by Barley Lewis-McCabe
Life gets tiring — eventually, it’s all so boring. Same routine day in and day out, monotony becomes mandatory and breaking away gets more difficult by the day — wait! Starchildren of the universe, behold, for the Mothership has descended — free your mind and come fly with me. It’s hip on the Mothership.
I doubt anyone there, except for the man himself, could have imagined what was going to happen over the next two hours. It was transcendent and more spiritual than anything I’ve felt in a traditional house of god.
On Saturday, I worshiped at the altar of groove, under the kind Prime Minister of Funk himself.
“He’s gone by many names,” The band announced, “Dr. Funkenstein, Mr. Wiggles, Father, Grandfather, but we call him Big Brother. So pay attention to the man himself, George Clinton!”
It was at that point that lightning struck the audience. A bolt sent from the funked-out guitar wriggled through the crowd; nothing could stop it. It was too late, our humdrum signal had been taken over by the Mothership Connection, the phenomenon of space based funk musicians, the embodiment of funk itself. The crowd was lost in space, nothing but stardust. Until the groove pulled us together, reformed in the image of Dr. Funkenstein.
P-Funkadelic wasn’t stuck to just one genre — they don’t see funk strictly as a genre, but as a feeling, as the embodiment of the eternal groove. They zapped from a groovy funk beat to hard rock accompanied by shredding guitar solos that slowly calmed down to a steady blues groove.
The saxophone told a story, accompanied by Lige Curry on guitar; they wailed out the audience’s blues and sang their praises. They performed something extraordinarily human — they knew how we felt and what we needed. For two gracefully long hours, we didn’t live in our world; we were transported somewhere new.
Third generation P-Funker Thurt Deliq was raised in an environment of funk, and is a strong believer in its medicinal powers.
“If you’re going through anything, even with world problems or whatever’s going on, you know, you throw on a little funk and, you know, it changed your mode and changes your mood,” Deliq said.
The audience lived in a world where no one wished for food or shelter, just funk! We lived in a nation united by groove, led by P-Funk and their cabinet of all-star players.
I was holding my camera in front of me to snake through the crowd more easily. I tried to take photos, but had to constantly repeat “Excuse me, sorry, excuse me” to get anywhere. A man with a short beard, a blue aloha shirt with matching shorts, and pupils the size of a pen tip chopped my back repeatedly, “Come on man, get up there!” He shouted as he pushed me forward. I leaned against the barricade and watched the bright lights above Parliament dance in the Humboldt sky — my eyes glazed over and my mouth might as well have been full of dirt.
I couldn’t sit, or stand, or lean, or photograph — I couldn’t consciously control my body. I was overwhelmed by the Mothership Connection; I had to dance.
It felt like it would never end, and no one wanted it to. There were several final songs of the night; I don’t know why that was. It could’ve been the fact that they were waving and saying “Goodnight, everybody” over and over again, or more likely, it was the sheer showmanship that followed everything they performed. Every song felt like it was the big finish; every time it felt like they couldn’t go higher, they couldn’t possibly get any better — they did.
I went to the side gate after the show and got my interview with Thurt. He brought me backstage and introduced me to Danny and Lige. We stood in a circle and engaged in a blazing hot conversation. I asked Lige what’s so special about Funk.
“It was always breaking the rules, but we always defied that by making it a party, you know? Yeah, it was a party out there tonight. And for George, that means everything. And for us as well. Of course.” Said Lige.