Rokukai Reuben Wilson has played it straight for the majority of his career--the exceptions being his 1971 psychedelic soul/funk album "Set Us Free" and 1975's gritty, urban "Got to Get Your Own" (which lists his band as "The Cost of Living", essentially a revolving door of awesome musicians). One of the few souljazz organists to make a dent as a leader in the Blue Note stable, Wilson specializes in mellow, slightly funky renditions of popular tunes, sprinkling his own compositions onto his albums to showcase his songwriting skill.

Wilson has only one partial songwriting credit on "Got to Get Your Own", but it's difficult to imagine his own songs could improve this set. It's brash, funky, and loaded with soul. The only cover of a well known song is the Chi-lites "Stoned Out of My Mind", which is given an uptempo, slightly disco reading. "Stoned Out Of My Mind" and "Together (You and Me) are the only songs you'd expect from Wilson, and the only tracks which prominently display his Hammond B-3. The rest (except "In the Booth, In the Back, In the Corner, In the Dark") sound like they could easily be at home on an Ohio Players record.

"In the Booth, In the Back, In The Corner, In the Dark" has, after hundreds of spins, become my favorite song on the album and ranks as one of the catchiest soul songs I've ever heard. It would be a fabulous record without it--with it, "Got to Get Your Own" is a true classic. Track this one down at all costs.

Chicapah I have a well-respected musician friend who related in an interview a few years ago that when he was in his early teens he thought that playing bass guitar “funky” meant playing the instrument badly. His story of youthful naiveté is hilarious for the innocent irony involved but shouldn’t be taken too seriously. Yet if one was to judge the entire musical genre known as funk by Parliament’s “Live: P-Funk Earth Tour” double album one might draw a similar conclusion. I won’t mince words. It’s one of the worst in-concert recordings I’ve ever encountered. I can hear the excuses already. It was 1977. Folks just wanted to party. Funk was a legitimate movement that was infiltrating R&B, jazz and rock by leaps and bounds and Parliament’s head honcho George Clinton was simply basing his unique form of satire upon that foundation and capitalizing on its growing popularity. Therefore it’s just a glimpse into a wild & wooly era that won’t be repeated and should be viewed as nothing more than a historical curiosity. I’ll readily agree to all of that. But there’s no excuse for sloppy musicianship. I recall that Frank Zappa did much the same thing as Mr. Clinton with his sarcastic brand of humor yet on stage he and his cohorts steadfastly maintained the same high level of professional integrity that they insisted on in the studio environment. I expected to hear something equivalent to that mindset when I sat down to listen to this album. I was wrong to do so.

The show begins with over 6 minutes of "P-Funk (Wants To Get Funked Up)," a loose jam in which the band members seem to be slowly finding their assigned spots while the drums, trombone, sax and electric piano vamp without a trace of urgency. Their leader George delivers a rambling spoken introduction to the mumbling crowd that eventually leads to an ensemble-warbled chorale that’s hard to understand. An imperceptible segue to "Dr. Funkenstein's Supergroovalisticprosifunkstication Medley" ensues. It sports the same lazy vibe but this time a thumping bass guitar is more involved as it becomes obvious to me that the audience participation aspect of the presentation is going to take precedence over the music. That’d be fine if this was a video but that’s not the case. My ears are all I’ve got to go by and they’re starving already. At least on “Do That Stuff” the drums lay down a solid beat for the bass to lock onto and the song is a tad more organized but the group as a whole is still stuck in a stifling, one-dimensional rut. "The Landing (Of The Holy Mothership)" is next and it’s a snippet-filled, mostly pre-recorded comedy routine that’s impossible to follow, much less to find anything to laugh about. Maybe the stage props gave it relevancy. I hope so. For "The Undisco Kidd (The Girl Is Bad!)" a pattern surfaces that involves the rhythm section laying down a basic funk base but, alas, it never evolves into anything engaging. Instead, you get a long soliloquy punctuated by a hook line chorus that’s pointless unless you happened to be there that night and were able to merrily join in the communal sing-along. Those of us wanting to hear some great musicianship are out of luck, I suppose.

"Children Of Productions" is the shortest cut and that’s a shame because it’s the apex (relatively speaking) of the album. It’s a unison chant with brassy horns and decently layered harmonies but it passes by like a rare cool breeze in the middle of August and is gone. "Mothership Connection (Star Child)" is a rowdy jam that rumbles behind a repeated refrain and features enthusiastic exhortations aimed at the audience. After a long spell the track inexplicably evaporates into the ether and then fades back in as "Swing Down, Sweet Chariot." The same gospel-tinged mantra continues but a male vocalist scats on and on for a full five minutes till you reach the number’s noisy ending. That’d be okay if it was special but it ain’t. Suddenly you’re whisked away from the live festivities and treated to a studio take of "This Is The Way We Funk With You." It’s vaguely reminiscent of what Sly Stone was up to in the early 70s but it’s also not terribly original or inspiring. Monotonous describes it best. We’re then returned to the scene of the crime to endure a quarter of an hour of "Dr. Funkenstein." Due to the gathered throng’s reaction there must’ve been some kind of visual stimuli happening to enhance the moment but aurally it’s a lot of the same old shtick involving a crowd-sung chorus echoed ad nauseum. There’s a solo from the guitarist and an ARP ride to fill up some space but I found myself drifting into a coma waiting for something entertaining to occur. "Gamin' On Ya!" actually resembles a tune and by now that’s a plus. The full horn arrangement is very Famous Flames-worthy but all that does is cause you to yearn for James Brown’s inimitable charisma to give it life. Next comes their "Tear The Roof Off The Sucker Medley" and it’s an admirable rendition of one of their more recognizable ditties but it does sound very different from the rest of the album which begs the question “Is it live or is it Memorex?” At this juncture I don’t care but the suspicious fade-in to the closer, "Night Of The Thumpasorus People," gives the inquiry credence. By now the well-oiled show attendees are in a stimulant-induced frenzy so, while there’s plenty of excitement in the hall for the reveler in you to soak up, there’s not much for the jazz enthusiast to celebrate. It’s just another rave up that goes nowhere near interesting.

Released in the Spring of ’77 when George Clinton’s eclectic entourage was enjoying tremendous popularity in urban markets all across the civilized world, this 2-disc set sold and went gold. If you were one of the spunky pups who got to witness one of their stops along the P-Funk Earth Tour then I have no doubt that your memory of the event is a fabulous one. I wasn’t there but it was undoubtedly a hoot to treasure forevermore even if the music had to take a seat in the back of the bus. However, this album doesn’t do it any justice on one side or the other. Future generations who want to sample what went on at one of those concerts will not conclusively find out what the fuss was about from listening to this discombobulated mess. As a rule, a little bit of craziness goes a long, long way and then it quickly becomes ridiculous and a waste of valuable time. This proves it. To use their own grossly overused term, “What the funk?”

js The Counts were a great 70s funk band who somehow never got the recognition they deserved. Like so many early funk bands, The Counts were basically jazz musicians at heart and all through “Funk Pump” their jazz skills come through loud and clear. They have a fairly diverse sound, The Ohio Players and early Funkadelic are influences, as well as War’s earthy sound and older jazz and soul styles as well. This diversity of sound may be what held The Counts back as it is possible the labels weren’t sure how to market them. There is also a very appealing down home old school almost country sound to The Counts, which may have hurt them in the mid 70s when other funk bands like Parliament and EW&F were sounding urban and futuristic. Possibly the two main things that hurt The Counts most though were the lack of a central lead character along the lines of Bootsie, Sly or Sugar Foot, and a lack of memorable lyrics. Although the songs and playing are great on here, the lyrics sound like filler and afterthoughts.

Anyway, don’t mean to get stuck on this band’s faults while speculating on their lack of commercial recognition, this is actually a good record and it should appeal to fans of jazzy funk. Also, for the funk-jazz purists, there are a couple of totally (or mostly) instrumental numbers too. If you like old school down to earth funk with a bit of country twang along the lines of early Ohio Players and War, you will enjoy this one.

Warthur Parliament's debut album sounds more like Funkadelic, presenting a guitar-driven sound which is differentiated from the material on the Funkadelic albums of the era mainly through its focus on short-form structured songs as opposed to improvisational jams. Of course, from Maggot Brain onwards Funkadelic would incorporate songs such as this alongside their longer freakouts, leaving the Parliament name rather redundant until it was resurrected in 1974 as a home for P-Funks more horn-driven and funk-leaning and less psych-drenched material. This leaves Osmium as a real oddity in the P-Funk catalogue - but a catchier and more compelling oddity you'd struggle to find.

Warthur Rock fans acquainted with the history of Pink Floyd will know how after their debut album Syd Barrett soon ran into some severe issues, and under the influence of heavy drug use transformed into a troubled introvert whose musical output revealed a rapidly crumbling psyche. Well, imagine the album which Pink Floyd might have produced if they had stuck around with Syd and provided a full band backing to his ideas rather than retiring him from the band to make his sparse solo albums; There's a Riot Goin' On is the funk equivalent of that.

Sly's drug-affected behaviour from this era is legendary, as is the dark tone of the album; the sunny optimism of Stand! is gone, the Sixties are well and truly over and the Seventies are here to stay, and whilst the opening Luv n' Haight's refrain of "feel so good, feel so good, wanna move, wanna move" ought to be uplifting, it feels more compulsive and involuntary, the product of a nervous energy which infuses the album. Drowning in a swamp of fuzz, There's a Riot Goin' On is the sound of a funk pioneer caught in the quicksand of drug abuse and yet still possessing the insight to produce this devastating look at how the dream of the Woodstock Nation, the civil rights era, and all the movements that had informed Stand! had met with setbacks, failure, and deep, deep trouble in the intervening years.