Funkadelic – Funkadelic

Oh yeah. It all starts with this great Funkadelic album. Maybe their best.

The most underrated album of all time. 50% blues rock and 50% R&B gone insane. Just crazy, off the wall stuff for 1969-1970. Can’t even imagine what the average person thought of this upon release. It’s still far out in 2024.

The marketplace does not seem to understand that these source masters are loooong gone and it’s only the 1970 and 1975 westbound releases that will ever truly capture the magic. The 1989 reissue comes close and then everything from last 30 years is essentially mp3 quality.

This record starts with a double knocker: "If you will suck my soul, I will lick your funky emotions" ...and then a rip-off of the well-known Whole Lotta Love riff. Anyway a classic.

4 Men with Beards pressings of this sound TERRIBLE. Avoid at all costs.

THIS IS PROBABLY ONE OF THE GREATEST ALBUMS EVER CREATED......It is though isn't it!!

Clinton was sunk deep into Detroit for nearly a decade before unleashing this mad dog funk on the world (recorded in the Motor City and issued on Detroit label Westbound), a street-tough older brother to Parliament that would become a huge part of the "Parliafunkadelicment Thang" (a family of creative outlets and personas that must have inspired the diverse renaissance aspect of the golden era of hip hop decades later). While the future would see Clinton owning the 1970s, embracing and inventing the decade, here the sound clearly comes out of the late 1960s, pure acid groove, blues, funk, acid rock, the first cut offering obvious nods to both Sly and Hendrix, the two influences showing throughout the set. Of course, this dips down to Ohio, Memphis and even Mississippi and brings it up to Detroit, "a t rolled in toilet paper," circular motion lotion applied to ashy kneecaps, this is clearly rust-belt hard funk, the second cut "I Bet You" exploring the same territory that Norman Whitfield had been exploring with this Motown outlets. Of course, these comparisons shouldn't suggest any assembly-line mentality or lack of originality, this was delivery of something sporting a fresh paint job and a brand new powerplant under the hood roaring out of the garage, pistons pumping out the rhythm, curb feelers scraping against concrete, Motor City muscle that was built to last and cause notice, the sounds of the 1960s rolled up tight and rolled out like a steamroller in the late-night moments when the dark of night meet the light of morning. "I Bet You," would become a minor hit (#63 and oddly their biggest hit for the first half of the decade), but while perhaps it's not surprising that this album was mostly ignored, it's even less surprising that this would eventually take on classic status, it's just a whip-crack attack on the status quo, deep dark funk rolling like a tank down the streets of Detroit...bust out the TV cameras, take notice interplanetary sources, there's a riot goin' on. - winch (green noise records)

I bought a brand new reissue of this album in 1994, with catalog number WD-2000. Any idea what that might be?