Get Off Your Ass and JAM with The Rolling ILX Funk Listening Club: New Selections Weekly! Updated Mondays and Fridays! All ILXors and Lurkers Welcome!

funk music is awesome and made by awesome musicians.

also you suck if you dont like these records.

The ESG is great and while a lot of it is on that souljazz comp, I actually preferred the brevity and focus of this. I'm struggling in some of these clubs to find anything worth saying about stuff like James Brown (he's pretty good?). Not that I'm saying people shouldn't pick major albums or anything, just explaining my own lack of commenting.

what ESG album is "Six Pack" off?

I think that was just a single? Though it's on souljazz's sequel comp A South Bronx Story 2.

Tannenbaum has traded me a friday bonus jazz pick for a funk one, so it will be interesting to see what he chooses, will find out in a few days! But please keep commenting on Sam's picks!

motor booty affair is for real og's only

James Brown never had an idea he didn't enjoy repeating ad nauseam

― the sound of a norwegian guy being wrong (Shakey Mo Collier), Tuesday, April 27, 2010 3:40 PM (2 weeks ago)

Heh, was gonna answer "Yeah, howbout JB's Hell album, on which every single track is preceded by the sound of a gong?" And there it is! JB trying for a piece of the Kung Fu/Bruce Lee zeitgeist of '73-4, probably.

Haha, I need to check that out

It's a bit patchy, but you just know that everyone has different favourite tracks they wouldn't leave out to make a single cd.

listening now - lol this version of Cold Blooded is totally different from the original

also, who's the band on this...? I'm guessing that this is post-Maceo/Fred Wesley departure, the arrangements seem a little busier than what they would do. Drumming doesn't really sound like Jabo or Clyde either.

James Brown never had an idea he didn't enjoy repeating ad nauseam

speaking of which, jesus christ how many versions of Please Please Please did this guy record?!?

lol wait I think I was mixing up Coldblooded with Cold Sweat before

speaking of which, jesus christ how many versions of Please Please Please did this guy record?!?

about 3 million?

That's a lot of Pleases

i wonder if anyone got any royalties they were due from it

oh please

naw, just bullshittin.
Douglas is the right guy to ask JB q's to; I think he's the board expert.

It wasn't really a serious question..

who is in the band on Hell was a serious question!

hmm Wesley left in '75 so he's probably on this, not sure about Maceo or the drummers though

I dont own the cd so i cant check

in general I'd say the album's uneven - I'm partial to the trance-inducing epics so obviously my favorite here is Papa Don't Take No Mess, and there's plenty of other nice, muscular workouts on it but on the whole it's a little too busy. JB works best as a minimalist in a lot of ways, the showier the arrangements, the less interesting he becomes.

My James Brown jam is 'Lost Someone.' It's one of his rare moments of going into deep soul. I wish he had explored that kind of soul more.

Sorry pfunk to come late to this listening party, Thanks for making me listening to The Ohio Players again. I love the slow jam on that album. They still had moments of a soul vocal group on that album. By far my favorite of theirs. The Parliament and Funkadelic on this thread was fun listening to, but for me they start treading close to jamming land. I know that's my fault as a listening and not their fault. I love the Dr John Album! There needs to be more louisiana on this funk thread. Some Of the songs on that record remind me of Willie Tee.

Echoing a thanks for the Dr. John mention on this thread. I got 'Destively Bonaroo' because of this thread and wound up getting a bunch of other Dr. John albums as a result. So good! I was put off because it seems he has worked to become, like Wynton Marsalis, a conservative guardian of NO music and has been pilloried for it (whenever I hear him it reminds me of Patton Oswalt's crack about Dr. John wearing a hat made of meat!) But listening to his early stuff and knowing he had worked with Spiritualized made me think that getting these early albums would be worth it and they have.

I have a lot of funk stuff, but when I see you guys dropping obscure stuff like Mandrill, Chairmen of the Board, or letting me know that, yes, before they picked up one of his songs for that stupid Helen Hunt/Paul Reiser sitcom, Dr. John was funky -- all I have to say is thank you for this thread!

heh, that stuff isnt obscure, we went for established classics first! you wait until we go obscure on your funky butt!

everything Dr. John did between like 1968 and 1975 is pretty awesome btw

ESG is definitely my fave this week, I'm going to listen to it again now and try to come up with something interesting to say about it. The Parliament and JB are fine, but they just kind of sound like yet another Parliament or JB album (though admittedly WITH GONGS).

It's not the best Parliament album by any means I'd rank about 5 ahead of it, but it's still great, Parliament just set very high standards!

I'd rank about 5 ahead of it

?? really? that seems like a lot

I mean Mothership Connection is obviously THE Parliament album, but I'd put Chocolate City, Funkentelechy and Motorbooty Affair right behind it

Osmium, Mothership Collection,Funkentelechy vs the placebo syndrome,The Clones of Dr. Funkenstein, Chocolate City.

In fact up for the down stroke I prefer too

Like I said, Parliament had high standards (til the final 2 albums)

And many people have a different favourite. Always going to happen when a band has such an amazing catalog

yeah I dunno I don't rate Clones and Up for the Down Stroke as highly (the production on Clones is oddly thin to my ears, and UFTDS is just inconsistent). I always feel weird considering Osmium as part of Parliament's main catalog - I know it was released under that name, but everything else released as Parliament is almost an entirely different band. I know there's overlapping personnel and a lot of times who released what under which name was kinda arbitrary, I just associate Osmium more as a Funkadelic thing. It has the original Funkadelic line-up on it, and it bears way more resemblance to, like, America Eats Its Young than anything else released with the Parliament moniker.

As I said, we all have different favourites. But Osmium IS Parliament.

Friday Funk Bonus Album will be chosen by funkybum schmidt this week after the swap.

and here it is!

Friday Funk Bonus

Eugene McDaniels: Headless Heros Of The Apocalypse (1971)
http://ecx.images-amazon.com/images/I/41mdkT1niqL._SS500_.jpg

Spotfiy

When this album was first released in 1971, so the legend goes, Nixon's vice-president Spiro Agnew himself called Atlantic Records to complain about the album's incendiary lyrics. Once again available on CD, McDaniels' funky social critique is wrapped up in an appealing stew that draws from rock, R&B, folk, soul, and even free jazz.

Dustygroove: A monster album that's gone onto influence a generation - but which was barely recognized at the time! Singer Eugene McDaniels had scored big with some pop hits in the 60s under the name Gene McDaniels - but here, he steps out in a righteous batch of offbeat funk tunes - filled with politics, offbeat rhythms, and some very weird instrumentation. The whole thing's awash in moody, jazzy changes - of the style that showed up often in samples by Tribe Called Quest, Beastie Boys, and other artists who drew keen inspiration from this record.

Here's a detailed blog entry that could also help non-Spotify , from which:

Depending on which story you read, either the (then) supremely despicable (Nixon administration) Vice President Spiro Agnew or the equally contemptible Chief of Staff Harry Haldeman contacted Atlantic Records and demanded that the label stop recording the singer after the album was released in 1971.

AMG review: http://www.allmusic.com/cg/amg.dll?p=amg&sql=10:3vfpxqekld6e

Seriously, you NEED to hear this record

ah shit, mispelt Heroes

Excellent choice!

That's a super album indeed. And about time too - all this happy funk was making me happy.

lol

Sam has to give you an Arsenal player verdict too

great album - was on my prospective list of things for this thread btw

A good bit of listening down today:

1. I tracked down a thing I'd read about and planned on nominating myself - pretty good, but obviously I can't reveal what it is now.

2. ESG - really excellent, I want to know more about it, where it came from, what's the lineage, etc. I wouldn't actually have put this down as funk had it not come up in the club. Not sure what i'd've called it, maybe big beat or some kind of punk house. It kept reminding me of 'Pump Up The Volume' more than anything else.

3. I had Betty Davis on briefly too. Really like it. I took a bit of abuse upthread for suggesting that Funkadelic should scrub the vocal tracks and get someone like Tina Turner in - this is the kind of thing I had in mind.

ESG - really excellent, I want to know more about it, where it came from, what's the lineage, etc. I wouldn't actually have put this down as funk had it not come up in the club. Not sure what i'd've called it, maybe big beat or some kind of punk house.

"Punk house" isn't far off; they're usually considered part of the Mutant Disco/post-punk/dance-punk scene like Konk and Liquid Liquid. The AMG bio is good on a lot of your questions; if you don't know their origin story, it's quite charming: http://allmusic.com/cg/amg.dll?p=amg&sql=11:39fwxqr5ld6e~T1.

it's ilm's idea of funk

That sounded disparaging , I meant the kind ILM in general would like. You know what I mean anyway.