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 the smoke, mirrors, UFOs, and colors have to be reduced to meet industry standards, the genius is stripped down to his most human elements, still producing powerful art but at an Earthbound scale. Modern rock concert production doesn’t stop songs like “Maggot Brain”, which the band opened their Ventura Music Hall performance with, from being direct links to the spirit world through guitar music. Still, if this version of Parliament Funkadelic were jamming in a different time, their show would be even more spectacular and it would inspire the culture to dress, jam, and think along the same wavelength. The reason people are so homogenized today may just be the reason rock and roll and concerts are getting homogenized too. Making cool experiences costs too much money today. In other words, “The price of art is too damn high!”
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Non of this is to diminish the performance Parliament Funkadelic put on at Ventura Music Hall. They were nothing short of incredible, each player from brass, to electric strings, to vocals were all special in their own way, bringing unique vibrations everyone in the venue was able to feel from their head down to their feet. People couldn’t help but move and groove to the classics, raising their hands to testify in praise of the band almost as if funk was more than a genre but a religious movement. Almost as if funk could better be described as alien gospel music.
All I’m saying is that I’m nostalgic for times where greater production standards allowed audiences to witness crazy shit the likes of which I know George Clinton is imagining at any given moment. Clinton has been nothing short of a musical genius and visionary throughout his career as a performer and producer, elevating the musicians that come to play for him and those he blesses with his golden touch on record.
When I show friends old images of Grateful Dead shows where giant mushrooms were erected in the arena and Grateful characters fly down from the ceiling over the audience. Practical production like this is so much more impactful and memorable than simply having an artist’s imagery play on a screen behind them.
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As for George and the boys, memories of times past didn’t hinder the profound performance they put on in the present. Together, musicians and artists of every stripe under the sun, from metalheads in Slipknot shirts, to old jazz head guitarists ripping, to soul singers, rap singers, and blues singers all joining together in funk jam. The show was tremendous and I genuinely feel lucky for being able to check this band off my bucket list. To wrap up the evening’s entertainment, George Clinton led the audience in a stirring rendition of “Yank That Doodle”, ensuring every male in the audience had a higher chance of happy ending at the end of the night than could’ve transpired with any other song closing the night.
Words by: Rob Shepyer
Photos by: Jeff Tillquist
