We’re in the middle of our Further Explorations of Funk series, but you can’t have too much funk. Throughout 2024, we’ll be funking every Friday. Check back every week to move your feet.

Kicking off these weekly adventures is a Parliament track from 1980’s Trombipulation. It was to be Parliament’s only album for 38 years, with financial disputes and an array of side projects soon to derail the Parliafunkadelicment Thang. They returned with 2018’s Medicaid Fraud Dog (well, sort of ‘they’, but really a different band – understandably, given the 38 years ‘n’ all).

During a staff writing job at Motown, George Clinton “learned how to write with clichés, puns and hooks. So when I got Parliament-Funkadelic, I just went stupid with it. Instead of one or two hooks, we’d have 10 hooks in the same song. And puns that were so stupid that you could take ’em three or four different ways.”

‘Agony Of Defeet’ revels in the stupid. For a band who’d already had tracks like ‘Rumpofsteelskin’ (“He’s got dynamite sticks by the megatons in his butt”) and ‘Night Of The Thumpasorus Peoples’ (built on the refrain of “Gaga-googa, gaga-googa”), ‘Agony Of Defeet’ arguably took the silly to another level.

The brilliance of the lines owes a lot to the delivery. “You’ve got some funny looking toes” is hilariously sung as though utterly serious, with an air of the gospel.

(This was a trick repeated 25 years later on the George Clinton & The P-Funk All Stars album How Late Do U Have 2BB4UR Absent. In ‘Butt-A-Butt’, “What is a booty and how do I know if I’m shaking it? / Bend over / Bend over” is treated as though part of a hymn.)

There’s also “Are you toenails overgrown?”, spoken, not sung – seemingly by a voice that has no other part to play in the song. Did George draft in somebody who he knew would excel in such a pivotal role?

Alongside the toe poetry, the squeaky keyboard parts and a restless bassline add up to unbridled fun for six minutes that feel like two. The bass is provided by Donnie Sterling (cowriter of this tune with Clinton and Junie Morrison), who propels each bar towards the kick on the One and claps on the two and four. He’s given a shoutout towards the end of the song (“Come on Donnie. Come on Donnie”).

Sterling also shares lead vocals with Ron Dunbar, responsible for the vocal arrangements. Clinton wrote in his autobiography of Dunbar that he was a “production and arrangement wizard”. It’s an arrangement that may owe something to the no-space-to-breathe stylings of Motor-Booty Affair, the Parliament album released two years earlier.

Lonnie Green drums with great energy. Every other bar there’s a drum fill then a moment of space before the One, giving that beat extra impact. The track strikes a delicate balance between human playing and computerised interventions, which wasn’t easy to achieve: in the same year the self-titled album from Sweat Band (a P-Funk offshoot) felt rigid in comparison.

Though the lyrics stick firmly to the topic of toes, there’s much ground covered musically. While it’s mostly a tight dance track, there’s room for a wailing guitar solo three and a half minutes in, and some playful, funky keyboard phrases courtesy of David Lee Chong (AKA David Lee Spradley), cowriter of ‘Atomic Dog’.

Happy funking with those feet. See you next Friday.