p Funk Live

The only officially released in-concert Parliament-Funkadelic album, Live: P-Funk Earth Tour captures George Clinton and company at their peak in 1977, compiling recordings of a couple shows (January 19 at the Los Angeles Forum and January 21 at the Oakland Coliseum). The double-LP/single-CD album can't do justice to the group's extravagant theatrics, most memorably the landing of the mothership, but it's a wonderful showcase for their musical ability and their catalog of great songs.

' …this album follows in the same vein as the last post: live P Funk in wonderful sound quality. This had to be a soundboard recording just by how good it sounds. You can tell the audience is loveing it too judgeing by the way the automatically start gettin' down when the band switches it up. I definitely recommend this as well as the last live P Funk performance "Hydraulic Funk".' contributors.editorial@hqhiphop.net

The mastermind of the Parliament/Funkadelic collective during the 1970s, George Clinton broke up both bands by 1981 and began recording solo albums, occasionally performing live with his former bandmates as the P.Funk All-Stars. Born in Kannapolis, NC, on July 22, 1940, Clinton became interested in doo wop while living in New Jersey during the early '50s. He formed the Parliaments in 1955, based out of a barbershop back room where he straightened hair.

William "Bootsy" Collins cut his teeth playing bass with the James Brown band in 1970, but when he landed in George Clinton's Parliament/Funkadelic crew in the mid-70s, he quickly became a figurehead of Clinton's messier, trippier cartoon funk. Throughout the 1976-82 period condensed into this two-disc set, Bootsy and his Rubber Band were essentially P-Funk for kids. His records had all the stage-crowding chaos of the Mothership, with the politics and priapism replaced by goofy spiels about the excellence of, well, Bootsy, plus squelchy, googly sounds and his infamous star-shaped shades. The tone he got out of his star-shaped bass, like huge bubbles surfacing from the bottom of a lake, was heavy enough that he could slow things way, way down–"Jam Fan (Hot)" crawls like no other hard-funk record. That, in turn, let him be the half-serious love-man Clinton couldn't risk being (check out the wacky, spacey slow jam "Munchies for Your Love"). Glory B mostly collects unedited album tracks, though it also throws in 1980's lost demi-hit "Freak to Freak" (credited to Sweat Band) and the 1982 single "Body Slam!".

' Dayton was the home of Sun, a funk combo that showed a lot of promise in the beginning but didn't get nearly as far as it should have commercially. Some of Sun's material was excellent, much of it was merely competent. But the band's recording career got off to a fairly promising start with 1976's Live On, Dream On, which boasted the sweaty funk gem "Wanna Make Love." Unfortunately, many of the people who bought the single passed on this good-to-excellent LP, and that was a mistake because a lot of the other material is almost as strong.
Live On, Dream On (re-released as Wanna Make Love several months later) falls short of perfect, no doubt, it's one of the greatest funk albums ever! ' Alex.Henderson@allmusic.com

Bootsy Collins has rightfully received accolades as funk's second officer (after George Clinton – and it should be third after James Brown and Clinton). For decades he has been sampled by every rapper from Snoop Dogg to OutKast, and virtually created the bass sound that made the Red Hot Chili Peppers a household name and that created a career for Les Claypool. Yet, his most influential sound emanated not from his tenure with James Brown or P-Funk, but his own Rubber Band, and until now that wooly, wild, and surreal unit has never been properly anthologized. Rhino, in their usual thorough, crazy fashion, have directed the folks at the Warner archives and have created a massive, drop-the-bomb two-disc set that sets the record straight.

El-P, aka El Producto, is one of hip-hop's most obstinate and adventurous pioneers, combining a lo-fi old-school aesthetic with a progressive rock musician's inclination to push boundaries. He has never succumbed to the demands of corporate rap, instead choosing to pursue his own decidedly non-commercial direction. In the mid-'90s, he developed a strong reputation with the groundbreaking trio Company Flow, a band whose achievements include El-P-produced LP Funcrusher Plus on Rawkus Records, a label considered by many one of the best for intelligent hip-hop. Over the group's auspicious stint together, he proved he was himself capable of intense lyricism as well as sonic production so powerful it could stand on its own.