I have long entertained the suspicion that seeing George Clinton must be something a little like seeing God, and this suspicion was largely borne out for me last night at the Hammersmith Apollo. Clinton’s mythos stands in sharp contrast, at least in my mind, to the uptight and rather humourless musical authoritarianism of James Brown (who I remember seeing twenty-odd years ago on the same stage, and who was frankly rather a bore). Clinton recognises the vigor and vitality of the hybrid, and shows the great depth and seriousness to be found in flippancy and silliness.
This was not a set for the purists: in addition to the inevitable – and most welcome – doses of P-funk, there was (lemme see now): a chaotic soul jam which mutated into a gospel frenzy; a prolonged acid rock freak-out in Maggot Brain (featuring the Funkadelic part of the crew), a truly jaw-dropping klezmer/march musical theatre piece, and an extended rock’n'roll medley affair which started out as a spare, economic rockabilly reading of Whole Lotta Shakin’ Goin’ On, before exploding into wide screen technicolour electric rock, fluidly mutating through a fair summary of the entire history of the rock idiom, shading through classic rock’n'roll, British invasion, garage rock, psychedelia, metal and space rock. Then back to the funk with a barnstorming One Nation Under A Groove and Atomic Dog. The sound quality left quite a bit to be desired, with great rumbling turds of bass feedback submerging all the detail in some of the early songs, but this music is tolerant of degradation and muckiness. The set was a demonstration of how Clinton’s mongrel funk relates to other kinds of music, and while it may have tried the patience of those who expect the expected, I totally loved it.