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George Clinton
Sharing Technologies and Abilities
by Jeff Kaliss
"We all use ten per cent of our brainpower, "George Clinton reminded me as he held court in his dressing room a few seasons back. "The Allocator needs to show back up and give us ten per cent more, 'cause we've got a lot of technologies and abilities and don't know what to do with 'em yet, or don't trust what we're doing with 'em yet, and all of that is just a matter of comprehending. . . In the big picture, everything is there."
I had every hope that if anybody could help get me glimpse of the big picture, it would be this grandfatherly progenitor of funkadelia, whom I'd admired since the late '70s, when Clinton and his conspirators in the Parliament and Funkadelic bands had declared "One Nation Under A Groove" and placed on the charts with a sound and a performing style that would go on to influence acts from Prince to the Red Hot Chilis. Clinton's own somewhat slow and sometimes frustrating ascent had begun with the group he formed at age 14 in Newark, New Jersey in the mid-50s. Working his way up through doo-wop, R&B, and a fall-back gig as a hairdresser (he now appears in glorious dredlocks), Clinton was more than ready in 1970 to debut Funkadelic, a band in which he fused funk and psychedelia, with the title motto, "Free Your Mind and Your Ass Will Follow."
After leaving his two bands on the back burner and spawning a number of spin-offs including Bootsy Collins' Rubber Band, Clinton scored another strange, addictive hit in 1982 with "Atomic Dog." Most recently, he's made good on his promise to continue exploring and sharing "technologies and abilities" by linking up with the purveyors of the Mixman technology, which permits fans everywhere to inject the elements of his classicsthe bass, guitar, drum beats, and vocals of "Atomic Dog", "Mothership Connection Starchild", "Do Fries Go With That Shake?", and so forth --- into their PC's and, with a few clicks of the mouse and flicks of the keyboard, to remix them into something personal and perpetual.
It may not match the high energy and communal fun of a live show by Clinton's current P-Funk All-Stars aggregation, costumed in space suits and giant diapers, but the Guru of Groove wants me to assure you that, "'Funk' is to do the best you can and then leave it alone. . And if it's not enough, you find out what the (ital) next (unital) one is."