Word from the mother (ship)

I pulled out my guidebook on funk and there he was, staring out at me on the cover. Of course they would put him there, the leader of the most colourful and most sampled band in funk music.

But I think that Parliament / Funkadelic (for all intents and purposes they are the same band. George Clinton got his gang to record under a new name because they got caught in a lawsuit) were never really introduced to a Singapore audience. In the 70s, if you listened to that type of music it meant that you were the sort with long hair, doesn’t study hard at school, takes drugs, will probably be involved in a teenage pregnancy, and will live wretched and miserable in a ghetto for the rest of your life. And you won’t be one of the yuppies who cough up $60 to go to Esplanade to watch George Clinton.

However you could be one of those people who lose a lot of money betting on football, and therefore be a major sponsor of the construction of the Esplanade. Life ain’t fair. If you really had a plaque that listed down all the individuals who contributed to the Esplanade building fund, you would get a lot of Tan Ah Kows.

Anyway I have also plonked down $20 for Portsmouth to win the FA cup at 1.75 odds. It seemed a sound investment until 5 minutes later I remembered that Harry Redknapp has a bad record of losing to smaller teams.

I had never been to a Mosaic show before, so I guess it was not good that I missed Tortoise (by all accounts one of the best shows Singapore has ever seen) or Chick Corea or Pat Metheny. Or Femi Kuti! How could I have missed Femi Kuti!!! (Femi = son of Fela Kuti)

Anyway it wasn’t surprising when I saw that I would be upgraded to the floor seats so my wisdom in getting the cheapest seats was somehow vindicated (although when the box office clerk asked me if I was sure that I didn’t have any concessions it became clear to me that I could have gotten a student to buy my tickets for me and gotten in without much fuss.)

The crowd had a huge proportion of ang mohs (only ang mohs have heard of him.) I said to Nat, who I talked into going along (I thought he was a regular concert goer because he went for Pat Metheny, only to find out later he was not.) I said to Nat, I’m probably the only Chinese here who’s not an SPG. (Nat’s Indian).

As usual, Gary Shider turned up in diapers. I told people before that some nutcase would turn up in diapers but they thought I was kidding. It wasn’t a 20 piece band (and if there were 20 guys back there I wouldn’t blame them for resting a few after they got so spectacularly snubbed by the Singaporeans). There was some short guy at the keyboards who doubled up spectacularly as a saxophone soloist. Although that didn’t make up for the disappointment that he was the entire brass section. (I was hoping for something akin to the horny horns.) There was a stagehand who doubled up as a guitarist and contributed some blistering Hendrix solos. Drummer, bassist. Bassist doesn’t get the spotlight but in the original Funkadelic Bootsy was arguably the second most important guy in the band. The other keyboardist didn’t get much spotlight, and I guess it’s not that easy covering for Bernie Worrell. There was a 3rd guitarist, and 3 backup singers, although one of them, some white chick, got a solo spot.

The proceedings were somewhat disrupted with the latest incarnation of Sir Nose D’VoidOfFunk angling for more air time than he was given, and had to endure Gary Shider telling him to get the hell off the stage.

They ripped through a few songs at the beginning, without George Clinton. “Funkentelechy”, a few lines of “promentalshitbackwash enema squad”, and the standard “Bop Gun (Endangered Species)” opened the set. Can’t recognise all of the stuff that was played but many of the standards were there: “flashlight”, “p funk”, “Tear the Roof off”, “One Nation Under a Groove”, “Get Off Your Ass and Jam”. But no “Maggot Brain”, “Aqua Boogie” or “Night of the Thumpasorus Peoples”.

George Clinton is almost 70 and you wouldn’t expect him to last the whole set. He turned up 1 hour into the show dressed up as Kenny from South Park, keeping his hood on, dramatically pointing his finger at everybody in the band. Still has a hell of a voice though.

They couldn’t go full out for the entire 3 hours, so there was slow jams that got a bit draggy at times. But the highs – like the vocalist’s solo spot, where she worked Marvin Gaye’s line “throw up both my hands” (from “Inner City Blues”), “Nature Boy” and “My One and Only Love” into what she was singing. Like the triple Hendrix guitar freak out. Like Sir nose rippling his pecs like he was some crazy caterpillar, doing acrobatic backflips and a motormouth rap, when not holding up posters like “I am Sir Nose” or “Fuck George”. Or when they dragged up 10 lucky audience members (all female) on stage to dance during the finale.

I would love to do a version of “flashlight” one day, except that we use British English here and it would be Torchlight. You could throw in the Singaporean alphabet soup for the lyrics: “PAP”, “SIA”, “MRT”, “WP”, “ISD”, “PSA”, etc etc.

This is not, to quote one of their album titles, “the awesome power of a fully operational mothership”. That would be one of the best shows to go to. But I wouldn’t pass them up if they came to Singapore, just like I wouldn’t pass up Prince or James Brown (if he’s not charging a bomb). Well James can’t come because he’s dead anyway. But it was good enough.

One character in the P funk mythology is Sir Nose, the straight laced geek who doesn’t understand funk. One big problem with the concert is that there were too many Sir Noses in the audience. Nat was hollering himself hoarse but he also thought it could have been better.

I have favoured those large, loud, outlandish bands who are willing to go out on on a limb. But I think when you start dressing up like clowns and fooling around you people treat you less seriously and there is some slighting of your musical qualities, even though “anything goes” is such an important part of the creative process. I have always thought that Captain Beefheart, Sly Stone, Jimi Hendrix, Frank Zappa, Prince, electric era Miles Davis and Michael Jackson have typically been punished for sometimes letting their clownish antics overshadow their great music.

(the above being the review for the George Clinton concert on 10th March, belatedly published.)