It's quite hard to know where to begin with this gig.
The James Brown tribute bit in the middle? The
break-dancer dressed like a pimped-out polar bear doing handstands on a speaker stand 12 feet
from the ground? The female vocalist doing Saturday Night Fever Moves in an all-in-one jumpsuit on
roller skates? Or maybe the bassist in a nappy?
Yep, a nappy. Perhaps it would be best to start with the man himself. George Clinton, the 66-year-old corn-rowed forefather of funk.
Although that wouldn't, in the context of things, be very
accurate: Gorgeous George didn't even shuffle on stage until nigh-on an hour had passed.
Leaving us in the capable hands of his P-Funk Allstars to help warm us up. To help us get down with
our bad self. From the windows, to the walls, till the sweat drips down our ba... You get the idea.
And hey, it was funky, if predictably self-indulgent. Oh they had the strut, they had the style, but
after the fourth or fifth minute of the fifth or sixth saxophone solo, even the hardest of hips
began to slow their grind.
But then, Lazarus like, George appeared, dressed like Special Forces at a Grateful Dead gig, and the
whole thing ratcheted up several levels. The groove deepened and darkened and the whole thing gained a
focal point in Clinton, and that shrill piercing cry.
My God, George Clinton is a funky man. A very, very funky man. An overwhelmingly funky man. Sure
he's elderly enough to ride the bus for free, and he is prone to speaking very passionately about
nothing particularly cohesive, but still, has there ever been a man more slavishly devoted to the
funk than he?
So devoted that nothing as pedestrian as a curfew was going to stop him. After a set nudging three
hours it was left to a panicky looking soundman to pull the plug, disconnecting the microphone
with the hour well past 11, leaving the camouflaged Clinton soundlessly mouthing to pretty much himself.
Even then as plaudits were taken, the cry continued. "We! Want! The FUNK!" Even after two football
matches worth of hot funk injection, delivered right to the solar plexus of all concerned.
There were some songs in there somewhere. Cosmic Slut was the best of the pre-Clinton numbers led by
the aforementioned nappy-clad Garry "Starchild" Shider. One Nation Under A Groove was immense, if
barely distinguishable under the various expressionist swirls the assembled members painted over the
top, but honestly, the funk cares not for your pre-defined song boundaries, the funk will always
escape. The funk will not stop.
Yes, it may have tried your patience at times. Yeah several supernova were born and died during one
of the more over-the-top guitar solos. But hey. That's funk. As the man said, free your mind, and
your ass will surely follow. And it's hard to argue with 4,000 asses.
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