Funk - there are wonderful connotations to that word aren't there? Funk! It just sounds nasty in a really good way, evoking images of people in dark sweaty bars getting all dark and sweaty. There's something sultry about just the very sound of the word that makes you want to move.
Funk was disco's older and more mature brother in the seventies. It was all disco promised but could never deliver in terms of energy, fun, and excitement. While disco pummeled you with its repetitive bass and drum beats, funk would lift you up with its drive and energy – propel you across the dance floor with the sound of trumpets and the throb of bass mixing with whatever else the band had going for it.
Funk evokes images of elegant men and women while disco brings sleazy seventies pick-up lines and tacky fern laden bars. Funk rises out of the ground like a primordial rhythm, while disco is manufactured by a machine and has as much of an organic quality to it as the polyester suits so favoured by its proponents.
Have I made it clear yet which I prefer? I hope so because I'm running out of damn comparisons and silly metaphors to make my point. Now not all funk sounds the same, (unlike disco – oops sorry) as within any genre of music your bound to get variations and funk is no exception.
From the late sixties and early seventies gospel influenced the sound of Al Green, Wilson Pickett, and James Brown with their horn sections and beautifully choreographed routines. The punk funk of The Gang of Four that used a speeded up funk base line to lead its assault against conventionality, to the Talking Heads extended funk line-up that gave us the wonderful sight of David Byrne getting down, Funk has displayed a versatility that not many dance rhythms could obtain.
But there has been one figure that has stood out from even the most flamboyant of Funkers to occupy his own strata in this galaxy - George Clinton and those two amazing bands he fronted Parliament and Funkadelic. These two bands went places mere mortals feared to go and took the funk stage show to such heights of excess it literally ended up becoming financially impossible to tour because of the sheer costs involved. 
But it was the music that really set him apart from the others, taking it away from the gospel tinged sounds and moving more in the direction of what was coming out of some of the Jazz fusion groups. Of the two bands Parliament was the more commercial of the two and retained more of the recognizable sounds of the other bands. Funkadelic, with many of the same members as Parliament, were the experimenters. They increasingly went in directions further and further a field from both the mainstream of funk and pop music period.
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