Funkadelic - Maggot Brain (Classic Album US 1971)

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Source: Japan 24-Bit Remaster

Maggot Brain is a 1971 album by the American funk band Funkadelic. It was released on Westbound Records. The album incorporates musical elements of psychedelia, rock, gospel, and soul music, with significant variation between each track. Pitchfork Media named it the seventeenth best album of the 1970s decade. In 2003, the album was ranked number 486 on Rolling Stone magazine's list of the 500 greatest albums of all time.

It starts with a crackle of feedback shooting from speaker to speaker and a voice intoning, "Mother Earth is pregnant for the third time, for y'all have knocked her up" and talking about rising "above it all or drown in my own sh*t." This could only have been utterly bizarre back in 1971 and it's no less so decades later; though the Mothership was well on its way already, Maggot Brain really helped it take off. The instrumental title track is the key reason to listen, specifically for Eddie Hazel's lengthy, mind-melting solo. George Clinton famously told Hazel to play "like your momma had just died," and the resulting evocation of melancholy and sorrow doesn't merely rival Jimi Hendrix's work, but arguably bests a lot of it. 

Accompanied by another softer guitar figure providing gentle rhythm for the piece, the end result is simply fantastic, an emotional apocalypse of sound. Maggot Brain is bookended by another long number, "Wars of Armageddon," a full-on jam from the band looping in freedom chants and airport-departure announcements to the freak-out. 

In between are a number of short pieces, finding the collective merrily cooking up some funky stew of the slow and smoky variety. There are folky blues and gospel testifying on "Can You Get to That" (one listen and a lot of Primal Scream's mid-'90s career is instantly explained) and wry but warm reflections on interracial love on "You and Your Folks, Me and My Folks," its drum hits distorted to give a weird electronic edge to the results. "Super Stupid" is a particular killer, pounding drums and snarling guitar laying down the boogie hard and hot, while "Hit It and Quit It" has a great chorus and Bernie Worrell getting in a fun keyboard solo to boot.

01."Maggot Brain" (George Clinton, Eddie Hazel) – 10:20
02."Can You Get to That" (Clinton, Ernie Harris) – 2:50 (released as a single-Westbound 185)
03."Hit It And Quit It" (Clinton, Billy Bass Nelson, Garry Shider) – 3:50 (released as a single-Westbound 198)
04."You and Your Folks, Me and My Folks" (Clinton, Judie Jones, Bernie Worrell) – 3:36 (released as a single-Westbound 175)
05."Super Stupid" (Clinton, Hazel, Nelson, Tawl Ross) – 3:57
06."Back in Our Minds" (Fuzzy Haskins) – 2:38
07."Wars of Armageddon" (Clinton, Tiki Fulwood, Ross, Worrell) – 9:42

Bonus tracks
08."Whole Lot of BS" (Clinton, Worrell) - 2:11
09."I Miss My Baby" (Haskins) - 5:02
10."Maggot Brain (Alt. Mix, recorded 1971) (Hazel, Clinton) - 9:35

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