Ranking Parliament's Albums

2. Chocolate city.

3. mothership connection.

4. Motor booty affiar.

..and that's all i got.

http://www.duke.edu/~tmc/motherpage/albums_parliament/alb-funken.html

I have hard time ranking them, apart from Mothership Connection. sometimes nothin will scratch that itch like the weird proto-Sly psych guitar scratching that's all over "Up for the Down Stroke".

But I still don't get why Funkentelechy is such a big deal, apart from the really good Bernie Worrell work (but maybe a bit too much of it). For me, it was the Clinton-sells-out album.

I dunno, I think its a solid album, (Wizard of Finance is probably the one Parliament ballad that I really like) and I don't associate it with any Clinton career-positioning angles... but then that's cuz I didn't hear the record until 20 years later, so its pretty divorced from its original context for me. Bop Gun's my favorite from the record (Flashlight is great, but yeah its tired)

x-post

...in the top 4, it is almost impossible to decide something more concrete than this. I can say though that Osmium is the best album anyone could ever listen to on SHROOMS.

fair enough - it's not that it's not a great song that has given me much enjoyment, just that I don't really need to ever hear it again (as is the case with other overexposed great songs). Burned out on it, ya might say.

I am cranky today and overstating myself. I am most certainly not high enough. But I was a Parliament fan when you couldn't find enough white people who had ever heard of Parliament to have a conversation about them (Chocolate City grabbed me, and P-FUNK slammed me so hard the first time I heard it that I had to pull the car over). I bought Funkentelechy the day it was released, at a time when buying an album was something I could afford about once a season. I thought it was OK at the time, but mildly disappointing; I got tired of it fast and went back to the earlier records, which I continue to play today. It's kind of presumptuous of you to tell me to listen to something else.

I'm not certain Funkentelechy is even the second-best concept album Parliament made. For me, it doesn't hold a candle to Mothership. The concept there -- that the aliens everyone was waiting for were Black, that African-American culture was normative in the universe beyond Earth -- was brilliant and subversive, and beautifully executed, playing off both the redemptive and the threatening prototypes common then (and now) in popular science fiction. It also balanced perfectly between afrocentrism and reaching out to (and appropriating) mainstream culture. What they did in "Starchild" with "Swing Low, Sweet Chariot" was stunning: turning it inside out from an emblem of Uncle Tom-ish slave pathos and religious faith to an anthem of power and liberation through sheer joy. At a time when Black Power was moribund and most Black artists had retreated from any political content at all (or did it only with an earnestness worthy of the New York Times, as in "Living Just Enough For the City"), Parliament made Black Power seem like the greatest gift God ever gave mankind.

The non-linear hipster jokes were fresh and great: "Is 7 up?" The naughtiness was exhilirating, too. It doesn't seem like such a big deal today, but it wasn't too common at the time to hear about "uncut funk", getting "funked up", and "tearing the roof off the mothersucker".

Musically -- Collins, Wesley, Parker, the Brecker brothers, Worrell, Goins, and hints of all those old-school harmonies. The horns and jazz licks are wonderful.

I love Clones, too. The cover art alone is worth the price of the record, and again you have the sly, subversive appropriation of one of the major themes of mainstream science-fiction (the mad genius who plays God).

Funkentelechy: It's an anti-drug sermon from an artist who probably hasn't been straight in 40 years, so right there it's annoying. The slyness and subversiveness is gone, replaced by Sunday School. It's precisely as subversive as all those Truth.com PSAs that try to tell kids that not smoking is rebellious.

The Breckers are gone, too, and I don't think Goins was involved much. I haven't listened to anything but Flashlight in years, but if there are great horns there I don't remember them. For the most part, the little jazz touches were gone, replaced by letting Worrell freak out on synthesizer (something that was NOT out of the ordinary at the time). Flashlight was a straight-out dance number, at a time when that was what was selling. Nothing wrong with that, but Parliament hadn't done that since Up For The Down Stroke (which I like much more). And it was their fourth album in three years; it just didn't seem like much of an advance. I don't think it's that bad. I just like Mothership, Clones, and Motor Booty (and maybe Chocolate City) better.

Maybe THAT is exactly where the slyness and subversion ARE, Vorny! What could be more hilarious than an antidrug message from George Clinton at the height of his fame and drug intake? And how is a record with three nine-minute-or-more non-dance cuts (drones, really) any kind of careerist sellout move? Why is "Flashlight" evil somehow because it is a fun dance song? WHY DOES WHITE PEOPLE ONLY WANT THE P.FUNK TO ROCK etc. (just kidding, w/r/t you. others, no.)

Actually, it's not at all clear that Funkentelechy is only about drugs, so that's part of my beef with you; it's about ALL systems that seek to provide false comfort and shelters from reality. Including P.Funk itself -- if we're talking about signifying on album covers, who does Starchild morph into? Sir Nose, d'. Two sides, same coin.

So yeah, if "slyness and subversion" equals incorporating "Swing Low" into a song (Not Exactly The First Time Black Artists Had Used Gospel Music Ironically Or Anthemically By The Way), then you're right. But is there no s & s in "Three Blind Mice" and "Looney Tunes" riffs being played during our long space voyage? How about all the talk about Mood Prolong and Urge Overkill and "Stay up there until I tell you to come down"? Dude, that is not Sunday School, that is Magic Mushroom 4:20-ism.

And the idea that Parliament was only good with the Brecker Brothers is risible to the xxxtreme. Eff a Brecker Brother.

But I'll crank down my rhetoric. Although I think you and I value different things in general and certainly disagree about these records, I will take back my comments about you needing to listen to other music because you don't get it. That was a shitty Sir Nose thing to say.

See "Funkentelechy"

Re (Not Exactly The First Time Black Artists Had Used Gospel Music Ironically Or Anthemically By The Way): I didn't suggest Parliament had invented the wheel. But I've been wracking my brains for a roughly contemporary equivalent example, and I can't come up with one. What made it special to me was the combination of Irony AND Anthem, which is hard to pull off; the transformation of Elijah's chariot into a UFO, and substituting the "ride" for Home or Heaven as the destination. Also, "Swing Low" isn't gospel music; it has a whole different bunch of associations. And this wasn't the standard sacred/profane love switch-up, although it played with that, too.

But the "Three Blind Mice"/Looney Tunes stuff goes to the heart of what I think. It's a superficially similar thing to do, but I didn't think it was interesting at all. Three Blind Mice comes across to me like a clumsy, straightforward metaphor for being blinded by drugs, and Looney Tunes, if I remember correctly, is a leitmotiv for Sir Nose. Maybe you could convince me that I'm missing something really great there -- I'm thinking hard about your suggestion that the preachiness is a joke, and that Starchild and Sir Nose are the same -- but I've missed it for 30 years.

Horns: Haikunym, you are right that the Brecker brothers were not crucial to Parliament. But the sax fills on Mothership and Clones are something that I always like when I hear them. Not necessary, not central, just another nice touch there.

Not getting explicit anti-drug theme in Funkentelechy: Huh? Maybe that's the explanation for why everyone likes it more than I do (although I seem to like it just about exactly as much as Shakey Mo). I was listening to some different record.

OK, I'll stop now. Sorry to be such a putz.

That would be wrong. Funkentelechy isn't 20-some minutes of 7 fair-to-middling songs preceded by a 10 minute 3rd rate Hendrix guitar solo.

I SHALL RETURN STARCHILD!

... haven't heard "Gloryhallastoopid"

Motor Booty Affair at #1 I think..it's a hard call but it's perfect for this sunny day

Just drove over George Clinton Bridge.

Mothership Connection
Motor-Booty Affair
Funkentelechy vs. the Placebo Syndrome
Chocolate City
Up for the Down Stroke
The Clones of Dr. Funkenstein
Osmium
Trombipulation
Gloryhallastoopid

Not that keen on the bottom three.

Mothership Connection > Motor Booty Affair > Funkentelechy vs. the Placebo Syndrome >>> Osmium > Up for the Down Stroke > The Clones of Dr. Funkenstein > Chocolate City >>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>> Trombipulation > Gloryhallastoopid

What a way to wash Trump out of my hair!