George Clinton

Decide to give some of his stuff a listen, when I stumbled across a cover of 'Erotic City'. Is this performed by Parliament, Funkadelic or just George Clinton, and when? I hope to gain an idea of the differences between Parliament and Funkadelic. I've never listened to any of his stuff before, and he sounds interesting.

Uh Oh-Where's Funkpill when you need him?

Singingboy said:

nurse said:

Uh Oh-Where's Funkpill when you need him?

Singingboy said:

The top four that you absolutely HAVE to check out are

Parliament: Mothership Connection, Funkentelechy Vs. The Placebo Syndrome
Funkadelic: Maggot Brain, One Nation Under A Groove

also recommended
Parliament:Up for the down stroek, Clones of Dr. Funkenstein, The motor Booty Affair, Chocolate City, First Thangs
Funkadelic:Funkadelic, Free Your Mind and Your Ass Will Follow, America Eats Its Young, Standing on the verge of getting it on, Let's Take it to the stage

Here's the story in a nutshell. George Clinton had a five-piece do wop group from the mid 50s through the 60s called the Parliaments which included himself, Clarence "Fuzzy" Haskins, "Shady" Grady Thomas, Calvin Simon, and Ray Davis. Later he formed a backing band consisting of Billy "Bass" Nelson(bass), Eddie Hazel (lead guitar), Tawl Ross (rhythm guitar), Ramon "Tiki" Fulwood (drums) and unofficial member (at first) and good friend of George's since his days as a hair stylist Bernie Worrell (organ, keyboards). George decided to move beyond do-wop and more into a heavier acid-rock oriented but still funky sound influenced by Sly & the family stone, Jimi Hendrix, Cream, The MC5 and the Stooges. Billy Bass and Eddie Hazel came up with the name Funkadelic and were mostly responsible for the band's early sound. Their first album was sort of stoned out funky blues-rock kind of like Cream, it was released on Detroit's Westbound label. George had also released more conventional R&B based singles and albums under the name "Parliament" (at one point he lost the rights to the name "The Parliaments" so he just dropped the S). "Parliament" served as the "backing vocalists" on the Funkadelic albums while Funkadelic was the "backing band" on Parliament recordings. With the next two Funkadelic albums they more or less perfected psychedelic funk-rock (even bordering on heavy metal in a couple cases). Unfortunately most of the original band mutinied after their third album and George recruited Bootsy Collins' band which had backed up James Brown to replace them, and over the years the group would gain and lose many many talented musicians. In the mid 70s George revived the "Parliament" alter-ego, which started off as more conventional Funk/R&B with very little heavy guitar/rock influence, but eventually developed a more avant-gard, jazzy, futuristic (some would even say proto-hip hop) sound with the Mothership Connection album, a sound which was mostly developed by Bernie Worrell who was the arranging/melodic mastermind of the group. The group continued to alternate between releases under the name Funkadelic and Parliament through the end of the 70s and the beginning of the 80s and eventually the distinction between the two diminished (as did the quality of the music). Collectively the whole group was referred to as "Parliament Funkadelic" or "The Parliafunkadelicment Thang" or just P-funk. P-funk had many spin-off groups including Bootsy's Rubber Band, The Brides of Dr. Funkenstein, Fred Wesley and The Horny Horns, and Parlet. By 1981 George Clinton was effectively a solo artist but he kept the whole collective of musicians around as "The P-funk all-stars" Here's the name of all the musicians who've been involved that I can list off the top of my head (Apart from the ones I already have)

William "Bootsy" Collins, Phelps "Catfish" Collins, Franky "Kash" Waddy, "Chicken" Gunnels, Tyrone Lampkin, Cordell "Boogie" Mosson, Gary Shider, Michael "Kidd Funkadelic" Hampton, Jerome "Bigfoot" Brailey, Fred Wesley, Maceo Parker, Rodney "Skeet" Curtis, Walter "Junie" Morrison, Dewayne "Blackbird" Mcknight, Lige Curry, Glen Goins, Eric McFadden, Sylvester "Sly Stone" Stewart,
[Edited 5/8/06 0:44am]
[Edited 5/8/06 5:21am]

http://www.prince.org/msg/8/187618

funkpill said:

Singingboy said:

Decide to give some of his stuff a listen, when I stumbled across a cover of 'Erotic City'. Is this performed by Parliament, Funkadelic or just George Clinton, and when? I hope to gain an idea of the differences between Parliament and Funkadelic. I've never listened to any of his stuff before, and he sounds interesting.

First, start with these..

In this order..









Then go back and grab these..




Then this one...the early years..




Then this one..the early early years..



And finally, their last album under the Parliament name..



Bonus:





Now someone do Funkadelic for him....