10 Sep The Legacy of George Clinton and Parliament Funkadelic
George Clinton knows how to put on a show, and Telluride will be able to witness the splendor of it all, first hand, at the upcoming Blues & Brews festival this weekend. Here’s a story by Chris Jordan, with APP.com (Asbury Park Press), about George Clinton’s legacy and the news that Clinton’s Mothership stage prop from 1975 will be on display in the Smithsonian’s National Museum of African American History and Culture.
Move over, Spirit of St. Louis, here comes the Mothership.
The Mothership stage prop — central to the ’75 album “Mothership Connection” — is about the land in the Smithsonian’s National Museum of African American History and Culture where it will be on display at the Musical Crossroads gallery.
P-Funk music and concert footage will play to complete the experience.
“It’s definitely going to be right in the lobby when you walk in, so it definitely lives up to the history of the music, because the music has not only been good for us, but good for two generations of artists after that,” said Parliament-Funkadelic founder George Clinton. “All of the hip-hop and now electronic, those two eras, the funk has been the DNA of that.”
Case in point: the band’s “Give Up the Funk (Tear the Roof Off the Sucker)” has been sampled more than 35 times by major artists, everyone from Method Man and Redman to Snoop Dogg, according to the www.whosampled.com website.
“All the music came from the Mothership,” said Clinton from his Tallahasee, Fla. home.
The Smithsonian-bound Mothership is a replica of the ’70s Mothership, yet it was very active in the ’90s and it made its last appearance at Woodstock ’99. The original was sold for scrap, according to reports. There is no exact date for the installation but the Smithsonian has stated it is happening soon.
“After (the 1975 album) ‘Chocolate City,’ which was about black person in the White House, the next one I could see was (a black person) in outer space,” Clinton said regarding the creation of the Mothership. “Back in those days, you were getting out of the peace and love generation and into the ’70s and while that was still around you had to leave the planet to find it.”
“So we were exploring all of that.”
And making history. Clinton, who was living in Newark at the time, formed the Parliaments in his Plainfield barbershop on Third and Plainfield Avenue in the ’60s. It grew from there into a sublime melange of funk, R&B, rock, gospel, classical, doo-wop and jazz, all set off by outlandish stage costumes, fantastical narratives and stage props like the Mothership.
There wasn’t anything like it before and there hasn’t been anything like it since. It was at once farciful and fanciful, but it was also a pointed commentary of the turbulent nature of the times. You could take it either way, and that is part of its genius.
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