Read Online Public Enemy's It Takes a Nation of Millions to Hold Us Back (33 1/3) by Christopher R. Weingarten - Free Book Online Page A
Authors: Christopher R. Weingarten
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encountering alien worlds and fantastic technologies. Essayist Greg Tate wrote, “Black people live the estrangement that science-fiction writers imagine.” 48 George Clinton took it even deeper: “I knew I had to find another place for black people to be. And space was that place.” 49
“African-American culture is Afrofuturist at its heart,” wrote critic Mark Dery in the definitive essay on the topic. “With trickster élan, it retrofits, refunctions and willfully misuses the technocommodities and science fictions generated by a dominant culture that has always been not only white but a wielder, as well, of instrumental technologies.” In Bell’s version of Afrofuturism, his “zeep-speak” slanguage transmutes the English language into P-Funk’s cosmic-beatnik universe, an alternate land of the “epizootic,” the “foxative,” of “baby-masturbating nixonharpies” and the “neegroid protoplasm of cherrybustative dimensions.” Classic sci-fi tropes got pushed through the Funkadelic particle demobilizer: the sexy robot from
Metropolis
gets a funky overhaul for the cover of 1976’s
Tales of Kidd Funkadelic
; “Ratman and Robinlee” hide from the flagrant, filthy, flastic forces of Funkadelia on the back of
Hardcore Jollies
; a Kubrickian star-child relaxes in thecorner of
Cosmic Slop
. Bell’s felt-tip recontextualizations were Funkadelic’s version of sampling.
While most agree that the crowded covers of
Hardcore Jollies
and
Cosmic Slop
are classics, Bell looks back at the austere cover of 1975’s
Let’s Take It to the Stage
with some criticism — “a little too much mutant science on that one.” 50 The cover is almost a prototype for heavy metal album art, with a green autopsy subject who’s a mix of Linda Blair in
The Exorcist
and Iron Maiden’s as-yet-unborn mascot Eddie. This is the album from which the Bomb Squad took the most crucial noise in “Bring the Noise.” The album was driven by the same competitive spirit that drove Public Enemy to be overachievers, its lyrics full of jocular jibes at Funkadelic’s competition: “Slufus,” “Earth Hot Air and No Fire,” “Fool and the Gang,” “the Godmother,” etc. The title
Let’s Take It to the Stage
was a battle cry that said no one could defeat them onstage, something that Chuck D pressed upon his own troops when he saw rock bands outhustling his group.
Like the JB’s in 1971, P-Funk in 1974 were going through some changes that altered the band’s chemistry. Funkadelic’s signature guitar magician, Eddie “Maggot Brain” Hazel, had a habit of disappearing and returning to the lineup in erratic bursts — he was locked up in a correctional institution in California after attacking a female flight attendant and punching an air marshal. Hazel appears sporadically on
Stage
— he’s listed in the liner notes as “AlumniFunkadelic” — which allows new guitarist Michael Hampton to shine. P-Funk found Hampton fresh out of high school, jamming at a Cleveland house party. Pressured by his friends, Hampton played Funkadelic’s signature “Maggot Brain” in the living room, sitting on a tiny Fender amp. “I knew Mike was gonna be with the group then,” remembers Gary Shider, “’cause he played it note for note. Eddie couldn’t even play it note for note.” 51 In addition to the lineup shift, Bootsy Collins had his star-shaped goggles dead set on being a star and started singing on “Be My Beach,” eventually stealing the spotlight, a turn that would result in his own Rubber Band two years later. In the following years, money issues would tear Funkadelic even further apart.
It’s not certain who plays the opening acid-flashback ambulance siren on “Get Off Your Ass and Jam” — probably Hampton. It ended up as the main riff on “Bring the Noise” because it’s noisy as all hell, a stabbing wheedle-throb like the inside of a calliope. Three disparate noises appear in 10 seconds, perhaps tape-spliced together.
“African-American culture is Afrofuturist at its heart,” wrote critic Mark Dery in the definitive essay on the topic. “With trickster élan, it retrofits, refunctions and willfully misuses the technocommodities and science fictions generated by a dominant culture that has always been not only white but a wielder, as well, of instrumental technologies.” In Bell’s version of Afrofuturism, his “zeep-speak” slanguage transmutes the English language into P-Funk’s cosmic-beatnik universe, an alternate land of the “epizootic,” the “foxative,” of “baby-masturbating nixonharpies” and the “neegroid protoplasm of cherrybustative dimensions.” Classic sci-fi tropes got pushed through the Funkadelic particle demobilizer: the sexy robot from
Metropolis
gets a funky overhaul for the cover of 1976’s
Tales of Kidd Funkadelic
; “Ratman and Robinlee” hide from the flagrant, filthy, flastic forces of Funkadelia on the back of
Hardcore Jollies
; a Kubrickian star-child relaxes in thecorner of
Cosmic Slop
. Bell’s felt-tip recontextualizations were Funkadelic’s version of sampling.
While most agree that the crowded covers of
Hardcore Jollies
and
Cosmic Slop
are classics, Bell looks back at the austere cover of 1975’s
Let’s Take It to the Stage
with some criticism — “a little too much mutant science on that one.” 50 The cover is almost a prototype for heavy metal album art, with a green autopsy subject who’s a mix of Linda Blair in
The Exorcist
and Iron Maiden’s as-yet-unborn mascot Eddie. This is the album from which the Bomb Squad took the most crucial noise in “Bring the Noise.” The album was driven by the same competitive spirit that drove Public Enemy to be overachievers, its lyrics full of jocular jibes at Funkadelic’s competition: “Slufus,” “Earth Hot Air and No Fire,” “Fool and the Gang,” “the Godmother,” etc. The title
Let’s Take It to the Stage
was a battle cry that said no one could defeat them onstage, something that Chuck D pressed upon his own troops when he saw rock bands outhustling his group.
Like the JB’s in 1971, P-Funk in 1974 were going through some changes that altered the band’s chemistry. Funkadelic’s signature guitar magician, Eddie “Maggot Brain” Hazel, had a habit of disappearing and returning to the lineup in erratic bursts — he was locked up in a correctional institution in California after attacking a female flight attendant and punching an air marshal. Hazel appears sporadically on
Stage
— he’s listed in the liner notes as “AlumniFunkadelic” — which allows new guitarist Michael Hampton to shine. P-Funk found Hampton fresh out of high school, jamming at a Cleveland house party. Pressured by his friends, Hampton played Funkadelic’s signature “Maggot Brain” in the living room, sitting on a tiny Fender amp. “I knew Mike was gonna be with the group then,” remembers Gary Shider, “’cause he played it note for note. Eddie couldn’t even play it note for note.” 51 In addition to the lineup shift, Bootsy Collins had his star-shaped goggles dead set on being a star and started singing on “Be My Beach,” eventually stealing the spotlight, a turn that would result in his own Rubber Band two years later. In the following years, money issues would tear Funkadelic even further apart.
It’s not certain who plays the opening acid-flashback ambulance siren on “Get Off Your Ass and Jam” — probably Hampton. It ended up as the main riff on “Bring the Noise” because it’s noisy as all hell, a stabbing wheedle-throb like the inside of a calliope. Three disparate noises appear in 10 seconds, perhaps tape-spliced together.
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