Clinton and crew pack plenty of funk

ELI GILL/Daily Bruin George Clinton gets funky Saturday night at
the Sunset Recreation Amphitheater.

By Anthony Bromberg
DAILY BRUIN SENIOR STAFF
[email protected]

The fans planted themselves on the trampled, spotty lawn of the
Sunset Recreation Center Amphitheater with one thing in mind: funk.
Fortunately, there was one man who had brought a group with him
ready to funk the whole crowd.

George Clinton and Parliament Funkadelic didn’t bring the
mothership with them to UCLA’s housing section on Saturday
night, but they did bring a wild show with plenty of funk to spread
around. It was a great show for funk fans and fun, cheap
entertainment for students with a free Saturday night.

As Clinton and company took the stage, the amphitheater was
bordering on full. For P-Funk’s set, the crowd stayed on
their feet and packed in close to the stage. It was cold at the
outdoor venue, and standing through the entire two-hour-plus set
became less appealing as the night wore on. The open air let the
heavy bass and dense instrumentation pulsate naturally toward the
listeners’ ears and guts, while also allowing the hazy and
pungent clouds that rose over the crowd to disperse in the breeze.
The stage was big enough to accommodate the large band, and the
lighting show was simple. Multi-colored lights were directed at the
musicians from both the front and back of the stage.

The crowd took hungrily to the funk that Clinton was pleased to
dish out. Made up of psychedelic-clad funk fans, older folks out to
get their nostalgia kicks and a good number of students, the
audience was positive and supportive from the get go.

Opening for Clinton was the female hip-hopper Medusa and her
band. While her set had its own groove to it, it just wasn’t
that funky. Quick to declare her own merits and fall into other
hip-hop lyrical cliches, they were for the most part at least
positive cliches. Medusa rapped most of her verses, but was most
interesting when passionately singing her words with two female
backup vocalists. It was not a poor set musically, but her attitude
was a little too preachy and self-assured for the quality of her
music to make up for it.

Clinton’s set was marked by a massive amount of audience
participation and extended 20-minute jams. The large entity that is
the current incarnation of Parliament Funkadelic included multiple
guitars, several vocalists, horns, keyboards and percussion. One of
the guitarist/vocalists played the concert wearing only a large
diaper, while another random group member was out in a very odd
gray fur coat, hat and long pointy fake nose. In addition to the
music, Parliament’s show included two of its members making
signs with markers on paper that said things like, “Funk the
World,” and “Flossiblity,” which they crumpled up
and threw into the audience.

The music was solid at its core ““ the bassist and other
guitarists held down their parts nicely, including many long
hard-rock-type solos. The many vocalists contributed to a
party-like singing atmosphere, in which one of the weakest elements
was Clinton’s weather-beaten and hoarse voice. It was then no
surprise that Clinton took many opportunities to turn mics toward
the audience and had them fill in the chorus parts, including the
famous, “We want the funk! Gotta have the funk!” A nice
addition to the band’s set was the inclusion of wild
violinist Lily Haydn’s talent on a couple of songs. Clinton
was quite the bandmaster though ““ clearly orchestrating much
of the performance and providing a charismatic visual and energetic
center to which the rest of the band and the audience could
turn.

One thing was for sure as P-Funk finished their set to the
crowd’s chanting: the grass is always greenest and the groove
is always funkiest when Clinton comes to town.