On the peak of its powers, Parliament-Funkadelic appeared able to something: scoring radio hits, crafting visionary best-selling albums, spinning-off profitable solo acts and satellite tv for pc teams, even producing an unparalleled stay present that climaxed each evening with an onstage spaceship touchdown. But chief George Clinton believed that P-Funk nonetheless had unfinished inventive enterprise. Since Parliament’s 1975 album Chocolate Metropolis, as he recalled in his 2014 memoir, he’d been working towards, “a whole, complete funk opera.” Having witnessed rock’s conceptual and narrative breadth evolve with The Beatles, The Who’s Tommy, and the musical Hair, he puzzled: “Why couldn’t soul or funk music be simply as refined, simply as wide-ranging, simply as artistically profitable?”
On the coronary heart of his reply could be the philosophical idea of entelechy – i.e. the belief of 1’s potential – as launched to Clinton by his then-business associate, Nene Montes. Within the spirit of his mad scientist alter ego, Dr. Funkenstein, Clinton merged the phrase “funk” with “entelechy” and got here up with “Funkentelechy” – i.e. the belief of 1’s funkiness. If “Funkentelechy” represented a drive of excellent by way of a dedication to the purest music of all, funk, its reverse drive would naturally (or unnaturally) be any sort of short-term synthetic simulation of such, “The Placebo Syndrome.” Clinton had discovered the premise for his opera: a battle between funk’s interplanetary emissary/hero, Starchild, and a non-dancing villain, Sir Nostril D’Voidoffunk. And with Funkentelechy vs. the Placebo Syndrome, Parliament self-actualized certainly one of its biggest achievements.
Hearken to Parliament’s Funkentelechy vs. the Placebo Syndrome on Apple Music or Spotify.
In fact, the album’s conceptual framework wouldn’t be almost as spectacular with out consummate funk in execution. Fortuitously, P-Funk was nonetheless the tightest band on this or every other planet. Lyrically, “Bop Gun” and “Flash Mild” have fun the space-age weaponry Starchild employs to make Sir Nostril dance; musically, they proved equally potent. The latter traditional single particularly – with Bernie Worrell’s ever-fluid Moog supplanting Bootsy Collins’s house bass – nonetheless sounds as futuristic because it doubtless did when it shot to #1 on the R&B charts again within the day. “Sir Nostril D’Voidoffunk,” a slinky dangerous man theme, flaunts loads of menacing cool by way of Fred Wesley and Worrell’s jazzy horn preparations. And in a little bit of playful irony, “Placebo Syndrome” couches its lament of contemporary life’s empty artificial pleasures in a blinding symphony of Worrell’s synthesizers.
“Funkentelechy” is the album’s sprawling centerpiece. A group of chants (“Whenever you’re taking each sort of tablet/Nothing appears to ever remedy your ailing”) peppered with Clinton’s comical promoting catchphrases, it gleefully takes goal at quick-fix consumerism and cultural emptiness. As with the remainder of this genius album, although, it’s the music that encodes the message. Clocking in at over 11 minutes, it’s one of many longer P-Funk studio tracks on report, but someway wastes no notes. Midway by way of, the band goes to the bridge turning the groove meditative, everybody repeatedly harmonizes “Funkentelechy” as a non secular mantra, and also you notice the music’s different most important chorus – “The place’d you get your funk from?” – is the one query that basically issues.
Hearken to Parliament’s Funkentelechy vs. the Placebo Syndrome on Apple Music or Spotify.