Today in Parliament

Now George Clinton is bringing his funky bunch to town next week. They are still promoting the tickets. I think they are having problems selling them. You want to pay $60 to watch a 60 year old man prance around in his diapers? (nb: this is not a mere rhetorical question. This being a P Funk George Clinton concert, there will be a guy prancing around in his diapers.) Am I going to fork out $60 for that lunacy?

But then again I reflected: there are only a handful of people whose live concerts I would attend. Sonny Rollins. Sonic Youth (They were in Singapore, performing in the Harbour Pavillion, 1 week before I was drafted. Since then the Harbour Pavillion has been torn down, and Vivocity erected in its place.) Bob Dylan. (He turned up at my super ulu out of the place uni 1 day, so why could I do?). Sonic Youth was great, the others were OK, but over the hill. Bob Dylan was good for his age.

Now anybody who knows rap music knows that the 3 most sampled artists are James Brown, Sly Stone and P Funk. So when P Funk (OK, it's just George Clinton and a few newbies - no Bernie Worrell, no Bootsy Collins) traipse into town, what should we expect?

I don't expect many Singaporeans to know P Funk, which is why I'm surprised he decided to come to Singapore. Aren't a lot of R+B fans, and definitely very few people from that disco era. But it's going to be like that David Bowie concert 25 years ago when a legend comes to perform, and nobody turns up, but people have fun anyway.

This is P Funk, they are legendary. Anybody who compiles a list of the top 100 greatest artists of pop music will include them.

There are a few musicians I want to be. One is Thelonious Monk. Another is Andrew Hill. (Both are dead unfortunately). I wouldn't mind being Captain Beefheart or Zappa, making crazy music that would piss off a lot of people. I would definitely love to be George Clinton, strung out and freaky with all that crazy music and crazy costumes, being a good role model for Prince to follow in your footsteps.

There are the crazy characters, like Sir Nose D'voidOfFunk (the straight nerd who doesn't understand black music, doesn't swim and doesn't do cocaine hence the nose reference), Uncle Jam, Dr Funkenstein, the Mothership.

I heard them first on Prince's "Graffiti Bridge". "We can Funk" was cool but probably a step down from their great heights. I fished out their masterpiece (wait for it) "Funkentelechy vs the Placebo Syndrome" from the discount bin. (Told you Singaporeans can't appreciate good stuff.) 1 minute into "Endangered Species" I was hooked, I hadn't heard anything that funky in my life. (By then I had already been acquainted with Sly Stone and Stevie so that is saying something.) Just before I left for the States I renamed the ICQ account on the Singapore computer "Mothership Connection" as a tribute to them (and my family too of course.)

Remember: you can tune a piano but you can't tuna fish.