This is the first Unknown Mortal Orchestra music I’ve had on my site in two years and once you hear the first few notes, some of you will say ‘are you sure this is UMO?” It sounds funky but yes, this is the same UMO. Not only that but this is a Grateful Dead cover. The Grateful Dead get funky? In a better world it can happen and it has happened here. This is on a new Grateful Dead tribute album called Day Of The Dead, out on CD and digital with a vinyl pressong on its way September 9th.
If you are a syndicate from the tribe of Shabazz, then you may already know who Shabazz Palaces are and/or/is and now you can see a new video from them/him/it called “Dawn In Luxor”. This is from Lese Majesty so if you’re familiar, get your eyes in touch with this. If not, introduce yourself!
By the way: tour dates:
June 4… Spokane, WA (Volume: The Inlander’s Music Festival @ Terrain Stage)
June 18… Vancouver, BC (Levitation Festival @ Imperial Vancouver)
August 4… Los Angeles, CA (Shrine Auditorium) *
August 7… San Diego, CA (The Casbah) (DJ Set)
August 8… Los Angeles, CA (Shrine Auditorium) *
August 13… Eau Claire, WI (Eaux Claires Music Festival)
August 27… Brooklyn, NY (Afropunk Fest @ Brainfeeder Stage)
September 15-16… Oakland, CA (Fox Theatre) **
September 17… Hollywood, CA (Hollywood Bowl) **
* w / Radiohead
** w/ Flying Lotus, George Clinton + Parliament Funkadelic, Thundercat, The Gaslamp Killer
A new 37 minute mix of excellent funk, soul, and jazz has been blended together by DJ Manipulator in something he calls the Third Eye Vision Mix and true to its subtitle, it is an all vinyl mix, straight out of the crates. You can download it for free from the Soundcloud page while supplies last or directly from Mediafire.
Good evening, do not attempt to adjust your radio, there is nothing wrong, we have taken control as to bring you this special show, we will return it to you as soon as you are grooving. Welcome to station W.E. F.U.N.K., better known as We-Funk, or deeper still, the Mothership Connection, home of the extraterrestrial brothers, dealers of funky music. P.Funk, uncut funk, the bomb.
Coming you directly from the Mothership, top of the chocolate milky way. 500,000 kilowatts of P.Funk power, so kick back, ya’dig, while we do it to you in your eardrums. Who me, I’m known as Lollipop Man, alias The Long Haired Sucker, my motto is…
At the age of 5, I had heard something I had never heard before. My young life existed by listening to records on the radio but this was the very first time I had ever heard the radio on a record. As someone who fell in love with the means of communication through on-air announcer and listener, my first job was not wanting to be a police officer, astronaut, or a fireman. I wanted to be a disc jockey, the idea of playing music for anyone willing to listen was the ultimate goal, so to hear these peculiar aliens broadcasting from an unknown radio station felt like I was entering a secret club house. At 5 years old, I may not have known the reality of this club but I certainly wanted to live there forever.
Mothership Connection was Parliament’s fourth full length album, their third album for Casablanca Records. They were a group founded by George Clinton, who originally started them as a vocal group called The Parliaments, named after a popular cigarette brand. When Clinton found The Parliaments concept a bit boring, he formed Funkadelic, a cross section of what was psychedelic and funky, a loud mixture of rock and hard soul. The core of Funkadelic were the musicians but they had a team of singers, including Clinton. Those singers were the core of what was The Parliaments, who decided to simplify and call themselves Parliament. In time, Clinton found himself not running two different bands, but the same band who used two different names for the sake of trying to be like Ike Turner and James Brown by milking the system for all that it could be worth. In other words, if one group could make a set of money, why not two, even if they’re one and the same? Originally, the musical vibe of both Parliament and Funkadelic were pretty much one and the same but by the mid-70’s, Clinton realized Funkadelic could rely on the grit and dirtiness of the music while Parliament could be designed with a sense of polish not unlike the mechanics of James Brown and his bands. In time, Parliament and Funkadelic would be known to describe a united movement: P.Funk, or a Parliafunkadelicment Thang. Once you heard the code words, you could not mistake them for anyone else, and it got bigger and weirder when there were more subsidiary bands making themselves known, be it Parlet, Bootsy’s Rubber Band, or The Brides Of Funkenstein. For the sake of wanting to make this article basic, I will limit the discussion to just Parliament/Funkadelic and this album.
By five, I had already been a fan of Earth, Wind & Fire and War, along with groups like El Chicano, Santana, Black Sabbath, and Led Zeppelin. I was slowly developing musical tastes from my parents, along with an uncle who had lived next door, so it was not only about discovering new songs and artists, but to sit in front of the phonograph and carrying the album cover, looking at it and wondering what was going on. What I saw on the cover of Mothership Connection was weird and peculiar: a smiling black man with make-up on his face, wearing shiny silver boots, spreading his legs in laughter while riding in an open-door UFO in space. Who was this man, and why is he so happy?
From the moment I heard these fictitious radio DJ’s in “P-Funk (Wants to Get Funked Up)”, I couldn’t stop listening. I had never heard a radio show recreated in song, and this voice speaking from the unknown was a place I wanted to visit, it sounded like someone I could trust. There were three characters in the song: the unknown mellow man, the high-speed voice known as Lollipop Man (a/k/a The Long Haired Sucker), and the laid back man who dominates the song talking about doing it to you in your earhole and discovering people in the southern part of the United States lived bands like the Doobie Brothers, Blue Magic, and David Bowie. Being a kid, I could only understand what I had known so when he said ” but can you imagine Doobie in your funk?”, I knew what he was hinting at. My dad smoked, so when I heard him talking about a doobie, it wasn’t something from one of my dad’s Cheech & Chong records. Someone else talked about marijuana cigarettes, the world I experienced was not exclusive. Outside of hearing about Lollipop Man, “P. Funk” introduces another character to the Parliament empire, someone named Starchild, and we were tuned to stick around and “tune in”, to wait and see what this Starchild was about.
The title track to Mothership Connection began and it too was a mock radio show, and as I’m looking at the album cover, I could only imagine this guy with silver boots going around in outer space, looking around for good music and good times while listening to the best music around. Starchild introduced himself to the citizens of the universe, but he could easily be referring himself as a citizen as well, making the world he spoke to not focused on one, but for all. However, he was also getting a bit social and cultural by saying “We have returned to claim the pyramids”. At the time, I had no idea what that meant or why this cool martial was talking about pyramids but through learning about the world and people around me, it would become clearer.
One thing I would realize later was that the first two songs on the album are not really proper songs, neither of them are verse/chorus/verse or even casually traditional. They were a bit like being in a car, finding a radio station that had music you liked and just kept it there for the duration, taking in whatever the DJ talked about to absorb the community he was speaking to. What made the song interest were the other references such as mentioning the Bermuda Triangle and Easter Island, along with the biblical reference “when Gabriel’s horn blows, you’d better be ready to go.” These were new things to me and again, not knowing what he was saying made the world described much more interesting, a need to figure out if he was speaking in code or would I eventually learn about why he talked about these things.
When I’d get deeper into the music of Parliament and Funkadelic, that’s when I learned about the social and political side of Clinton, someone who was more than willing to speak about how he and others lived or finding a way to simply live a regular life that isn’t available to everyone on Earth. Clinton and the other members were often direct and to the point but they made it fun by throwing in slang and odd references that would make listeners go “oh, so THAT is what he’s singing about?” As the song ends with a nod to a well known gospel song, it slowly became clear what this Mothership was about and why it was called the Mothership. It was a vehicle where people from the motherland are able to ride together as one, without fear or harm, where everyone is able to find out how they are connected as a united force, whatever that force may be. “Swing down, sweet chariot stop and let me ride” was merging the hymns and metaphors of the past and bringing it to modern times in the hopes of celebrating a much better future. By asking if they could “let me ride”, it was a nice way of saying “please, I am a good person, welcome me in”. He knew if this mothership is as good natured as he had heard, he will find others within the community who is just like him. It’s a sense of brotherhood and sisterhood that many of us look to finding throughout our lives, but the idea is to keep that vibe intact.
It would take three songs before Mothership Connection has a proper song, the excellent “Unfunky UFO” and it is when we realized the unidentified flying object on the cover was not as cool as we had thought, and why? The chorus hits things accurately, without hesitation: Unfunky kind of UFO
here from the sun
you’ve got the groove and we want some
We’re unfunky and we’re obsolete
and we’re out of time
gonna take your funk and make it mine
Why is Clinton and friends saying he’s obsolete and out of time? If Starchild is a man traveling from the future in a Doctor Who fashion, perhaps he wants to tell everyone that they have to unite for a better cause, whatever the cause may be. Some of the cause is explained in the verse, sung by Bootsy Collins and Glen Coins: Stupidly, I forced a smile
my composure was secure
I wore a silly grin from ear to ear
a smile they saw right through
Oh, but then like a streak of lightning it came
Filling my brain with this pain
Without saying a word, this voice I heard
“Give up the funk, you punk”
The song sounds like a track to dance and get down to but the lyrics show there is a much more serious manner at stake. Combined with the horn arrangement, it could be a spirited song, which it is, but there’s much more going on than wondering why this UFO is unfunky. Or is it that the inhabitants of this unfunky UFO are looking for a means to steal the funk from a land where its riches are fully known?
Side 2 begins with “Supergroovalisticprosifunkstication (The Thumps Bump)” and while the song is not in the verse/chorus/verse format either, it is not like “P. Funk” or “Mothership Connection”, there is no radio aircheck involvement. Instead, it’s a musical call to arm of sorts. Three years later, Funkadelic released One Nation Under A Groove and asked people to “pledge a grooveallegiance to the funk of the United Funk of Funkadelica”, but you could say an early declaration for this nation was made here: Give the people what they want when they want
and they wants it all the time
give the people what they need when they need
and the need is yours and mine
When you hear the singers say “throw-down, baby do the throw-down”, it seems they are seeking and finding what they want in order to feel that goodness throughout the existence. It’s something worth fighting for.
When I first heard “Handcuffs”, I did not like it as much as the rest of the song for it sounded forced to me, or if they were trying to say something and I wasn’t ready to understand it. The song deals with sexism in a way that perhaps the band had never done before. If people had thought it seemed weird for these guys to be doing a song so blunt about the battle of the sexes, it was co-written by a lady Clinton had made in Los Angeles, Janet McLaughlin. Or at least she was given co-songwriting for the song, which happens to be the only song in their entire catalog that she gets credit for. Upon going through the lyrics, it seems she played a very important role for while the lyrics may come off like a bitter (if not sexist) joke, it’s meant to provoke thought, not laugh at: If I have to keep you barefoot and pregnant
to keep you here in my world
get down and take off your shoes
girl, I’m gonna do to you
what it is I’ve got to do
If we’ve been bonding like you say that we do
I think you won’t mind if I’d be possessive, now would you?
your preach about loving, you know it is to blame
that’s why I can ask you and not even feel ashamed
One day before the 40th anniversary of the album, there has been one lyric that has bugged me for most of my life. Since he is on Twitter, I decided to ask George Clinton what he was singing, since it is he who is on vocals. I always wanted to know what exactly “can go to hell”, for it was unintelligible to my ears. A few hours later, Clinton was nice enough to solve my mystery:
I don’t care about looking like a chauvinistic kinda whatever
(some corny?)
aw, corny can go to hell
and if I find that I need some help
gonna pull out my chastity belt
what it is, I’ve got to do
In the song, the song is much stronger than originally realized, the battle of the sexes explored. As the song began to be understood a bit more, it got more soulful and funkier and showed that the perceived space travels of the front cover was more earthbound.
“Give Up The Funk (Tear The Roof Off The Sucker)” became the big hit on the album and it works on a number of levels, despite it not being in the traditional verse/chorus/verse format either. It might seem like there’s a verse thrown throughout but to my ears, it comes off more like nothing but cool choruses, pieced together to make a dance proclamation. The response from the singers is made for listeners to repeat it but what really makes the song work is Collins’ bass lines, intermingling with the rest of the band, made tight by the horn section, all pulled in by the importance of Bernie Worrell’s counter-melodies. At one point, it seems like there are three or four different groups involved in the song and perhaps that’s exactly what Clinton was trying to do, not really knowing who is who or where things begin or end.
On a side note, I remember reading something somewhere that while there were a full cast of musicians on the back cover, Collins was involved into the music more than we realized, including drums and guitar work in some songs. He’s credited with everytong on the cover but in a way, despite having a cast of over 20 people on the album, it could have easily be done by a small group of six or seven. Collins will forever be known as an important bass guitarist but his time in the recording studio was much more than just limiting himself to the four string. (NOTE: Collins didn’t play bass in “Give Up The Funk”, that song was done with Cordell Mosson.)
Despite “Night of the Thumpasorus Peoples” not having any true lyrics, I always found Mothership Connection‘s closing track to be a personal favorite, not only for the groove but because the semi-instrumental had a Mini-Moog from Worrell that always reminded me of wet farts. I had never heard any song at 5 years old where someone could play a song with their ass so I’d laugh at it, thinking it was one of the greatest things to be made on a record.
Plus, the lyrics mean nothing and yet it does: ga ga goo ga
ga ga goo ga
ga ga, goo, ga ga
Who were these thumpasorus people and do they have other lifeforms in their habitat? Ga ga goo ga, ga ga goo ga, ga ga goo ga gaow, you know?
In one way, the album does not really have a unified theme like The Clones Of Dr. Funkenstein or Funkentelechy Vs. The Placebo Syndrome do, the concept tends to fade a bit once Side 1 comes to an end. Mothership Connection begins by the listener discovering a frequency that can only be heard by a select few, only for the journeyman to head elsewhere. Or perhaps it’s the realization that the spaceman on the front cover is not in the mighty universe but as the back cover shows, he’s nothing more than a brother hanging out in a back alley somewhere with his ship held up by a piece of lumber or a plank.
In truth, the universal travels are something that, for now, can only be dreamed of and we can only think about the possibilities if we better our universe within our immediate vicinity, the connection we must seek in order for any of us to function as one, if at all possible. Perhaps in the distant future, our ancestors will be able to meet up with Sun Ra to understand why space is truly the place, a dimension where there is no limit. For now, we have to find solace in our dreams and wonder why reality can’t be as grand as the man on the cover with a shiteating grin and knee high boots.
On top of that, hearing a lot of “funk” in song was something I had never heard in my young live so I used to think they were singing naughty things. I mean, what did it mean to get “funked up” and “turn this mother out”? Maybe for some, funk was not a bad word but it sounded like they were getting away with cursing and I loved it. Sure, I read the cover and knew it was all about the funk and in a way, getting down just for the funk of it was like speaking in code, even though I couldn’t find any of my friends to speak in the same way. However, I knew if their records were available at Woolworth’s or other stores and being able to hear “Flashlight” on the radio, I knew George Clinton had to be someone to look up to. In many ways, Clinton was like a long distance funky uncle, if not a funky father and no matter where his travels went to next, he would still be there on the other side, waiting to speak in a way that comforted anyone who wished to understand the world around us.
Statistically, Mothership Connection went as high as #4 on Billboard’s R&B Album chart and #13 on Billboard’s Pop Album chart. It would be certified gold by the Recording Industrial Association of America (RIAA) four months after its release on April 26, 1976. The RIAA would raise their awards to sales of 1,000,000 and they created the platinum award in 1976. Therefore, Mothership Connection was also given a platinum award nine months after its release on September 20, 1976. On top of that, “Give Up The Funk (Tear The Roof Off The Sucker)” was released as a single and it too sold 500,000 copies, leading to the RIAA giving the band a gold record for the 45 (their first gold single) on October 19, 1976.
Two other songs from the album were also released as singles: “P. Funk” and “Mothership Connection”, both being edits with the latter being titled “Star Child”. Both did not do well on the pop charts, which is why you generally hear “Give Up The Funk” on oldies radio station more than any other Parliament song. Nonetheless, the influence of Mothership Connection and the entire P.Funk empire on hip-hop continues to grow, with fans realizing that the games and puzzles Clinton and friends introduced in song were commonly enjoyed, celebrated, and deciphered. While Parliament had existed with three albums before this, it was with Mothership Connection that started what is called the P.Funk mythology, introducing different characters that would be explored in musical adventures for the next five years. For many of us, P.Funk was the ultimate comic book fantasy and we got a chance to see and hear it, even if only in musical form. With this album, we were somehow connected as one, hoping to find access to the mothership upon its inevitable arrival.
DJ Platurn is back to his pesky editing ways and this time he goes back to 1974 for a dip into the Ohio Players catalog to try out the hit song “Fire”. This one is a scorcher and c’mon, it’s a Platurn edit, you know how he does it.
When I visited New York City in 1990, I went to a record store in Times Square and bought a literal heap of records, including a few Ultimate Breaks & Beats comps and a few albums made by DJ Mark The 45 King, whom I had liked for his work with Queeen Latifah, Lakim Shabazz, and Chill Rob G. 25 years later, 45 King is still doing his thing and this time he worked with K-Def to put together a fine album of breakbeats galore called Back To The Beat Vol. 2. For a listen, check out a track called “Zulu Strings”. Back To The Beat Vol. 2 will be out on November 13th via Redefinition Records.
Did you like the new album by AM & Shawn Lee Outlines? DID YOU, I SAID? Well good, for now there’s a new mix or I should say, a new remix for the song “Again And Again”. This one is done by I’CED and you can have a listen to his perspective
AM & Shawn Lee have some shows coming up, including one later this week in Seattle so head there and get into the groove like Madonna: October 15… Seattle, WA (Crocodile)
October 20… San Francisco, CA (Rickshaw)
October 22… Los Angeles, CA (Mrs. Fish)
October 27… Chicago, IL (Schubas)
October 28… Brooklyn, NY (Knitting Factory)
To say that this record is one of the best and most underrated releases of 1985 and the entire decade of the 1980’s is an understatement. It’s my way of saying that the debut release from Fishbone was something that I could not keep myself from. If the first half of the 80’s featured a number of brand new musical discoveries for me, then this was easily the crossroads that put me over into a new territory, for a number of reasons.
The first time I heard of Fishbone was through the video for “? (Modern Industry)”, which at the time I felt was one of the oddest songs due to its lyrical content: WBRU, KABE, WFLY, Cool 92
KAX, KOKE, KRO
WAMX, YES, WOW!
The majority of the song was nothing but radio station call letters and as Angelo Moore says during the chorus: This is the music behind the machine
These are the voices of modern industry
As someone who loved the power of radio, enough to where my childhood dream of being a radio disc jockey became true when I joined the Radio/Television Production class at the local vocational skills center during high school, hearing this was a dream. It was a song about the radio that I would never hear on any local radio stations, which made it even better. Yet it wasn’t just the call letters that moved me, it was the attitude of the band and especially the musicianship, these guys rocked. One would never expect a band who looked like them to play music like that, but outside of Los Angeles, who would expect anyone to look like that? These guys were punk rock and new wave in their own world and I had to have more.
The next time I heard them was with their follow-up video, or at least that’s how I had seen it before. One video may have been made before or after the other and “Party At Ground Zero” looked independent compared to the major label clout of “? (Modern Industry)”. Then again, unless you were Michael Jackson, black artists in the 80’s were lucky to have any level of a music video budget, look at how homemade Atlantic Starr’s video for “Secret Lover” looked, followed with “If Your Heart Isn’t In It”. One wasn’t expected to be a pop hit, one showed the after effect. Nonetheless, “Party At Ground Zero” was incredible for it started off somewhat low-key and mellow and about a minute into the song, it interrupts itself by going to a major shift in vibe and attitude: Party at ground zero
every movie starring you
and the world will turn to flowing pink vapor stew
All of a sudden, it was a ska basement party we all wanted to find ourselves in, a tasteful song about being in some kind of apocalyptic realm where during a time of utter chaos, all you can do is party. Or as Frankie Goes To Hollywood once said in the liner notes for one of their albums, “get off your dance, we’re all going to the same grave” so if the end is truly coming, end it by gyrating our bottoms.
I just loved what these guys were going, how they were coming off so I went to the local record stores to find this self-titled EP on Columbia Records. I could not find it and I found myself frustrated. I was in my mid-teens, going out of town to Seattle for school clothes or just a visit out of town was common. I always made sure that we would go to Tower Records since I had made that place “a home away from home” when I visited Tower regularly when I lived in Honolulu. All of a sudden, there it was: the tape. In time, I would eventually discover for the next six years that my Fishbone purchasing tasks were always out of town. Despite me assuming their music was getting more popular due to seeing their videos on BET and MTV, I guess since I live in a “small market” town, their music was never sold here, or at least I never noticed them. If it wasn’t in Seattle at Tower on 5th & Mercer or in the U-District, it was in Portland at the Tower on 82nd. If not there, maybe I’d lever buy their Christmas EP It’s A Wonderful Life in Spokane at Eli’s. Before the easy access of MP3 files and now streams, if you really wanted the music of a band one liked, you had to make the effort, or at least “the effort” was a bit more difficult than it is these days. I found myself loving Fishbone and I enjoyed buying their music by going long distance, at least before 1991 when I finally became a part of Columbia Records’ promotional mailing list and was able to get Fishbone advance tapes and CD’s for free. I’m jumping ahead of myself in this story.
The union between Angelo Moore, Philip “Fish” Fisher and brother Norwood Fisher, Kendall Jones, Christopher Dowd, and Walter A. Kibby II was something that could not quite be understood despite reading about it. They were all young kids from South Central Los Angeles enjoying the kind of music most kids from South Central weren’t exactly listening to. They loved soul, funk, and jazz, with Moore with his love of the saxophone and Norwood getting down with the funky bass but learning how to play those instruments was a process in itself. They gathered together just to jam and party, the idea of doing it for a living really didn’t happen until later. However, as other kids saw this “disparate, all-black oddball crew” having fun and at times taking themselves seriously, that’s when they started to do more shows throughout L.A. and eventually California. They seemed to fit in with what the Suicidal Tendencies, Red Hot Chili Peppers, and Faith No More were going, mixing up soul and funk in odd ways, but also bringing in ska, reggae, punk, and metal. At that time, ska music was considered “white man’s reggae” partly because no one bothered to discover ska was a pre-cursor to reggae. Thus, for a short time, Fishbone were considered a band playing “white man’s reggae”. In truth, the band who were one of the most successful groups who played white man’s reggae was not The Specials or Madness, but The Police. Their album Reggatta de Blanc was called that for a reason. It was a different time but for the weirdness people saw and heard in Fishbone, it lead to them being signed by Columbia Records, where they ended up working with producer David Kahne, a relationship that would last for years.
The EP begins with “Ugly” and it became the best way one could start off their debut release. Boy. you’ve got no method to control us all
for the mentalities are not that small
and now you’re thinking’ that you have won
but the revolution has just begun
It was their way of saying their music revolution is here and they are ready to attack whenever necessary, while also touching on social conditions while briefly making a pop culture reference to Dennis The Menace.
If the music of Fishbone may have seemed out of wack to some, their lyrics showed a very strong sense of maturity that perhaps showed subtle hits of what Parliament/Funkadelic, Earth Wind & Fire, and Bob Marley were doing: making statements that touch on how someones regular sense of living is interrupted just because they are not within the community of someone else. Another trend to follow, another word to linger on
they may not even know the reasons why
you think without a vision, and then they try to call it ours
and it’s causin’ me to culture shock
It’s not saying they have created their own world, but due to personal interpreations and misconceptions, they were outsiders. In truth, it may have been a need to just fit in but they were more than happy to fit with whomever was willing to take them in, or to simple state “this is us, this is who we are and always will be and if you don’t like it, fuck off, we’ll find a place to call home because someone will welcome us.”
If there’s a song that was just outright foolishness, then that would have to be “V.T.T.L.O.T.F.D.G.F.”, featuring a lead vocal from Walter Kibby Jr. The initials stand for “Voyage To The Land Of The Freeze Fried Godzilla Farts” and if anything in the song makes some level of sense, it’s the chorus: It take a big bean but butte, we’ll surely rumble
it take a big bean but butte, we’ll surely rumble
it take a big bean but butte, we’ll surely rumble
King Kong will fall as will the great wall
and the whole damn town will crumble
However, Norwood states the song is actually about nuclear war, even though the lyrics state Godzilla is going to come in and do his damage, whether it be with his feet or his flatulence, we are uncertain but one thing is certain: everyone will be scared.
The EP closes with “Lyin’ Ass BitcH”, which features Lisa Grant helping out on vocals and while the title suggests the guys in Fishbone were on the misogynistic, the song was actually condemning the treatment some men give to women. As Norwood Fisher said in a 1985 magazine interview: “(the song) isn’t ragging on women, it’s making fun of all that macho balderdash.” She swears that her heart’s for you
and she swears that her love never ends
she swears that she’s all for you
as she messes around with your friends
I really thought our love was much too strong
but that little slut just proved us Wrong
I still care and that’s my fatal flaw
cause sharing you will surely kill us all
When the song was performed as Michelle Bachmann’s walk-out music during her appearance on Late Night With Jimmy Fallon, some people in the viewing audience who watched knew the song laughed, even though no one in the group sung the lyric “you’re nothing but a little lying ass bitch”, it was just the “la, la la la, la la la la la la” part. Nonetheless, the damage was done, The Roots’ drummer and band leader Ahmir “?uestlove” Thompson was put in temporary “detention” and had things went a different way, The Roots may have been pulled off as the show’s band. They are now the official band for The Tonight Show and the song’s suggested for walk-out music for guests are “carefully monitored.”
Fishbone’s self-titled debut EP was a few seconds short of what was considered “album length” at the time (27 minutes) for if it was a second over 26:59, it would have been an album (a short album at that). Nonetheless, what Fishbone created in that frame of time was a revolution of sorts that had begun, even if they weren’t one of its leaders. For the next ten eyars, the band recorded some of the best music in their lives and best music ever made, whether it be the advanced fun they displayed on their debut album In Your Face, the next wave of intensity with Truth And Soul or the incredible genius that was their best album, The Reality Of My Surroundings or the last album to feature Kendall Jones and Christopher Dowd, the powerful yet emotional Give A Monkey A Brain And He’ll Swear He’s The Center Of The Universe, which also became their last album with Columbia. The group had hits but not solid pop hits like Red Hot Chili Peppers, Faith No More, and Jane’s Addiction. They were always the band that could’ve or should’ve and it had seemed they were always on the verge of being ready. While that major success never happened, they didn’t bother waiting for anyone to say they are relevant, revolutionaries didn’t have time. In truth, they remain a band who are willing to execute any level of boredom within a room or even themselves, and it “began” in that small room on the cover of that EP, incredibly cramped, just like their music.
Colorado jam band Digg want to be dug and are doing so by releasing a single from their album There Are Days. “Fade Away” is said to be influenced by two people you may not think have a connection but at least in music, they do: Bill Withers and Derek Trucks. The album will be released on November 17th.
Get ready, New Mastersounds fans, your favorite band will be releasing a new set of music very soon. Made For Pleasure (Royal Potato Family) will be out on October 2nd and a few days before that, they will begin touring in support of it. Check out the dates, set your coordinates and then have a good time if they’re playing within your vicinity.
September 30… Phoenix, AZ (Crescent Ballroom)
October 1… San Diego, CA (Winstons)
October 2… Los Angeles, CA (Teragram Ballroom)
October 4… Mill Valley, CA (Sweetwater Music Hall)
October 6… Chico, CA (Lost On Main)
October 7… Eugene, OR (HiFi Music Hall)
October 8… Portland, OR (Wonder Ballroom)
October 9-10… Seattle, WA (Nectar Lounge)
October 11… Missoula, MT (Top Hat Lounge)
October 13… Salt Lake City, UT (The State Room)
October 14… Boulder, CO (Fox Theatre)
October 15… Steamboat Springs, CO (Old Town Pub)
October 16… Albuquerque, NM (El Rey Theater)
October 17… Chicago, IL (Concord Music Hall)
October 16-18… Ozark, AR (Phases of the Moon Music + Art Festival)
October 20… St. Louis, MO (Old Rock House)
October 21… Memphis, TN (1884 Lounge)
October 22-25… Rockdale, TX (Art Outside)
October 23… Dallas, TX (The Loft at Gilley’s)
October 24… Houston, TX (Warehouse Live Studio)
October 27… Birmingham, AL (Workplay)
October 28… Baton Rouge, LA (Varsity Theatre)
October 29… Jackson, MS (Duling Hall)
October 30… Hattiesburg, MS (Dollar Box Showroom)
October 31… Live Oak, FL (Hulaween)
November 1… Charleston, SC (Charleston Pour House)
November 3… Wilmington, NC (Ziggy’s)
November 4… Charlotte, NC (Neighborhood Theatre)
November 5… Raleigh, NC (Southland Ballroom)
November 6… Asheville, NC (Isis)
November 7… Nashville, TN (War Memorial Auditorium) *
This Is Book's Music 