info/contact
info/contact
Friday Funk #31 – ‘Deep’ by Parliament
Friday Funk #31 – ‘Deep’ by Parliament
Friday Funk #31 – ‘Deep’ by Parliament
The summer’s getting warmer, so let’s go underwater. August is Motor Booty Month here on Edge of the Line. Each Friday in August, we’ll wriggle to a different track from Parliament’s 1978 classic, Motor Booty Affair.
George Clinton was so struck by The Beatles’ Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band that the album was still at the forefront of his mind over a decade later.
He envisioned Parliament creating a similarly ambitious and absorbing concept album. Clinton had already taken funk into the Whitehouse, to space, and to the Pyramids, and it was time for another adventure. A keen fisherman and an even keener wordsmith, Clinton had fish puns aplenty, so the natural destination was the ocean.
Motor Booty was one of the many P-Funk records enriched by the album art, and by this point their music had such a visual element that Overton Loyd’s wonderful sleeve included the tag “A Soundtrack from a Motion Picture Underwater.”
The album title was two puns in one. It referred to Motor City (Detroit) and its changing sound since Motown’s prime. The title also played on“motorboat”, introducing the water theme. Plus it mentioned butts, which in the P-Funk world is always considered a bonus.
As well as puns, P-Funk were full of characters. Starchild made a reappearance underwater. Sir Nose had been above ground refusing to dance; now he was underwater refusing to swim. A worm and clone of Dr. Funkenstein, Mr. Wiggles, was introduced. Junie Morrison, new to the band, provided similarly cartoonish voices.
In his memoir, Brothas Be Yo, Like George, Ain’t That Funkin’ Kinda Hard on You?, Clinton described the music as a continuation of what Funkadelic started with Funkentelechy Vs. The Placebo Syndrome. He says Motor Booty had “an even greater sense of its own status as entertainment.” It was P-Funk’s own thing, their own funk. The arrangements were elaborate, the songs long and unpredictable, the humour and puns ever present.
Clinton wrote of the album, “Richard “Kush” Griffith and Junie did some of the arrrangements, and they took them to the edge of what was acceptable for pop music.”
‘Deep’ is a Bootsy Collins-Morrison-Clinton composition, after much previous P’ being composed by combinations of Bootsy, Clinton and Bernie Worrell. The musical arrangement may be pretty out there, but the horns, arranged by Fred Wesley and the main bassline, heavy on the One, give the song an immediacy that not many 9-plus-minute tracks manage.
Motor Booty’s vocal arrangements are dense, and this song is one of its most clam-packed. Morrison sings lead, and a swirling orchestra of vocal parts join him. Voices come and go and lyrics are unpredictable. There aren’t any real verses or choruses.
‘Deep’ touches on contemporary politics, race, NIMBYism, and Atlantis (a big pop culture topic in the ’70s), and does all this with a smile. Morrison uses his cartoon voice to mock politicians (“Be sure to get your votes in, but be sure to pay your money”).
Junie starts other lines without finishing them (“I swear – you – if you don’t give – you can’t tell – you ain’t there”... or something like that) and different singers overlap and interrupt each other. Such fidgetiness starts around the 1-minute mark, when the first of many not-quite-intelligible lines (“Just-a-just-a how you want to meet”?) overlaps with Junie’s lead.
His question of “Could you point George Clinton out to me?” was an in-joke referring to Clinton being less recognisable than Bootsy Collins, whose stardom had exploded. Morrison made the same joke (“Which one is George Clinton?”) on Funkadelic’s ‘Promentalshitbackwashpsychosis Enema Squad (The Doo Doo Chasers)’, recorded on his first day with the band. That track was part of Funkadelic’s One Nation Under a Groove, released the same year.
The lead and backing vocalists were credited on the LP as “Jaws” and “The Choral Reef (Er, Bubbly Vocalizations)”. The school of singers included Lynn Mabry and Dawn Silva who had both sang with Sly & The Family Stone before joining P-Funk. They’d form part of The Brides of Funkenstein, with Silva the only permanent member through the group’s career.
‘Deep’ lifts a line from sibling act Bootsy’s Rubber Band’s ‘Bootzilla’, also from 1978. The “Wiiiiiiiiiind me up!” at 3:25 is one of many hooks of the kind that would be the foundation of an entire song if it were anything but P-Funk. Here, though, that line is just one wave in a sea of vocals.
“I’m so deep / You’re so deep / Everybody is deep” is one of the best hooks, widening your grin after “You can tune a piano, but you can’t tune-a fish”.
The only hook that’s repeated enough to be called a refrain is the brilliant “We’ve got to raise Atlantis to the top / With the bump / And the bop”. It arrives after six and a half minutes, and the song builds towards its climax with the backing “ooh”s, and eventually, after eight and a half minutes, there’s a few bars to catch your breath. Bare bones drums, bass, and scratchy guitar are all that’s left after the vocals and horns have run their course.
A little earlier in the song, from 7:23, the insistent horns briefly drop out; the drums are reduced to four-on-the-floor kicks before quick rolls; and the bass just plays a few notes every two bars. This gives more room for the guitar, which mimics the horn line, before the horns return.
This adding and subtracting of elements is rather Fela Kuti-like, and in the following decade Clinton would use the chorus from Fela’s ‘Mr. Follow Follow’ in a solo cut, ‘Nubian Nut’.
By 1978, disco had broken big. It would soon dissolve as people got tired of hearing the same one beat over and over. But Parliament were swimming against the current in making a 9-minute groove-based song that was constantly changing and always unpredictable.
Clinton said of disco, “You could phone that shit in. Disco itself was funk. But all they did was take one funk beat and sanitize it to no end. It’s irritating.”
This echoes what James Brown said in his autobiography: “Disco is a simplification of a lot of what I was doing, of what they thought I was doing. Disco is a very small part of funk. It’s the end of the song, the repetitious part, like a vamp. The difference is that in funk you dig into a groove, you don’t stay on the surface. Disco stayed on the surface. See, I taught ’em everything they know but not everything I know.”
Funkadelic had alluded to the emptiness of disco with The Placebo Syndrome, and their determination to “Rescue dance music from the blahs” was later crystallised on Uncle Jam Wants You.
Nonetheless, there is a disco tinge to Motor Booty – this track included: the four-on-the-floor beat, and the main horn riff more straightforward than Michael Brecker’s jazz-leaning sax or Bernie Worrell’s space-gospel synths.
But “one beat”? “Sanitized”? That’s not ‘Deep’. Parliament definitely didn’t “stay on the surface”.
The summer’s getting warmer, so let’s go underwater. August is Motor Booty Month here on Edge of the Line. Each Friday in August, we’ll wriggle to a different track from Parliament’s 1978 classic, Motor Booty Affair.
George Clinton was so struck by The Beatles’ Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band that the album was still at the forefront of his mind over a decade later.
He envisioned Parliament creating a similarly ambitious and absorbing concept album. Clinton had already taken funk into the Whitehouse, to space, and to the Pyramids, and it was time for another adventure. A keen fisherman and an even keener wordsmith, Clinton had fish puns aplenty, so the natural destination was the ocean.
Motor Booty was one of the many P-Funk records enriched by the album art, and by this point their music had such a visual element that Overton Loyd’s wonderful sleeve included the tag “A Soundtrack from a Motion Picture Underwater.”
The album title was two puns in one. It referred to Motor City (Detroit) and its changing sound since Motown’s prime. The title also played on“motorboat”, introducing the water theme. Plus it mentioned butts, which in the P-Funk world is always considered a bonus.
As well as puns, P-Funk were full of characters. Starchild made a reappearance underwater. Sir Nose had been above ground refusing to dance; now he was underwater refusing to swim. A worm and clone of Dr. Funkenstein, Mr. Wiggles, was introduced. Junie Morrison, new to the band, provided similarly cartoonish voices.
In his memoir, Brothas Be Yo, Like George, Ain’t That Funkin’ Kinda Hard on You?, Clinton described the music as a continuation of what Funkadelic started with Funkentelechy Vs. The Placebo Syndrome. He says Motor Booty had “an even greater sense of its own status as entertainment.” It was P-Funk’s own thing, their own funk. The arrangements were elaborate, the songs long and unpredictable, the humour and puns ever present.
Clinton wrote of the album, “Richard “Kush” Griffith and Junie did some of the arrrangements, and they took them to the edge of what was acceptable for pop music.”
‘Deep’ is a Bootsy Collins-Morrison-Clinton composition, after much previous P’ being composed by combinations of Bootsy, Clinton and Bernie Worrell. The musical arrangement may be pretty out there, but the horns, arranged by Fred Wesley and the main bassline, heavy on the One, give the song an immediacy that not many 9-plus-minute tracks manage.
Motor Booty’s vocal arrangements are dense, and this song is one of its most clam-packed. Morrison sings lead, and a swirling orchestra of vocal parts join him. Voices come and go and lyrics are unpredictable. There aren’t any real verses or choruses.
‘Deep’ touches on contemporary politics, race, NIMBYism, and Atlantis (a big pop culture topic in the ’70s), and does all this with a smile. Morrison uses his cartoon voice to mock politicians (“Be sure to get your votes in, but be sure to pay your money”).
Junie starts other lines without finishing them (“I swear – you – if you don’t give – you can’t tell – you ain’t there”... or something like that) and different singers overlap and interrupt each other. Such fidgetiness starts around the 1-minute mark, when the first of many not-quite-intelligible lines (“Just-a-just-a how you want to meet”?) overlaps with Junie’s lead.
His question of “Could you point George Clinton out to me?” was an in-joke referring to Clinton being less recognisable than Bootsy Collins, whose stardom had exploded. Morrison made the same joke (“Which one is George Clinton?”) on Funkadelic’s ‘Promentalshitbackwashpsychosis Enema Squad (The Doo Doo Chasers)’, recorded on his first day with the band. That track was part of Funkadelic’s One Nation Under a Groove, released the same year.
The lead and backing vocalists were credited on the LP as “Jaws” and “The Choral Reef (Er, Bubbly Vocalizations)”. The school of singers included Lynn Mabry and Dawn Silva who had both sang with Sly & The Family Stone before joining P-Funk. They’d form part of The Brides of Funkenstein, with Silva the only permanent member through the group’s career.
‘Deep’ lifts a line from sibling act Bootsy’s Rubber Band’s ‘Bootzilla’, also from 1978. The “Wiiiiiiiiiind me up!” at 3:25 is one of many hooks of the kind that would be the foundation of an entire song if it were anything but P-Funk. Here, though, that line is just one wave in a sea of vocals.
“I’m so deep / You’re so deep / Everybody is deep” is one of the best hooks, widening your grin after “You can tune a piano, but you can’t tune-a fish”.
The only hook that’s repeated enough to be called a refrain is the brilliant “We’ve got to raise Atlantis to the top / With the bump / And the bop”. It arrives after six and a half minutes, and the song builds towards its climax with the backing “ooh”s, and eventually, after eight and a half minutes, there’s a few bars to catch your breath. Bare bones drums, bass, and scratchy guitar are all that’s left after the vocals and horns have run their course.
A little earlier in the song, from 7:23, the insistent horns briefly drop out; the drums are reduced to four-on-the-floor kicks before quick rolls; and the bass just plays a few notes every two bars. This gives more room for the guitar, which mimics the horn line, before the horns return.
This adding and subtracting of elements is rather Fela Kuti-like, and in the following decade Clinton would use the chorus from Fela’s ‘Mr. Follow Follow’ in a solo cut, ‘Nubian Nut’.
By 1978, disco had broken big. It would soon dissolve as people got tired of hearing the same one beat over and over. But Parliament were swimming against the current in making a 9-minute groove-based song that was constantly changing and always unpredictable.
Clinton said of disco, “You could phone that shit in. Disco itself was funk. But all they did was take one funk beat and sanitize it to no end. It’s irritating.”
This echoes what James Brown said in his autobiography: “Disco is a simplification of a lot of what I was doing, of what they thought I was doing. Disco is a very small part of funk. It’s the end of the song, the repetitious part, like a vamp. The difference is that in funk you dig into a groove, you don’t stay on the surface. Disco stayed on the surface. See, I taught ’em everything they know but not everything I know.”
Funkadelic had alluded to the emptiness of disco with The Placebo Syndrome, and their determination to “Rescue dance music from the blahs” was later crystallised on Uncle Jam Wants You.
Nonetheless, there is a disco tinge to Motor Booty – this track included: the four-on-the-floor beat, and the main horn riff more straightforward than Michael Brecker’s jazz-leaning sax or Bernie Worrell’s space-gospel synths.
But “one beat”? “Sanitized”? That’s not ‘Deep’. Parliament definitely didn’t “stay on the surface”.
The summer’s getting warmer, so let’s go underwater. August is Motor Booty Month here on Edge of the Line. Each Friday in August, we’ll wriggle to a different track from Parliament’s 1978 classic, Motor Booty Affair.
George Clinton was so struck by The Beatles’ Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band that the album was still at the forefront of his mind over a decade later.
He envisioned Parliament creating a similarly ambitious and absorbing concept album. Clinton had already taken funk into the Whitehouse, to space, and to the Pyramids, and it was time for another adventure. A keen fisherman and an even keener wordsmith, Clinton had fish puns aplenty, so the natural destination was the ocean.
Motor Booty was one of the many P-Funk records enriched by the album art, and by this point their music had such a visual element that Overton Loyd’s wonderful sleeve included the tag “A Soundtrack from a Motion Picture Underwater.”
The album title was two puns in one. It referred to Motor City (Detroit) and its changing sound since Motown’s prime. The title also played on“motorboat”, introducing the water theme. Plus it mentioned butts, which in the P-Funk world is always considered a bonus.
As well as puns, P-Funk were full of characters. Starchild made a reappearance underwater. Sir Nose had been above ground refusing to dance; now he was underwater refusing to swim. A worm and clone of Dr. Funkenstein, Mr. Wiggles, was introduced. Junie Morrison, new to the band, provided similarly cartoonish voices.
In his memoir, Brothas Be Yo, Like George, Ain’t That Funkin’ Kinda Hard on You?, Clinton described the music as a continuation of what Funkadelic started with Funkentelechy Vs. The Placebo Syndrome. He says Motor Booty had “an even greater sense of its own status as entertainment.” It was P-Funk’s own thing, their own funk. The arrangements were elaborate, the songs long and unpredictable, the humour and puns ever present.
Clinton wrote of the album, “Richard “Kush” Griffith and Junie did some of the arrrangements, and they took them to the edge of what was acceptable for pop music.”
‘Deep’ is a Bootsy Collins-Morrison-Clinton composition, after much previous P’ being composed by combinations of Bootsy, Clinton and Bernie Worrell. The musical arrangement may be pretty out there, but the horns, arranged by Fred Wesley and the main bassline, heavy on the One, give the song an immediacy that not many 9-plus-minute tracks manage.
Motor Booty’s vocal arrangements are dense, and this song is one of its most clam-packed. Morrison sings lead, and a swirling orchestra of vocal parts join him. Voices come and go and lyrics are unpredictable. There aren’t any real verses or choruses.
‘Deep’ touches on contemporary politics, race, NIMBYism, and Atlantis (a big pop culture topic in the ’70s), and does all this with a smile. Morrison uses his cartoon voice to mock politicians (“Be sure to get your votes in, but be sure to pay your money”).
Junie starts other lines without finishing them (“I swear – you – if you don’t give – you can’t tell – you ain’t there”... or something like that) and different singers overlap and interrupt each other. Such fidgetiness starts around the 1-minute mark, when the first of many not-quite-intelligible lines (“Just-a-just-a how you want to meet”?) overlaps with Junie’s lead.
His question of “Could you point George Clinton out to me?” was an in-joke referring to Clinton being less recognisable than Bootsy Collins, whose stardom had exploded. Morrison made the same joke (“Which one is George Clinton?”) on Funkadelic’s ‘Promentalshitbackwashpsychosis Enema Squad (The Doo Doo Chasers)’, recorded on his first day with the band. That track was part of Funkadelic’s One Nation Under a Groove, released the same year.
The lead and backing vocalists were credited on the LP as “Jaws” and “The Choral Reef (Er, Bubbly Vocalizations)”. The school of singers included Lynn Mabry and Dawn Silva who had both sang with Sly & The Family Stone before joining P-Funk. They’d form part of The Brides of Funkenstein, with Silva the only permanent member through the group’s career.
‘Deep’ lifts a line from sibling act Bootsy’s Rubber Band’s ‘Bootzilla’, also from 1978. The “Wiiiiiiiiiind me up!” at 3:25 is one of many hooks of the kind that would be the foundation of an entire song if it were anything but P-Funk. Here, though, that line is just one wave in a sea of vocals.
“I’m so deep / You’re so deep / Everybody is deep” is one of the best hooks, widening your grin after “You can tune a piano, but you can’t tune-a fish”.
The only hook that’s repeated enough to be called a refrain is the brilliant “We’ve got to raise Atlantis to the top / With the bump / And the bop”. It arrives after six and a half minutes, and the song builds towards its climax with the backing “ooh”s, and eventually, after eight and a half minutes, there’s a few bars to catch your breath. Bare bones drums, bass, and scratchy guitar are all that’s left after the vocals and horns have run their course.
A little earlier in the song, from 7:23, the insistent horns briefly drop out; the drums are reduced to four-on-the-floor kicks before quick rolls; and the bass just plays a few notes every two bars. This gives more room for the guitar, which mimics the horn line, before the horns return.
This adding and subtracting of elements is rather Fela Kuti-like, and in the following decade Clinton would use the chorus from Fela’s ‘Mr. Follow Follow’ in a solo cut, ‘Nubian Nut’.
By 1978, disco had broken big. It would soon dissolve as people got tired of hearing the same one beat over and over. But Parliament were swimming against the current in making a 9-minute groove-based song that was constantly changing and always unpredictable.
Clinton said of disco, “You could phone that shit in. Disco itself was funk. But all they did was take one funk beat and sanitize it to no end. It’s irritating.”
This echoes what James Brown said in his autobiography: “Disco is a simplification of a lot of what I was doing, of what they thought I was doing. Disco is a very small part of funk. It’s the end of the song, the repetitious part, like a vamp. The difference is that in funk you dig into a groove, you don’t stay on the surface. Disco stayed on the surface. See, I taught ’em everything they know but not everything I know.”
Funkadelic had alluded to the emptiness of disco with The Placebo Syndrome, and their determination to “Rescue dance music from the blahs” was later crystallised on Uncle Jam Wants You.
Nonetheless, there is a disco tinge to Motor Booty – this track included: the four-on-the-floor beat, and the main horn riff more straightforward than Michael Brecker’s jazz-leaning sax or Bernie Worrell’s space-gospel synths.
But “one beat”? “Sanitized”? That’s not ‘Deep’. Parliament definitely didn’t “stay on the surface”.