1001 Albums Summary

Common knowledge has it that Parliament was the more accessible of George Clinton's grand projects of funk -- the other being the more experimental Funkadelic. But this seems a rather relative comparison in retrospect. This is still some far out shit. Right from the outset, we're given a track with long interludes allowing bass, trombone, piano to do their thing. Sometimes by themselves, often swirling into each other. (Introducing an album by way of a fictional radio station has become a recognizable [if not terribly common] trope. Is this where it started? It surely deserves to be.) "Unfunky UFO" is probably the song that pauses just enough for us to hear exactly what this album fully is and does. It's got more of a recognizable pattern that we can return to and integrate ourselves into. And it's infectious. It's frustratingly short, fading out just as we really find ourselves in the groove. "Supergroovalisticprosifunkstication" is another one that, at around the same length, slows down to let you hear yourself into it. Slinky and groovy. A kind of definition of what groove is. But it's "Give Up the Funk (Tear the Roof off the Sucker)" that really personifies the album. Little wonder that this most recognizable single became the first song many people think when they think of funk. On the humor. It's interesting that this album was contrasted with, say, the Ohio Players or the Commodores in Rolling Stone as not having the "seriousness" of its counterparts (though to be clear, it's a good thing in the original review). Because it seems to me that funk is thought of as first and foremost a fun genre. And it certainly is here. Yes, the vision of black astronauts meeting with aliens is both absurd and a serious challenge to the imagination. Absurd not because black people can't be astronauts, but because of the aliens. Yet at the time of recording, both were seen by the public as large as just that: absurd. Hence the Afrofuturist challenge. The silliness and the seriousness start to slide into each other's place. Throwing off your notions of possibility with humor.