The Associated Press There’s no roof at the Sunset Recreation
Amphitheater, but if there was, George Clinton
would tear it off.
By Shana Dines
Daily Bruin Reporter
[email protected]
He’s got the funk. And he’s bringing it with
him.
George Clinton and the Mothership of Funk will be landing at
UCLA this Saturday night at the Sunset Canyon Recreation Center
Amphitheater. Bruins had better be prepared to shake their booties,
because Dr. Funkenstein, the Starchild, and all of the other
characters more commonly known as George Clinton and
Parliament-Funkadelic are excited about their upcoming
performance.
“We want ’em to bring two booties,” said
George Clinton, about the students who plan on attending the show.
“Because we gonna funk ’em up and we gonna funk one
booty off.”
Having played Los Angeles and Hollywood numerous times, but
never UCLA, Clinton is excited to bring the funk to more college
students. He said that Parliament-Funkadelic will play at a college
campus any chance they get, but they are particularly looking
forward to their first time at UCLA, the only college on this
year’s tour. He is confident that the Bruins will receive
funk well, despite lack of experience with it.
Many students should have a small idea of what to expect from
George Clinton performing on campus. He made a cameo in
1994’s “PCU,” a movie satirizing the political
correctness of liberal arts colleges. He expects that this
Saturday’s show, like other college shows, will resemble the
movie scene in which the band crashes a frat party and plays a free
concert for the school.
“Every time we play a college, we get virgin fans,”
Clinton said. “We like playing for people that have never
seen the group or heard about us, and whether they like us or not,
we love playing for a fresh audience.”
George Clinton and Parliament-Funkadelic have been a mainstay of
funk since the early ’60s, when Parliament first formed.
According to UCLA musicology Professor Robert Fink, Parliament
broke up for about a decade, allowing Clinton to form Funkadelic.
By the time that broke up, Parliament was ready to get back
together. The solution was melding the two bands into a collective
whole, since known as Parliament-Funkadelic. Now, Clinton and his
crew offer their fans plenty of the instrumental diversity and acid
jamming of funk, in addition to the wide range of harmonies and
chants that evolved from doo-wop and motown roots.
They, along with James Brown, War and Sly & the Family
Stone, are some of the most prominent groups responsible for
keeping funk alive over the past half century. In addition to the
abundance of influential artists in the genre, its variety of
sounds and widespread appeal to many age groups have also helped
its longevity.
“It’s probably one of the only kinds of music that
kids can jam to the same music that their parents or older brothers
and sisters jam to,” Clinton said. “Everybody can funk
together; it’s like a circus. The whole family can go see
some funk. And they can relate to it for different reasons or
different eras or different styles, or they get introduced to it in
different ways, but they’re all in agreement: that this is
dope.”
The dynamic personality of funk music has also helped keep the
booties shaking. It’s always changing, while maintaining the
tribal basics that make it funk. According to Clinton, motown used
to be the funkiest music out there, but when it got sophisticated
and became pop hits, groups like Funkadelic were there to bring
funk back to its essentials.
“Today, George Clinton is one of the most sampled artists
in hip hop, only behind James Brown and a couple other
artists,” Fink said. “Because of this, he has a huge
influence on college radio.”
In addition to the strong funk undertones of hip hop, bands like
the Red Hot Chili Peppers have also taken elements from Clinton and
mixed it with harder rock. A generation later, Rage Against the
Machine adopted funk as one of its main influences, according to
Fink. Rage was also famous for being politically charged, another
trait borrowed from Clinton.
The science-fiction stories about the Mothership landing with
Dr. Funkenstein arriving on Earth and bringing funk with him,
though it sounds playful and goofy, is actually chock-full of
political commentary. According to Fink, it represents the
separation of blacks and their feelings of being almost a different
species in America. There were also numerous Parliament-Funkadelic
songs with themes of oppression, unemployment and anti-war
protests.
Hip hop and political rock are not the only musical genres that
carry on the legacy of funk these days. Clinton named Mystikal,
Eminem and Missy Elliot as some of the funkiest people today, but
then threw Alanis Morissette onto the list.
“There’s all kinds of funky music out there,
it’s not all just one style,” Clinton said.
“Everyone that takes chances and goes some crazy places, you
know, I can get into it.”
According to Clinton, funkiness is not just a personal and
musical style, but a state of mind and even a way of life. It
includes taking nothing, especially yourself, too seriously. He
added that he is always the first person to call himself on being
unfunky. If anyone else ever tries to say it to him, they’re
usually too late.
In giving a lesson in funkiness to UCLA students, Clinton feels
privileged to be the one to give many people their first taste. And
for those who have boarded the mothership before, he knew it was
just a matter of time before they found their way back.
“Funk is dope, it’s in your genes, it’s a part
of your evolution. It’s a basic part of you that we kind of
get away from when we get civilized and sophisticated. Then
somebody will take us back to the basic chant, where there’s
somebody spitting the beat, “˜pschh pschh,’ or James
Brown, “˜ugh gah ga ga,’ you know those grunts or sounds
like that,” Clinton said.
“They go back to basic, animalistic type feelings, which
is still a part of us, which makes us want to shake our butt and
dance and feel good. Funk is that part of it, it don’t hide
it. Most of it tries to get civilized, we attempt to do it too, but
our funk overriders always bring us back quickly. So we are able to
stay funky and you may stray away from it for a minute, but
everybody that has been into it, they come back; they need a dose
of it,” he continued.