Funkadelic’s One Nation Under A Groove (1975) rivalled Standing On The Verge Of Getting It On (1974) in its synthesis of funk and rock. Track 6, ‘Cholly (Funk Getting Ready to Roll)’ wasn’t a huge hit like ‘One Nation’, but it has a similarly catchy refrain and irresistible bass work.

Garry Shider delivers one of his many outstanding vocal performances. He tells a story of discovering funk: “I was strung out on Bach / And Beethoven was my thing / I dug jazz, I dug rock / Anything with a swing / But I ran into a friend who told me there was so much more / Find the void that you miss / There is plenty to explore”.

The main rhythm guitar (likely played by Shider, though Michael Hampton also plays on the song) largely follows James Brown’s “everything is a drum” philosophy. It emphasises the One and in between plays scratchy chords on offbeats. It often goes a few bars without changing chords.

Variation is provided in part by the changes in vocal melodies, tones, and rhythms. The female backing singers – Dawn Silva and Lynn Mabry (who started with Sly and the Family Stone before joining P-Funk and forming Brides of Funkenstein), Debbie Wright and Mallia Franklin (of Parlet), Jeanette Washington (who sang with James Brown), Sheila Horne, and Linda Shider (wife of Garry) – create an almost hypnotising collage from 3:02. Their words are unintelligible and it doesn’t matter in the slightest. Shider’s own delivery is characteristically inventive. Sometimes he sings with power (“I would dance / I would sing / I would get lost in my dreams”) and at other times contorts his voice as if he’s fiddling with knobs on effects pedals (“Sorry, but I got to leave y’all / I gotta go with the funk”). 

It’s that vocal collage section where the bass really lets loose. It still takes care of the One, but suddenly there are flurries of notes, with space tastefully left in certain beats. At 3:59, it dovetails with two guitars for a new riff. There sounds potential for a longer, jammier section, but the track fades out – P-Funk had jams for days, and plenty to say. The next track, ‘Lunchmeataphobia (Think! It Ain’t Illegal Yet)’, repeats one of the many P-Funk slogans open to interpretation, before George Clinton talks about our “mental state of diarrhoea” on ‘P.E. Squad/DooDoo Chasers’.