Magnificent Albums #02 - Maggot Brain/////Funkadelic (1971)

To understand the story of this album, you really need to understand Funkadelic. Funkadelic is an american funk community (band doesn’t give the right dimension of this project) created by George Clinton. Clinton had a doo-wop band in the 60’s called Parliament. Then LSD and James Brown came and changed his life forever.

Funkadelic released its debut in 1970, a self-titled album that blends funk, psych rock, soul, blues and jazz in a lysergic jam. Still in 1970, the second album “Free Your Mind and Your Ass Will Follow” was released, picking the formula from the first album and refining it.

But Maggot Brain is more. It’s bigger, bolder and crazier than those first two. It opens with the chilling sentence: “Mother Earth is pregnant for the third time
For y'all have knocked her up
I have tasted the maggots in the mind of the universe
I was not offended
For I knew I had to rise above it all
Or drown in my own shit”

And what it follows, my dear steemian… is basically the apotheosis of the guitar.

Eddie Hazel, guitarist of the group received a request: “play it as if your mother had just died” and he played the opening track Maggot Brain, 10 minute of a drug-infused psychedelic guitar solo that made Eddie Hazel an instant legend among musicians and non-musicians.

The album has SOUL (with capital letters) dripping through its groove and is an amazing collection of songs that influenced a whole lot of bands like Rage Against The Machine (Super Stupid is groove metal 20 years before), Red Hot Chili Peppers and more recently Childish Gambino.

If you want to understand the funk, start here, you’ll not regret it.