Tag: George Clinton

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A Baker’s Dozen of Delectable Disks

Often a meme will circulate listing the hits of bygone times. A roll call of great releases in, say, 1977 will leave one feeling it was a golden age of recorded music, our contemporary sounds paling in comparison. Looking over this year’s best-of list, however, I’m inclined to think that 2024 will be celebrated in much the same way. And if you should beg to differ, I would only refer you to those wise wake up call offered by GloRilla herself, “Do y’all know what the f*ck goin’ on?? (goin’ on … goin’ on … goin’ on …)” 

Aquarian Blood – Counting Backwards Again (Black & Wyatt)

This caps off a trilogy of sorts, over which the sometime punk screamers dialed it back into the acoustic realm. Meticulously crafted yet loose, these songs are dark, primitive missives haunted by trauma and desire, as if German sonic artists Can reinterpreted the Incredible String Band. 

Cedric Burnside – Hill Country Love (Provogue)

Burnside’s latest album turns the volume up, yes, but not the distortion. Bringing more of a full-band sound, this particular Burnside eschews the hard rock guitar tones that were his grandfather R.L.’s trademark. There are echoes of 2021’s I Be Trying’s quieter soul-imbued originals (“Smile”), but funkier, staccato riffs predominate — at least until he breaks out the acoustic for traditional numbers.

GloRilla – Ehhthang Ehhthang and Glorious (CMG/Interscope)

Rolling Stone ranked October’s Glorious among the year’s best, but we in the city where “everything is everything” tapped into the Ehhthang Ehhthang mixtape way back in April. While the 2024 releases are two peas in a pod, Ehhthang was arguably more significant as Glo’s triumphant debut in the full-length format. And tracks like “No Bih” slay (in Latin, no less) in such a stark, Memphis way: “F*ck it, carpe diem/I make ‘em motivated (okay)/Grammy-nominated (okay), f*ck whoever hatin’.”

IMAKEMADBEATS – WANDS (UNAPOLOGETIC)

While there are mad beats throughout this instrumental journey, there are also orchestral passages both ethereal and bombastic, at times sounding eerily like the ’70s synth-meister Tomita. It’s an interstellar trip in audio form, in which you’re never sure if you’re hearing a sample or an intricate new composition by MAD himself. “I’m Losing My Mind I’m OK” even features lyrics, hauntingly sung by Tiffany Harmon.

Juicy J and Xavier Wulf – Memphis Zoo

While Juicy J co-founded the dark horror-hop of Three 6 Mafia, this collab with fellow Memphian Wulf is, paradoxically, dark, ominous, and … fun. But there’s a gravitas here, too, as on the most popular track, album opener “The Truth,” an exhortation to cut the BS, stop fronting, and face facts. And a deeper truth about our times comes out in personal fave “Alley Oop”: “We’re living in the era of the alley oop,” and it’s not a good thing.

MonoNeon – Quilted Stereo (Court Square)

“I walked in the room and got butterflies.” So MonoNeon described his studio work with Mavis Staples on “Full Circle,” a highlight of Dywane “MonoNeon” Thomas Jr.’s latest work. With its doo-wop-ish vocal bass riff evoking a gospel bounce right out of the last century, it embodies funk and soul’s past, present, and future. Then there’s the sing-along jam with George Clinton, the perfectly Clinton-esque [and downright bluesy] “Quilted!” – an ode to flying your sartorial freak flag high, even if that means walking down the street decked out in bespoke, multicolored quilts. Then there’s the chugging New Wave pop of “Church of Your Heart,” the jungle beat rap of “Segreghetto,” and the sparkling sizzler of the summer, “Jelly Roll,” full of glossy synth warbles and bass stabs, its video overflowing with extras seemingly right out of the Crystal Palace roller-skating scene. MonoNeon’s greatest work yet.

NLE Choppa – SLUT SZN (Warner)

One of four releases by Choppa this year, all carry on his raunchy “Slut Me Out” variations, most audaciously with this album’s shuffling, acoustic guitar-driven “Slut Me Out 2 (Country Me Out),” featuring J.P., who sings, “If I was a cowgirl/I’d wanna ride me too!” Both versions skew gender in new ways for hip-hop, but it’s the stylistic mash up of the galloping, dancehall-flavored “Catalina” with Latin star Yaisel LM that truly takes Memphis hip-hop into global waters, reflecting Choppa’s Jamaican roots.

The Lisa Nobumoto Jazz Masters Orchestra – A Tribute to Jazz Singer Nancy Wilson

Having performed with the great Teddy Edwards for decades, this Memphian knows how to give Wilson’s catalog her own individual stamp. “Can’t Take My Eyes Off You” becomes a ballad, worlds away from Frankie Valli’s stomper. “Uptight (Everything’s Alright)” verges into boogaloo territory, yet with a relaxed delivery. Carl Wolfe’s big, brassy arrangements give the album a rare jazz classicism.

Jerry Phillips – For the Universe (Omnivore)

Though this is Phillips’ debut album, his decades of experience recording with great songwriters like John Prine at the studio his father built lend it the feel of a career-topper from the last century. The wry observations and hard-won wisdom of songs like “Specify” (exhorting his lover to say what she wants) or “She Let Me Slip Right Through Her Fingers” are carried by Phillips’ voice, echoing Charlie Rich or Johnny Rivers, and a band of ace Memphis session players.

Talibah Safiya – Black Magic

As artist-in-residence at the Rudi E. Scheidt School of Music last year, Safiya tapped into the High Water Recording Company’s back catalog, working with producer/engineer Ari Morris to weave generous helpings of Mississippi blues and soul into her samples. Erstwhile Memphian-turned-international-producer Brandon Deener lends his sonic touch as well, not to mention guitarist MadameFraankie, who brings a simmering soul vibe to underpin Safiya’s powerful-yet-playful voice.

Marcella Simien – To Bend to the Will of a Dream That’s Being Fulfilled

For this most personal of journeys into her family’s past and her own well-being, Simien’s playing nearly all the instruments, crafting a setting in a kind of synthetic world-building, evoking the sweep of generations with the sweep of electronic filters. Rootsier sounds also make an appearance, as the artist conjures a timeless space to commune with her ancestors.

Snowglobe – The Fall

Like much of Snowglobe’s earlier output, this is rich with layers of ear candy. Though grounded by chords on an acoustic guitar or piano, the arrangements fill out with all manner of harmonies, synthesizers, or electric guitar riffs and hooks. Think Badfinger meets “Soul Finger,” with
hints of Harry Nilsson’s darker moods and post-‘90s quirks all their own.

Cyrena Wages – Vanity Project

Produced and mixed by Matt Ross-Spang, this album has some of the rootsy, vintage elements of his previous work with Margo Price, yet with the contemporary pop instincts once championed by one of Wages’ heroes, Amy Winehouse. Most of all, the sounds jump out of the speakers with the grit of a real band, which includes guitarist and songwriting collaborator Joe Restivo.  

All albums self-released except where noted.

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MonoNeon Gets His Quilt On

MonoNeon (Photo: Logan Schaal)

When I arranged to interview Dywane “MonoNeon” Thomas Jr., the Bluff City’s hardest working bass virtuoso since Duck Dunn, and an auteur in his own right, the plan was to talk about his latest album. “Okay,” I thought, “I’ll give it a listen,” and pulled up the latest release on Bandcamp: MonoNeon on Synthesizer. It’s fantastic! A tour de force of thick Moog sounds, chock-full of inventive harmonies and sonic textures that Tomita himself would envy. There was only one problem: We weren’t supposed to be talking about that new album; it was the other one, due to drop on July 26th, the one featuring both George Clinton and Mavis Staples. “Okay,” I thought, “that new album.”

It’s hard to keep up with such a prolific artist. Since 2010, he’s created at a furious pace, from his trademark YouTube videos wherein his bass mimics found spoken word clips, to one-off singles (like 2016’s “Ruff Enuff,” produced by Prince), to full-on albums — 29 of them, if you count EPs. And if some of those have a real “I built this in my bedroom” quality, the production standards and arrangements have steadily, inexorably evolved over the years.

Which brings us to Quilted Stereo, album number 30. It’s the ultimate expression of MonoNeon’s ongoing evolution and sophistication so far, without sacrificing any of his unpredictability and inventiveness. And several of the tracks have been out there already, including “Quilted,” his single featuring George Clinton.

As none other than IMAKEMADBEATS noted on social media when the track was released in March, “MonoNeon not only just dropped a song with goated funk legend George Clinton and Parliament-Funkadelic, the whole song is MEMPHIS AF. The hook is literally ‘LOOK AT ME MANE.’ C’mon, bruh. Mane really brought George Clinton to US. THAT’S LEGENDARY. AF. People are really out here putting on for Memphis in innovative ways … both the mainstream and the alternative.”

When I caught up with MonoNeon last week, fresh off a European tour, he spoke of his working relationship with Clinton as a very organic, low-key phenomenon. “I met George two years ago, when I sat in with him at some music festival. And although our relationship is pretty new, I go down to Tallahassee a lot, to hang with him and his family. It wasn’t forced, it just happened in a casual fashion. He’s a pretty chill person.”

The song itself is a perfectly Clinton-esque ode to flying your sartorial freak flag high, even if that means wearing suits made of multicolored quilts. It’s a sentiment that Mr. “Get Dressed” himself can obviously relate to. And yet, as MonoNeon relates, the song, co-written with his longtime producer Davy Nathan and the rapper Wax, was practically an afterthought. 

As he explains, the tune is “about my whole aesthetic right now that I’m on, with my quilted clothes. And it came about when I was doing one of my videos, where I’m just acting up, you know, talking about how clean I am. A friend of Davy’s said, ‘That could be a song!’ His name is Wax; he’s a rapper. And we started writing the lyrics. My idea was to get George to do an intro for it and to feature him on the song.”

Nathan, as it turns out, is a key player in the MonoNeon universe. His home studio in Los Angeles is where MonoNeon does most of his recording these days, but their understanding goes deeper than your typical producer-artist relationship. “I usually always write my own songs,” says MonoNeon, “but when it comes to writing songs with other people, I usually go to him. He’s one of my best friends and a mentor, and I trust him with my vision. He understands me; he understands my little quirkiness. He’s really been helping me, seeing how he works and his way of writing — just being around him has really inspired me.”

Nathan also played a major role in MonoNeon’s collaboration with Mavis Staples on the song “Full Circle.” The title was apt, given the ties between the Staples family and MonoNeon’s own father. “I always wanted to do a song with Mavis, because I grew up listening to her, and she reminded me of my grandma, but also because my dad [Dywane Thomas Sr.] played bass with her and her father Pops Staples. So I’ve always been so in love with Mavis and her singing.

“Before this album, I told Davy, ‘I want to do a song with Mavis.’ I wasn’t sure if he was going to happen or not, but I told Davy, ‘Man, I’m going to let you have this, and I’m going to let you write a song, and hopefully me and Mavis can sing on it.’ So he sent me the song ‘Full Circle,’ and it was great. They sent it to Mavis and she loved it. She even told me that she prayed and prayed about it. And so it came to be. When we met in Chicago to record her vocals, I walked in the room and got butterflies.” 

The song, with its doo-wop-ish vocal bass riff evoking some gospel funk of the last century, is a stylistic home run, but that’s just one selection from an album as eclectic as any MonoNeon’s made. There’s the sing-along jam with Clinton, but also the chugging New Wave pop of “Church of Your Heart,” the jungle beat rap of “Segreghetto,” and what may just be the sparkling sizzler of the summer, “Jelly Roll,” full of glossy synth warbles and bass stabs, its video overflowing with extras seemingly right out of the Crystal Palace roller-skating scene of some years ago. Memphis AF.

It all has MonoNeon excited to be touring with new material, which he’ll soon be doing across the U.S. next month, culminating in his appearance at the Overton Park Shell on August 30th, followed by more European dates in the fall and winter. “I’m happy to be back home, but I’m ready to go back out,” he says. “I just want to be on stage and just continue evolving and continue to leave my little stamp down here before I get up out of this world. That’s all that matters to me.”

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George Clinton & Parliament Funkadelic: Keeping the Funk Alive

George Clinton

Tonight will be a watershed moment for lovers of the funk, as the Mothership descends once again on the Bluff City. I well recall when George Clinton and Parliament Funkadelic played the old Ellis Auditorium in 1991: the floorboards were literally bowing and bouncing to the beat. And that was just from the audience jumping to the band, who by now need no introduction, as pillars of American music history. The other day I had a chat with Danny Bedrosian, piano prodigy, synthesizer wizard, and fifteen year veteran of the band, about various new projects from the P-Funk collective and what funksters can expect from tonight’s show.

Memphis Flyer: So your first big work with the P Funk group and George Clinton was 2014’s First Ya Gotta Shake the Gate?

Danny Bedrosian: That’s the third P Funk album I was on. But I was much more involved with it than I was in the prior efforts. I came into the group as a studio musician first, which is kind of ironic. After being a studio musician with George for a few years, on and off while I was finishing college, I moved down to Florida where I live now, and where his studio is, and started working even more for George. And upon them liking what I did further and trusting me, they hired me into the group to go out on the road in 2003. Prior to that I was doing mostly just sessions. And being a session musician, you never really know how much of your stuff’s gonna end up on release. You also don’t know where things are gonna end up going. And I ended up doing a lot of work for a bunch of different associated acts all through those years as well, even while I was in the band. I played on George’s 2005 album, How Late Do U Have 2BB4UR Absent?, and I played on one song on his 2008 album, Gangsters of Love. And then I was very instrumental in the new Funkadelic album, Shake the Gate. I played on about 17 songs on that album. He also has a new Parliament album coming out called Medicaid Fraud Dog, which he’s really excited about. That’s coming out this year, the first Parliament album since 1980. We’re gonna have lots of horns, lots of that classic Parliament sound, and I’m also very conspicuous on that offering as well. I definitely contributed to more songs than there probably will be on the album, so…it’s another one that I’m really proud of, that’s gonna be coming soon from the P Funk camp.

You also contribute quite a bit to the new album Detroit Rising [released March 30 on Down Jazz Records], which features many P Funk players on it. Was that all recorded in Detroit?

No, the conceptual framework behind the project is the idea of the Detroit sound, being both the Motown sound and also United Sound, which was the studio where P Funk did a lot of its recordings back in the day. It’s the idea of the rising of that sound back into the forefront of American music and not just in these locales where it comes from. Although the title is a bit of a misnomer, because probably a greater portion of it was recorded in NYC. And probably an equal portion to the Detroit stuff was recorded in Florida as well. So it’s really a multinational offering, if you will. It was equal parts New York, Detroit, L.A. and Florida. So sorta all corners of the country. But the Detroit sound is really an important part of the P Funk sound, you know Motown and R&B and funk and all that stuff.

The idea of the concept was bringing back that sort of sound to the forefront and then adding something new to it as well. Because it’s definitely got a heavy East coast influence as well, with the jazz fusion thing. So it’s a pretty cool project.

A few tracks were done at United Sound, which is the longest running studio in the country. And it’s where P Funk did all of their big big albums back in the 70s, and also where a lot of the great R&B artists did their music. And so, the project started there and it evolved from there. I’m really proud of the music, I think it’s really dynamic and exciting musically.

What’s it like creating and recording tracks for a George Clinton album?

Working for George, he will have a complete concept in mind before coming in. So if it’s something we’re doing with George for a particular album or effort, he’s gonna be very specific about the concept and what it is that we’re doing and why we’re doing it. He’s still very much the producer in that way. For instance, we just did a session in Atlanta last night with the rhythm section, and we recorded a song that we’d been doing live that already exists in a track form; but he liked the way we did it live with the track so much that he’s having us recreate sort of a live version for the studio of this track. And so this was his vision for this, capturing that energy from a live version of a song that we never really put out live. We just played it live. We never put it out on an album. So he’s looking to create the live version of that as the studio version, if you will. And that was his vision last night.

It is collaborative, but he’s very focused, and it takes a long time. He cares about his product and how it’s crafted and how it’s made. He’s very on hand in the studio, always on point, very, very focused in the studio. You just get in there and take directions and see what happens. And then, he is also very collaborative in a way, where if we’re at his home studio in Tallahassee at the P Funk studio, we might be coming up with something sort of leisurely, and it’ll become something. That happens too in a very organic way. Or it could be something where one of us wrote a song and it doesn’t necessarily have a place yet, and he may fall in love with it and do some post production, add a bunch of stuff, take away some stuff, mix some stuff, do some things with it, and create something new with that. That happens very often too.

And then oftentimes he’ll put groups of us together to create something. So he’ll have a vision for a few of us from the group or from the organization to work together or create together in some way in a way that maybe we never would have thought of before because maybe it wouldn’t be someone you even knew before you came into this organization. He’s really connected a lot of people in that way. So the spirit of his production is just so more alive than maybe it has been in the past 20 or so years, ‘cos he’s just so focused now. And it’s really great to see.

It reminds me of Duke Ellington, who would craft compositions around the sounds and personalities of particular players in his group.

Yes, he’s very conscious about who it is that starts a particular song, and how it has that color because that person started it. And he’s equally conscious of how a track needs the color of this person, so we’ll get so and so to overdub on it. He’s very conscious about who starts it, who dubs in, how he wants it to be structured, how he wants the flavor of it to be.

Will Memphis get a taste of the new Parliament album?

Yes, we have released one single from the upcoming album already. It’s called “I’m Gonna Make You Sick.” And it is really really just a banger. It’s really a great funk song, the classic Parliament sound. It also features the rapper Scarface. and I played on it a little bit as well. We’ve been doing it live about four months. And it’s one of those songs that really gets the crowd going, which is great because it’s a new song. So, such a great continuum to see how it continues to thrive. So yeah, you will get a little bit of new Parliament album.

And of course some of the new Funkadelic.

Yep we’re gonna do probably five songs from that as well.

And dip into the hits?

Oh yeah. There’s always a strong inclination from the fans to do this song or that song. And the P Funk canon being so vast, you can never expect to get all the hits. It’s something like forty charted hits, six number ones, three platinum albums and additional maybe eight gold albums. Just so much of the stuff from that period that you can’t expect to hear all of them, but there are definitely ones that we can’t do a show without doing. And also, which makes me happy, is we tend to dig through the crates and go through a lot of lesser known album cuts as well from back in the day. Which I really like ‘cos I was such an album guy growing up when I was a fan of this band. I always liked a lot of the album cuts the best, even more so than some of the singles. So it’s really exciting to be able to do those as well.

I saw P Funk in 1991 and there was a descending Mothership…

Oh yeah! We probably won’t see the spaceship in this show. It is something that’s been talked about lately, about bringing the Mothership back, and you never know, it could happen. Right now the original Mothership is currently in the Smithsonian in Washington, which we’re really proud of.

How many of the current players go back to the early days of Parliament or Funkadelic?

We have Blackbyrd McKnight on guitar, he joined the group in about ’78. He’s with us. He’s also an original member of the Headhunters [backing Herbie Hancock], and played with Miles Davis. He’s a 30-plus year veteran of P Funk. Mister Lige Curry on bass, who’s the longest tenured bass player in the band’s history. He’s been playing for this group for 30 some odd years as well, joined in ’79. The horn section, Benny Cowan and Greg Thomas on trumpet and saxophone respectively. They both have been in the group some 40 years now, they came in the ’70s. Gary “Mudbone” Cooper, who has been with the group since ’73 and was also an original member of Bootsy’s Rubber Band, also is with the group. Tracey Lewis, who is George’s son, did a lot of work with them starting in the early to late ’80s. Steve Boyd, who started in the late ’80s, is also with us as well. So there’s quite a few people from that era. And it’s such a great thing to see how George has people from every decade of this group. I came in the 2000’s, and it’s interesting that I’m the only one left from that era. So it’s a kind of a microcosm where you see the different generations and how they impact the thing. I think we have maybe 3 people here from the ’90s. And then we have a slew of new people who’ve come in the 2010’s. Some of George’s grandchildren, they’re the new generation that’s coming up. So it’s really great to see it self-perpetuating.

It’s quite an American institution. Anything else we should know about P Funk projects?

I would like to say I have a new album that just came out as well, my solo album with my little trio called Secret Army. And the album is called 8finity. It’s our eighth album, and it’s myself and the bass player and the drummer from P Funk. So it’s basically the backbone of P Funk, we just put out this new album as well. George is on it too, and bunch of other members of the band. It’s a really nice effort.

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Q&A: George Clinton is Still Funkin’

The New Daisy is turning 74 this weekend, and to celebrate, George Clinton will be on hand to make sure the party goes well into the night. The venue will be mounting memorable show posters on the walls throughout the night, including the Bob Dylan concert flyer, and a Big Star show poster. While those shows definitely deserve recognition, the real draw here is George Clinton. I caught up with Clinton over the phone last week to talk about the show and how he manages to keep it funky at the age of 74. — Chris Shaw

The Memphis Flyer: How often are you performing these days? Are you able to tour as much as you’d like?

George Clinton: I generally tour all the time. We live on the road. We’ve been doing a 30-day tour in the states starting tonight. Then we go to Europe for 30 days, and then we come back here and do the same thing. We’ve got a couple new records out and a new video with Kendrick Lamar and Ice Cube that we’ll be promoting.

George Clinton

You’ve worked with a lot of rappers throughout your career. Is there any current artist you’d like to work with that you haven’t yet?

The group Alabama Shakes. I really like them, that’s the rock side of me. The hip-hop side of me [would like to work with] J. Cole. My grandkids show me what’s hip, there’s about five of them in the group now, and they keep me up to date on what’s going on. Flying Lotus is who I’m touring with right now.

Your ties with Stax Records and Memphis run pretty deep.

Al Green, Isaac Hayes, and the Bar-Kays have all been on tour with us. I go way back with all of that. In the ’60s, those were our touring buddies, and we were united with Stax and a lot of other Memphis connections. It’s always good to play Beale Street Music Fest.

Back in ’76 we had the Mothership, and it really blew a lot of minds to see the spaceship landing, and people were freaking out when we brought to Memphis. The Mothership in ’76 and ’77 pretty much freaked everyone out across the country.

How do you feel about your music being sampled by so many artists over the years?

I’m proud of being sampled. The corporations that try to own the music is what I have a problem with. That’s the part I’ve been fighting, and I’ve got a documentary coming out about that. My latest album is going to tackle all these pharm drugs you see on TV that are actually worse than street drugs. It’s going to be called One Nation Under Sedation.

You’ve been clean for a while now. Can you still get funky now that you’re sober?

Definitely. As soon as you find something better than the habit, you don’t need it anymore. All that rehab shit is just for people to make money. I smoke weed. I got my medical marijuana card, and I get higher with that than I ever did smoking crack. The weed nowadays gets you much higher than the crack I used to smoke. I sprained my back and they gave me these painkillers, but I won’t take that shit. I’m happy being clean, and I’m not bragging. I’m just happy to be over with it, and I know people need to hear these things without being preached at.

What’s been the secret to your longstanding career?

I feel lucky, but coming through the ’50s when rock-and-roll was coming up and then working at Motown factory with the best songwriters in the world, you learned to respect all the different music coming along. I’m not afraid of the kids coming along today. I’m not afraid of them putting me out of business. I’m trying to work with them. I get on YouTube with my grandkids and hear their mix tapes, and then I work with them.

It keeps me relevant, just like when I worked with Kendrick Lamar. We are basically doing R&B with this 21st century dance concept. Snoop and all them from that era, they didn’t identify with R&B the way they do now. They are all really proud of R&B now, and so the younger generation respects the music itself. The new era of rappers appreciates blues and R&B. That’s what keeps the music alive.