
How to Humanize an Alien: Parliament Funkadelic at Ventura Music Hall
Thanks to Ventura Music Hall and George Clinton, Parliament Funkadelic was up until Monday, a bucket list band that needed to get checked off my list if I was really to consider myself a music junkie. Now, in a totally changed state of mind since seeing them perform classic songs like “Flashlight”, “Atomic Dog”, “We Got The Funk”, and more, I’ve been feeling this strange sense of nostalgia for a time I didn’t even exist in. That time I’m so fondly recalling through videos, images, and oral tradition was the seventies. At the time, pop culture was more colorful, vivid, imaginative, and real. Forced to create practical magic and effects if artists wanted to make concerts feel out of this world, groups like Parliament Funkadelic constructed UFOs that would land on stage and release a cavalcade of alien crazies upon the audience, all dressed and sounding completely unique from one another to create a funk jam session akin to stream of consciousness power poetry. It was in the seventies, back when a heavily dreaded George Clinton produced acid-inspired rollercoaster rides that ranged from metallic to soulful to downright religious, that Clinton and his band were at their peak-alieness. Today, as