FUNKADELIC — Free Your Mind...And Your Ass Will Follow (review)

FUNKADELIC — Free Your Mind...And Your Ass Will Follow album cover Album · 1970 · Jazz Related Rock Buy this album from MMA partners
4/5 ·
js
Free Your Mind and Your Ass will Follow’ is Funkadelic’s second album and picks up where the first one left off with loose psychedelic blues-rock jams, channeled through echoplexes and restless panning techniques, topped by improvised ensemble vocals. There are some improvements this second time around as they took the time to write some actual songs with hooks and also gave keyboard whiz Bernie Worrell more room to direct and orchestrate these songs. The first song, which also bears the album’s name, shows the band’s new keyboard led direction as Bernie plays psychedelic melodies on a distorted B3 that gives the band that trippy Doors/Pink Floyd proto prog-rock sound. This is followed by ‘Friday Night August the 14th’ which shows that they can actually write catchy songs without losing their substance derived ambience.

Side two opens with ‘Funky Dollar Bill’ which continues with the smart songwriting plus one of the most bizarre piano solos I’ve ever heard. It sounds like there are aluminum pie plates laying on the piano strings as well as who knows what stuck in the key hammers. Bernie uses this tacky sound to good effect as he seems to channel Eddie Palmieri or some Latin classical composer in extravagant dramatic chords against the almost incongruous wah-wah guitar rhythms. Its wonderful chaotic tacky ghetto art damage heaven. Side two continues with more mind warping psychedelia featuring screaming guitar solos, gothic keyboard passages and those relentless panning techniques.

The album closes with ‘Eulogy and Light’, a spoken word piece with analog synth sound effects and backwards gospel voices in which a bottom feeding wannabe hustler comes face to face with his meaningless existence in a harrowing moment of chemical induced paranoia. Although most attempts to sound lyrically heavy on this album come across as kitsch, this one actually connects and gets downright sobering for a few moments. Materialism is one hell of a slave master.

Funkadelic’s long time band leader, George Clinton, has admitted that this album was recorded and mixed in one day while they were tripping. Considering the odds they were up against, this album came out surprisingly good, and only a few seconds of listening will easily confirm that Clinton’s story is not made up.
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js wrote:
more than 2 years ago
That album will always bring back fond memories for me, ..mmmmm ...the 70sssss ...mmmmmmm.
Abraxas wrote:
more than 2 years ago
Great review and great album!
I just love that distorted keyboard on the title track.

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