funkadelic, "promentalshitbackwash­psychosis enema squad" (1978)

Posted on February 2nd, 2007 by Scraps.
Categories: Music, Songs.

Song Project #10

If Sun Ra and his Arkestra are the great mystical goofballs of modern music, then George Clinton and Parliament-Funkadelic are the great secular goofballs, high concept with a capital High. By the time of 1978's One Nation Under a Groove, the early serious side of Clinton had long since been sublimated within the goofy. When he had something to say -- "Chocolate City", for example -- he said it with a grin and a groove. "Free Your Mind and Your Ass Will Follow", but he might have said Free your ass and your mind will follow, too.

And so Promentalshitbackwashpsychosis Enema Squad (The DooDoo Chasers).

This is a groove not for dancing but swaying, and listening to the preaching of Overlord George Clinton, the Ultimate Liberator of Constipated Notions (as he styles himself in the liner notes). It's laid down by a steady bass and drums, a low guitar carrying the basic melody, and a high guitar punctuating the melody. As the song goes on, changing chords but not the groove for over ten minutes, that high guitar begins to stretch out until for the last several minutes it's squawling. There's a singer singing a standard ballad melody, with words that can't be made out much of the time (and aren't in the lyric sheet), and sometimes he (she?) too builds to a squawling crescendo, but what would ordinarily be a lead vocal is here just melodic coloring, background for George Clinton's Sunday service: this week, the "prune juice of the mind".

The rope that pulls the song all the way through is the interplay between Clinton and his congregation, every assertion echoed and amplified. And the concept is wonderful: the mind as a mass of shit to be cleaned out with funk ("the band in the tidy bowl of your brain"). In lesser hands this would be an exercise in mere scatology; for Clinton it's a sermon, beginning with "The world is a toll-free toilet", built with delightful metaphor upon metaphor. Interspersed in the call and response are other vocal interpolations by a guy with a Peter Lorre voice ("What was that 'pro' word again? 'Promental--'?" "Clean! Sparkly!"), while George preaches: "And what is the cause of all this shit? . . . Ego-munchies! Me burger with I sauce on it!" "Count the calories of your thoughts!"

Funkadelic have many great songs, but for me this is the peak, even higher than "Maggot Brain". It's amazing that they can play this groove, without fundamental change, for ten solid minutes and it doesn't drag for an instant -- it doesn't even feel long. (There's an instrumental version, and it works, too.) This is Funkadelic at their most seriously playful; who else could repeat and have you repeat with them, and have it sound like an anthem: "Fried ice cream is a reality!"

3 comments.

Ed Ward

Comment on February 2nd, 2007.

"Clinton and his congregation..." George used to refer to those moments as "The Church of the Octave Insanes," and really hoped it would happen at every show. It didn't -- and I sure saw enough of them to be able to say that -- but it happened often enough. Too many of the shows I saw were in the rural South, where the audiences were as inhibited as they would have been *un*inhibited at a gospel show. But that night at the Capitol Center in D.C. ... they were screamin'.

And you're right: the band just grooved on, and they never even made it look like work. What an organization -- and they'd be modest about it up to the point when they'd realize how much Clinton was ripping them off. But that's another story...

Scraps

Comment on February 2nd, 2007.

I've only seen them twice, and (lucky me) they were great both times. The first time was the first big concert show I ever saw, when I was fourteen. The second was more than twenty years later, when, as one of the few perks I got when I worked at Sonicnet before it was gobbled up and shat out by MTV, I got to see the taping of P-Funk's Sessions at West 50-whatever street it is, from the second row. You would think with a space and audience like that that it wouldn't come together, but they pulled the floor out of the ground and took off. One of the amazing highlights that I'll bet didn't make it into the televised show was a version of "Maggot Brain" that must have been something like twenty minutes long.

Randy Byers

Comment on February 2nd, 2007.

"high concept with a capital High" is the best phrase I've seen yet today. Ha! I've only seen the Clinton show once, at Bumbershoot, where he led the assembled masses in a chant from the Red Hot Chili Peppers album that he produced: "I fuck 'em just to see the look on their face." Saw Bootsy separately at Rkcndy once, and even got a sweaty hug from the Man (along with everybody else in the audience).

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