361. Parliament - Mothership Connection (1976)

















Track Listing

1. P-Funk (Wants To Get Funked Up)
2. Mothership Connection (Starchild)
3. Unfunky UFO
4. Supergroovalisticprosifunkstication
5. Handcuffs
6. Give Up The Funk (Tear The Roof Off The Sucker)
7. Night Of The Thumpasorus People

Review

Well this is pretty much the perfect Funk album. George Clinton and the P-Funk were already featured here with Funkadelic's Maggot Brain, but Parliament is the more upbeat version of Funkadelic and makes for a much more interesting album here.

If you buy only one Funk album in your life this should really be the one. The world of Funk music is populated by mediocre albums which might have a couple of really good singles, this album is, however perfection all the way through. From the call to funk that is P-Funk to the James Brown tribute in the last track there is not a beat missed throughout this whole album.

One thing which makes Mothership Connection a particularly good album is its reliance on Jazz structures making Funk not only fun and very danceable music but also full of complexities and nuances. You can shake your ass to the first track, but suddenly you realise the quality of the piano playing and you understand that this isn't just fun, it is really amazingly good. And then you start picking out the bass of Bootsie Collins and the intertwining of sounds and you are fascinated while still having this urge to get your funk on. Doing it to your ears indeed.

P.S.- I could swear that Mr. Scruff has sampled the track Mothership Connection, does anyone know if he did and if yes in what track?

Track Highlights

1. P-Funk (Wants To Get Funked Up)
2. Give Up The Funk (Tear The Roof Off The Sucker)
3. Mothership Connection (Starchild)
4. Supergroovalisticprosifunkstication

Final Grade

10/10

Trivia

From Wikipedia:

Describing the album, George Clinton said "We had put black people in situations nobody ever thought they would be in, like the White House. I figured another place you wouldn't think black people would be was in outer space. I was a big fan of Star Trek, so we did a thing with a pimp sitting in a spaceship shaped like a Cadillac, and we did all these James Brown-type grooves, but with street talk and ghetto slang."

Give Up The Funk: