mnien (SIOP/M-9)
Because 'Chains And Black Exhaust' will never be reissued (and I'm not spending $250 on a CDr of it), we have this. There is some overlap with that comp. And it jams between the cracks of funk, soul and acid rock. Fuzz guitars to the front. If you've ever worn a pair of bell bottoms shirtless with a leather vest, or you're actually a member of a biker gang, you need this.
Favorite track: Jimi's Guitar Raps With The Bass.
Includes unlimited streaming via the free Bandcamp app, plus high-quality download in MP3, FLAC and more.
The idea of “progressivism” that took over rock music after psychedelia’s heyday in the late 1960s belatedly spilled over to funk. In the early 1970s, as the underground and psychedelic fire burnt out in the white rock world, it roared to a blaze in the black and brown musical communities. Function Underground shines light on an important and overlooked part of rock n’ roll’s history and talented ensembles that toiled in the shadows, derided by their peers.
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Compact Disc (CD) + Digital Album
CD packaged with booklet.
Includes unlimited streaming of Function Underground: The Black and Brown American Rock Sound 1969-1974
via the free Bandcamp app, plus high-quality download in MP3, FLAC and more.
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$18USDor more
Record/Vinyl + Digital Album
LP with16 page booklet and download card.
Includes unlimited streaming of Function Underground: The Black and Brown American Rock Sound 1969-1974
via the free Bandcamp app, plus high-quality download in MP3, FLAC and more.
14 tracks by Jimi Macon, Black Maffia, Blacklites and more, many reissued for the first time. LP and CD with extensive booklet, filled with notes notes on an overlooked and important portion of rock n’ roll’s history. LP contains download card with WAV files.
Nearly everyone in the world can rattle off the great African-American musical forms. Jazz, blues, R&B, soul, hip-hop, house, gospel. One influential genre is always left off of the list: a folk music known as rock n’ roll. Rock n’ roll was a term originally coined to market the white-friendly version of a genre that already existed; prior to 1965, the line between rock n’ roll and R&B was thin: Ike Turner recorded and released “Rocket ‘88’ ” in 1951 and, while its Chess Records release reached number one on the Billboard R&B chart, it is regarded by many as the first rock n’ roll record.
The Great Divide between R&B and rock n’ roll came after the Beatles and the British Invasion decimated the Top 40 chart in 1964. Simultaneously, R&B entered a new phase, soon to be labeled “soul,” which upped the music’s gospel quotient and turned its frantic twang. So somewhere in the mid to late-1960s, rock n’ roll became perceived as something for the Caucasian kids. When Jimi Hendrix and Arthur Lee made the scene, they were said to be black musicians entering into a white world. While that couldn’t be farther from the truth, that false dichotomy has existed in America’s popular conscious ever since, to the point where the idea of a black rock musician is on the level with the idea of a black cowboy.
In the mid-1960s, funk replaced soul as the rhythm that was going to move the world. We know all its progenitor – James Brown, The Meters, Kool & The Gang – and their innovations: the syncopated, 4/4 dance between the bass and drums, horns repurposed as percussion, chicken-scratch and wah-wah guitar. We can trace where they came from. But there is one crucial funk influence that no one seems to want to acknowledge – a devil-may-care attitude we can attribute to rock n’ roll. It’s not a stretch to say that funk is the African-American answer to psychedelia and hard rock rolled into one.
The idea of “progressivism” that took over rock music after psychedelia’s heyday in the late 1960s belatedly spilled over to funk. In the early 1970s, as the underground/psychedelic fire burnt out in the white rock world, it roared to a blaze in the black musical community. Nearly every American city with a large black population boasted self-contained funk bands that didn’t consider themselves simply revues or backup groups, but rather fully-operational ensembles In these bands, everything from composing, arranging, record production and distribution, was handled in house by band members. These are the bands whose music comprises this anthology, and while they’re all different, they’re unique in one way: they kept their ears open for new developments in funk and rock music.
This anthology presents earnest questions as to why we know so little about these bands and the movement of which they were a part. While we don’t anticipate that we’ll ever find a definitive answer as to what these ensembles’ true goals were, then, we do know that they took their charges seriously. And they knew they were onto something different, something that, though only they and their immediate kin might recognize it, was more interesting than the status quo. Function Underground shines light on an important and overlooked part of rock n’ roll’s history and talented ensembles that toiled in the shadows, derided by their peers
"Do you realize that Hendrix was dead before most black people in America knew he was a black man?” Ebony Rhythm Band drummer Matthew Watson questions rhetorically. “We was scorned. In that era, everybody else in the black community was wearing three-piece suits, processes and Afro wigs and that shit. We was the first guys to wear bell bottoms. The first guys to wear big hats. We were off into a whole other thing.”
credits
released April 22, 2017
Produced for reissue by Eothen Alapatt (with thanks to Dante Carfagna and Rob Sevier)
Restored and remastered by Pete Lyman at Infrasonic Sound, Los Angeles, USA.
Lacquered by Chris Potter at Electric Mastering, London.
Art Direction by Errol Richardson.
Liner notes by James Porter, with contributions by Eothen Alapatt.
Now-Again Records is the imprint founded by Eothen Alapatt 2002. He oversees all of the label’s reissues and manages a vast catalog of music from the 1950s through the present day, with a focus on the mid-1960s through the mid-1980s.
supported by 12 fans who also own “Function Underground: The Black and Brown American Rock Sound 1969-1974”
Oh how I long for this album in vinyl format! Such smoothness. Such warmth. Such execution. This music begs to be taken along and woven into memories. Everyone I’ve shared this album with has loved it. The music speaks far and wide. Shouting out to a fellow follower, Brian Lehmann, for his excellent taste in music. If not for him, I likely would have never stumbled upon this absolute gem! Plinchmo Larduktin
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