George Clinton Review

The Mother-ship landed in Auckland this past weekend and The Power-station became The Summit, Houston, Texas, 1976. Everywhere you looked souls were getting sucked and funky emotions were being licked. The zone of zero funkativity was left back at Neighborhood Bar and not one man or women in the building was devoid of funk. Not even 'Sir Nose'. He was too busy grinding somebody's wife on stage. (Thank George I didn't bring my mother)

It was a beautiful thing. We were one nation under a groove singing about sweat dripping down our balls in perfect unity. Dr Funkenstein himself was a beast. Orchestrating the band like Mozart in a sailors hat. Coke has never looked so enlightening. That stuff must work wonders for multi-tasking. Clinton was like Gandalf on stage. Controlling the band and the crowd like they were under his spell for two straight hours and some.

It was Psychoalphadiscobetabioaquadoo. Tighter than a virgin in a straight jacket. Funkier than the ring around your bath tub. Without Bootsy. Minus Maseo. No Garry "Doowop" Shider in a diaper and no Bop Gun (O.S.H outlawed that kind of thing after it was proven to onset epilepsy) But who needs all that when you got the subatomic transfunkadental liberation of all soul brothers and sisters? If I want to see a grown man in a diaper I'll visit my grandparents. It's about the music. 'Knee Deep', 'Flash Light'. 'Atomic Dog'. Shiiiet. They even managed to play 'Give Up The Funk' without it feeling like a Cadbury advert.

Then there was an amazing 15 minute long interpretation of 'Maggot Brain' (a song some say is a reference to Clinton finding his brother's decomposed dead body, skull cracked, in a Chicago apartment) Played on a crybaby wah-wah pedal that made the audience feel something the same it was the perfect juxtaposition to a night of P-Funk. "Who say's a funk band can't play rock?" I held my goat shamelessly high in the sky with the voice of funk in the back of my head singing 'why bother, ain't nobody gonna miss u'.

Then just as my feet began to fail me the band closed with the finale from hell. With the drummer topless cow-belling center stage and the backup singers almost scissoring every member of the audience's mind's then simultaneously spontaneously combusted. It was the perfect ending to a perfect show. I picked my soul up off the dance floor, rinsed the sweat out of it, thanked the flight attendant in the roller skates at the door and walked off The Mother-ship back into reality.

Filthy.