George Clinton brings the Mothership to New York for three area shows in five days
SummerStage: Wednesday, July 15, Queensbridge Park, free, 7:00
BAM’s R&B Festival at MetroTech: Thursday, July 16, MetroTech Commons, free, 12 noon
Paramount: Sunday, July 19, Huntington, $25-$65, 9:00
georgeclinton.com
Climb aboard the Mothership for free in Queens when George Clinton brings his legendary funk ensemble and outrageous stage show to the East River on a summer night. Performing on Wednesday as part of the City Parks Foundation SummerStage series in Queensbridge Park (on the Queens side of the East River, with a view of Roosevelt Island, just a few blocks from the 21st St. stop on the F train), Clinton and his Shake the Gate Tour will also appear for free on Thursday at noon in Brooklyn as part of BAM’s R&B Festival at MetroTech and then in a ticketed show at the Paramount in Huntington on Sunday night. But there may be no better place to see Clinton — who turns seventy-four next week — play such mind-bending classics of funk as “Atomic Dog,” “Loopzilla,” and “Do Fries Go with That Shake?” than on a sweaty July night outdoors. The creator of both Parliament and Funkadelic in the 1970s, he and collaborators including Maceo Parker, Bernie Worrell, and Bootsy Collins were responsible for monster dance-floor hits such as “Flashlight,” “One Nation Under a Groove,” and the epic 1970 album Free Your Mind . . . and Your Ass Will Follow. Mixing R&B with the psychedelic guitar stylings of Jimi Hendrix, Cream, and others, Clinton was among the chief creators of funk as we know it, submerged for a time beneath the shiny disco of the ’80s, emerging triumphant again in the ’90s and the new millennium as rap and hip-hop artists such as Outkast, Busta Rhymes, Fishbone, and especially Dr. Dre have sampled him countless times. Youngsters know “Loopzilla” from the soundtrack of the video game Grand Theft Auto, as well as many other Clinton songs used on TV and in movies. As he has stated: “Funk is the DNA of hip-hop and rap” and “Sure, sample my stuff. . . . Ain’t a better time to get paid than when you’re my age. You know what to do with money. You don’t buy as much pussy or drugs with it — you just buy some.” Caught for years in a morass of licensing, copyright, and ownership issues, Clinton has been forced to limit his recent output; the latest is 2014’s (First Ya Gotta) Shake the Gate, available only on iTunes and as a three-CD Amazon set. Although musical director Garry “Starchild” Marshall Shider (aka Diaper Man) left for the next world in 2010, and in keeping with the brilliant chaos that swirls around the band, the lineup can be fluid, the current slate of Mothership members consists of many, such as guitarist Michael “Kid Funkadelic” Hampton, who have played with Parliament Funkadelic since the 1970s. Keep an ear open for “Maggot Brain”; that’ll be Hampton on lead guitar, as it has been for decades. In his 2014 memoir, Brothas Be, Yo Like George, Ain’t That Funkin’ Kinda Hard on You? (Atria, October 2014, $27), Clinton titles his introduction “Let’s Take It to the Stage (1978),” and thankfully, nearly forty years later, he’s still doing it, with three area shows in five days.
