrees? Who dares disagree?

-- Alex in NYC (vassife...), August 14th, 2003

Far and away their tightest, least indulgent funk alb, heavily plundered by Dr. Dre. One of the all-time great alb covers too!

-- Andrew L (andre...), July 15th, 2001

Something of a landmark, being one of the first r&b record that's back to back funk, with not a ballad in sight.

-- Shakey Mo Collier (audiobo...), February 4th, 2004

'Mothership Connection' - you won't believe how many bits you'll recognize, it's been sampled to infinity.

-- tarden (scrape10...), July 15th, 2001

There are some strange and tortured souls out there who prefer "Funkentelechy" but then as George himself said, "Mothership" is the one with "all the hits".

-- Dadaismus (kcoyne3...), August 14th, 2003

Around the age of 12 or 13 my best friend found his brother's Parliament CD and we listened to it on repeat for weeks, out on the porch, dancing. First time I ever really danced. That shit changed my life.

-- Juan (p1nk8c1...), November 7th, 2002

Taking Tiger Mountain: His second album. Quite strange surreal story. Somehow gripping. With singing.

-- alex in mainhattan (alex6...), July 17th, 2001

Eno is an underrated lyricist...the words on "Tiger Mountain" always struck me as very nice indeed.

-- Jess Hill (jesshil...), February 28th, 2003

"Tiger Mountain" contains some of the best words I know.

-- eddie hurt (eddshur...), July 21st, 2004

I was in a bar where this guy I know works and he was playing songs from his iPod over the stereo. At one point I asked him, Is this the Thinking Fellers? And he said, no it's Brian Eno. Then later another song came on, and I asked him if it was the Swell Maps. Again it was Eno. It turns out both songs were on TTM(BS). That's when I knew I needed to hear the rest of the album.

-- o. nate (syne_wav...), July 21st, 2004

One thing I don't think I've said about Taking Tiger Mountain by Strategy is that I got a copy around the time that I had just about lost my belief in Christian doctrine, so it took on kind of a heavy symbolic weight of the scarey, uncertain, world of religious disbelief. (Obviously I hadn't only listened to Christian music up until then. That's not the point.) I want to exmphasize, this is a symbolic purpose I was giving it: I don't think it has much to do with the album itself (although it is kind of interesting in light of some things I've read by him essential outlining an anti-fundamentalism--of whatever source--stance). Just the cover itself took on a certain weight, and I wasn't totally happy about it. It didn't look like an especially happy world (and I've never been unambivalently attracted to hipster jadedness, if I've ever been attracted by it at all), but it seemed somewhat inevitable that I would be joining it. Graphically, it was: the cover of Taking Tiger Mountain vs. the dull blue cover of Cornelius Van Til's Defense of the Faith (given to me by my brother-in-law). I think I was more visually oriented then. Anyway, book covers or album covers could easily become suffused with an emotional coloring.