The idea of going on "groove maneuvers" with George Clinton in Uncle Jam's army certainly sounds good. Phillipe Wynne as the "thrill sergeant" would be more fun to answer to than Sgt Hulka.
Still though, this just isn't a very good album. The songs aren't there. Would anybody ever try to do a cover of any of this, other than maybe the first song? There just isn't much to cover. Specifically, there's precious little melody, vocal or instrumental. But let's start with the better end.
"Freak of the Week" gives us a decent actual song with a tune to start this thing. You've got the basic, "got to be, got to be freak of the week" hook, and there's some decent melodic development to make this midtempo disco funk jam a legitimate song. The female chorus fills some things out harmonically. It's got all the literal whistles and bells (whistles at least) to fill out the freaky fruit flavors. Also, at a relatively modest five and a half minutes, this doesn't get stretched out past the breaking point like a great many Clinton jams. Overall, this probably rates as one of his half dozen best all-time songs.
I've heard precious little of significant lyrical insight in the work of Clinton, but there are some interesting bits. One of his best bets of lyrical insight for my money comes from "Freak of the Week" and turns on a musical idea of great relevance:
Don't give her that one move groovalistic,
That disco sadistic,
That one beat up and down it just won't do.
Don't give her that forever and ever foreplay,
She's not looking for the short way,
She's got to reach a point where she gets off
On that level, "Uncle Jam" works out pretty well. Even at over ten minutes, he's working up enough different ideas, enough changeups in the groove to justify. This is exactly NOT "that disco sadistic, that one beat up and down."
It's not a very tightly structured song, but there's a lot going on. There's not much in the way of melodic development, but at least there are some decent shreds of melody to hang the jam on.
Article comments
1 - Michael J. West
I might suggest you look into earlier Funkadelic instead, Al, if you haven't done so already...the first three or four albums are quite brilliant, especially in comparison to the last few.
And may I add, I much prefer Funkadelic to Parliament. That's not relevant to anything here; I just wanted to make the statement.
2 - Al Barger
Thanks Mike. I'm hunting for some Maggot Brain right now.
3 - Newzzzz
This is one of Fundadelics best. I was in Phili last week and heard the Joel Kass Trio do some of their material from this LLP
4 - Delio
I saw the Joel Kass trio back in 1995 and they did alot of funkadelic.