The progenitors of intergalactic funk.

Before Kiss, before The Village People, before ELO, George Clinton and his fearless crew of funketeers were dressing up in outrageous costumes, adopting various personae, and landing a giant spaceship on stage. Now put a glide in your stride and a dip in your hip — and welcome to the mothership!

It all started out quite normally. George Clinton formed a doo-wop group called The Parliaments with his co-workers at a New Jersey barbershop in the mid-1950’s. When Motown became the epicenter of R&B, the guys packed their bags and moved to Detroit to make it big.

They did not make it big.

But they stayed in Detroit and kept working, becoming more of a band than a vocal group, not playing gigs with The Temptations or The Miracles but sharing stages with Motor City rockers like Bob Seger, The Stooges, and The MC5. The Parliaments added these influences to their own doo-wop and R&B origins and began to develop their own unique sound, even scoring a hit in 1967 before having to change their name for legal reasons. They became The Funkadelics.

That same year, they played in Boston and after the show some Harvard students approached and asked the band if they wanted to participate in a little scientific research. Turned out it was LSD trials and the band got turned on. And didn’t turn off for years, the acid influencing both their music and their stage show, often producing an elastic, spacy, cartoon-like sound with visuals to match. It explains a lot.

In 1970, Clinton revived The Parliaments as simply Parliament, and The Funkadelics shortened to Funkadelic. Although made up of largely the same personnel, each entity maintained their own style, with Parliament more in the R&B camp, and Funkadelic staying in the funk-rock vein. Clinton kept adding more and more musicians until he basically employed a whole funk orchestra in the mid to late 70’s and then Parliament/Funkadelic made albums fronted by all these added band members, as well: The Brides of Funkenstein, Bootsy Collins and His Rubber Band, Eddie Hazel, Fred Wesley and The Horny Horns — an endless funk empire.

I don’t know about you, but make my funk the P-funk. I want my funk uncut. Here’s the least you need to know:

Funkadelic — Maggot Brain (1971) A trippy mix of R&B and rock beginning with a 10 minute instrumental guitar workout that sounds like a therapy session. Then you’ve got a little Sly Stone and James Brown, but filtered through the acid-warped mind of George Clinton. Can you get to that?

Funkadelic — Standing On The Verge: The Best of Funkadelic Get your hardcore jollies. Socially conscious funk rock. Sometimes it makes you think; sometimes it makes you dance. (Note: Weird record label licensing stuff means that other compilations are split into two time periods so you have to buy two albums. This is an import where they’re able to combine all the songs from Funkadelic’s history into one place).

Parliament — Mothership Connection (1975) George Clinton as the captain of the funkiest spaceship in the galaxy. Boldly going, as he put it, where no black people had gone before. Extra-terrestrial brothers.

Parliament — Gold You want the funk? You can’t handle the funk! But if you want to try then this compilation (or Tear The Roof Off) has got you covered.

Bonus track — George Clinton’s 1982 solo single “Atomic Dog”: