P-Funk Earth Tour
The P-Funk Earth Tour was a concert tour by Parliament-Funkadelic in 1976–1977, featuring absurd costumes, lavish staging and special effects, and music from both the Parliament and Funkadelic repertoires.
The P-Funk Earth Tour was ambitious from the start. Casablanca Records executive Neil Bogart gave George Clinton a $275,000 budget for production, the largest amount ever allocated for a Black music act to tour.[1] Clinton hired Jules Fischer as set designer, who had previously worked on tours for The Rolling Stones, KISS, and other rock bands.[1][2] Both the show's music and production elements were extensively rehearsed at an aircraft hangar in Newburgh, New York.[1][2] The show required seven trucks to transport its equipment and scenery.[2] With a broad range of themes embodied in the show's production, culminating in the Afrofuturist landing of the P-Funk Mothership, author Rickey Vincent states that the P-Funk Earth Tour "drew from the ribald, uncensored entirety of the Black tradition in mind-blowing ways no one had yet even attempted."[1] Rolling Stone viewed the tour as embracing Clinton's "semiserious funk mythology" with "[a] mixture of tribal funk, elaborate stage props and the relentless assault on personal inhibition [that] resembled nothing so much as a Space Age Mardi Gras."[3] The New York Times described the tour as featuring "superbly silly, lavish costumes" and an "opulent Baroque ... stage show".[4]
The tour began in April 1976 in Nashville.[1] The 1977 live album Live: P-Funk Earth Tour was recorded at two early 1977 concerts, January 19 at the Los Angeles Forum and January 21 at the Oakland Coliseum.[1] The tour drew to a close in mid-1977; its expenses were as high as its innovation level and it was losing money steadily;[5] indeed one tour assistant's job was "to tell the musicians why they weren't getting paid."[5] Nevertheless, the tour served as valuable publicity and marketing for "the P-Funk brand",[5] making reference to the greater Parliament-Funkadelic-Clinton enterprise of acts, records, side projects, spin-offs, andso forth.
In 1986, Capitol issued a recording of a late 1976 concert as Mothership Connection: Live From Houston, attributed to George Clinton and Parliament-Funkadelic.
References
- ^ a b c d e f Vincent, Rickey (1996). Funk: The Music, the People, and the Rhythm of the One. St. Martin's Press. ISBN 0-312-13499-1. p. 245.
- ^ a b c Thompson, Dave (2001). Funk. Backbeat Books. ISBN 0-87930-629-7. p. 90.
- ^ McEwen, Joe (1980). "Funk". The Rolling Stone Illustrated History of Rock & Roll. New York: Random House/Rolling Stone Press. ISBN 0-394-73938-8. p. 375.
- ^ John Rockwell (1977-07-01). "The Pop Life: A Secular Niche For Gospel and 'Jesus Rock'". The New York Times. Retrieved 2007-12-16.
- ^ a b c Kempton, Arthur (2005). Boogaloo: The Quintessence of American Popular Music. University of Michigan Press. ISBN 0-472-03087-6. pp. 380–381.
External links
- P-Funk Tour List
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- Osmium
- Up for the Down Stroke
- Chocolate City
- Mothership Connection
- The Clones of Dr. Funkenstein
- Live: P-Funk Earth Tour
- Funkentelechy vs. the Placebo Syndrome
- Motor Booty Affair
- Gloryhallastoopid
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- Free Your Mind... and Your Ass Will Follow
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- Tales of Kidd Funkadelic
- Hardcore Jollies
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- Connections & Disconnections
- The Electric Spanking of War Babies
- Live: Meadowbrook, Rochester, Michigan – 12th September 1971
- By Way of the Drum
- Toys
- U.S. Music with Funkadelic
- First Ya Gotta Shake the Gate
Parliament-Funkadelic
- Computer Games
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- Some of My Best Jokes Are Friends
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- The Mothership Connection – Live from Houston
- The Cinderella Theory
- Live at the Beverly Theater
- Hey, Man, Smell My Finger
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- Mothership Connection Newberg Session
- T.A.P.O.A.F.O.M.
- Live 1976–1993
- How Late Do U Have 2BB4UR Absent?
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- Live...Capitol Theatre 1978
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- Live in Oklahoma 1976
- Christmas Is 4 Ever
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- Pieces of Woo: The Other Side
- Blacktronic Science
- Free Agent: A Spaced Odyssey
- Pleasure Principle
- Invasion of the Booty Snatchers
- Play Me or Trade Me
- A Whole Nother Thang (1976)
- Radio Active (1978)
- A Whole Nother Radio Active Thang (1994)
- Self Portrait (1970)
- I Am What I Am (1971)
- Take Me to Baltimore (1976)
- Mutiny on the Mamaship (1979)
- Funk Plus the One (1980)
- A Night Out With the Boys (1983)
- Aftershock 2005 (1996)
- Quazar (1978)
- Sweat Band (1980)
- Federation of Tackheads (1985)
- Lifestyles of the Roach and Famous (1988)
- Out of the Dark (1993)
- Funkcronomicon (1995)
- Heavy Metal Funkason (1998)
- PCU
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- George Clinton: The Mothership Connection
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- List of P-Funk members
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