George Clinton and P-Funk
[Art � 1982 by Pedro Bell / Splank Works]
In September, 1992, I was in emotional turmoil. I’d just lost my job as a programmer at Autodesk, and our last child was leaving the nest for college. I spent a night at the Mondo 2000 house in Berkeley and experienced some disturbing hallucinations (see the end of Chapter 8 of The Hacker and the Ants).
The next day, drag-assing along Telgraph Avenue, trying to get it together, I came across a used copy of George Clinton’s 1982 record Computer Games. George’s picture on the back seemed to speak to me. He knew where I was at. He’d been there from the beginning. Everything was gonna be okay. I got into the record, especially, “Atomic Dog”. What a great song. I’d never realized all along that Zappa and the Stones were imitating the George Clinton funk style, I didn't know what real funk was.
[Photo credit: Marcy Guiragossian, Marcy G. Photography]
Last night we went to see George Clinton and the P-Funk All-Stars at the Catalyst Club in Santa Cruz. It was so positive, such a great bouncy endless boogie. George like a shaman, like a happy tot, coaxing the maximum roar from the band (18 people strong at one point) and the crowd.
[Photo credit: Marcy Guiragossian, Marcy G. Photography]
A guy came out in a diaper and a floppy red hat made of maybe four yards of Chinese silk. He looked serious and craftsmanlike nonetheless. For a second I thought he was Bootsy Collins, but I don't think that's right, I don't think Bootsy is on this tour.
Quotes from GC and the show: “Yank my doodle, it’s a dandy.” “Harder than steel, still gettin’ harder.” “We tested positive for the P-Funk. I’ll pee in anybody’s cup. May they cup runneth over.” “We are all trying to straighten out a serious situation with faulty equipment.” (Last two quotes from the “Hiphop” entry in Mondo User's Guide, which I edited with Queen Mu and R. U. Sirius, Harper Perennial 1992).
I’m thinking I can use George as a model for Lama Jawobul in the Mirrorbrane, who has Ond Lutter imprisoned in maybe a Klein Bottle, and who’ll pass Higgs RAM to Thuy Nguyen to bring back to turn Earth into a conscious quantum computer without having to actually change anything, like, no grinding things up into nants.
Oh, I bought George's latest album at the show:
“How Late Do U Have 2BB4UR Absent?”
On stage, George said the answer to this question is
“4:21.”
May 31st, 2006 at 11:02 am
Rucker and Clinton? My teenage years are melting together like mozzarella!
July 23rd, 2007 at 4:19 pm
I love George Clinton, and have run into him on the street in San Francisco twice now. I’m glad the awesomeness of Computer Games was so helpful at a rough time in your life. Remind me to burn you a CD of some remixes and live versions from that album. Alas, I think How Late Do U Have 2B is one of Clinton’s weakest efforts. Much better are TAPOAFOM, Dope Dogs and Hey Man Smell My Finger, from the 1990s.