Customer Rating: 
Summary: This CD is to funk what "Kind of Blue" is to Jazz
Comment: As a pre-teen, I remember loving the spastic bass and super tight horns in P.Funk music but was too young to party to it. Wanting to play the sax parts made me a better musician. Now I have introduced this to my sax playing son and he even admits that what they listen to today is crap.
If you love, ever loved, or want to love funk. This is the place you start and stop.
Customer Rating: 
Summary: Capitol F-U-N-K
Comment: I saw the Mothership in 1976 at the San Diego Sports Arena. That concert blew me away!!! Ahh Bootsy baby. When George came down from the rafters in the Mothership it was off the charts. I think they played the whole album that night. That was the first time I had ever heard of or saw Parliment and needless to say I have been a fan ever since. Funk fans know this is the album.
Customer Rating:
Summary: Classic funk at it's best!
Comment: This album was well ahead of it's time. This whole album was slammin'. George Clinton was definitely the man back in da day. Straight up "king of funk". George was and still is one of my music heroes. I grew up listening to all of his stuff as a youngin'. I highly recommend this cd along with some of the other Funkadelic titles. Also pick up "Parliament Live". That's my favorite live album of all time.
Customer Rating:
Summary: "So groovy that I dig me!"
Comment: Mothership Connection is the kind of acid scorched space-jam platter that can keep a party movin' (and you'd best believe I mean MOVIN'!) all night long. It's a freewheeling chunk `o funk that'll instantly vaporize any of the lame-o crap that may be polluting your record collection, and make you boogie from now clear until the end of time. The songs are structured like truly inspired jams, with George Clinton and his band of visionaries hurling interplanetary melodies and starburstin' vocals around minimalist, rhythm driven hypno-grooves. The choruses are huge, the lyrics are divine, and the bass lines are deeper than oceans. As a whole, it's a ridiculously good surge o' wicked cool psychofunk genius. Just don't forget your sunglasses!
Customer Rating:
Summary: The album where a unique vision gels
Comment: Although George Clinton had made records with his "Parliafunkadelicment Thang" for a number of years before "Mothership Connection", it was only here that he managed to achieve the necessary energy and focus to make a truly great album. Whilst Clinton's previous works had had some fine moments like "You And Your Folks" and "Super Stupid" on 1971's Maggot Brain, it was only with Chocolate City that the band began to tighten up their dense funk enough to serious attract listeners.
On "Mothership Connection", Clinton and his backing group turn to a conceptual masterpiece about the struggle of funk against the rest of the world and those who would destroy it. Whilst this might seem as cliched as AC/DC's songs praising the power of rock'n'roll, it does not come off that way. This is because Clinton never deals in the shameless machismo that made and makes AC/DC so annoying, nor is he as stridently preachy and instead comes across as intimately calling people to join him.
Despite its title, "Mothership Connection" lacks the overt femininity of contemporary masterpieces by Can or Roxy Music. The rhythms are much tighter, but there are still clear traces of the expressive melody seen to great advantage in the work of those above-mentioned bands. This prevents P-Funk ever moving toward the awful machismo of 1980s and 1990s rap. Moreover, the intensity of the rhythms on "Mothership Connection", especially on the opening track "P-Funk (Wants To Get Funked Up)" is very subtle: it takes time to appreciate how different this is from the dance music that populated commerical radio in the time of "Mothership Connection".
The title track "Mothership Connection (Star Child)" fires continuously and features some stragely melodic vocal work on the famous line "swing low, sweet chariot" that really fits in with Clinton's remarkably well-executed conceptual aim. "Unfunky UFO" is quietly touching like the best music always should be, but never loses its fiery rhythmic drive or its feeling of joyful hope, whilst "Handcuffs" is the most beautiful song on the record and could almost be on Avalon if it were not for the big soul voice. Yet, the varied voices only add emotion and feeling to the song rather than make it annoying. "Give Up The Funk (Tear The Roof Off The Sucker)" is the most "jam"-like song here, but it still has a rare capacity to lure a listener in with repeated listens owing to the varied tone of the vocals and the repetitive, almost mantra-like lyrics. The music is actually very soft and its resonance and the chant near the end of the song fits its mood wonderfull well.
All in all, "Mothership Connection" is a rare work of subtle intensity that is actually quite beautiful, whist at the same time being arguably the best "concept" album made this side of Hounds of Love. Joe S. Harrington listed this album at #6 in his All Time Top 100 Albums - whilst that rating may be a very slight exaggeration, "Mothership Connection" is a true masterpiece that no other artist has emulated successfully.
|
