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If there’s one thing I know it’s that my taste in music is my own. Of that, I am sure. And yet it wasn’t always so. Back in the early seventies when I set out on the rocky road to musical nirvana, my taste was influenced by everyone and everything; Top Of The Pops, Radio One, the NME, record shops, my father, schoolmates, the girl two doors down, but most of all by my closest friends. Initially we listened to the glam, pop, soul and reggae hits of the day, or the classic rock albums passed down by older brothers and sisters. Occasionally we’d borrow some prog or hard rock. But one genre that never crossed our path was funk.
That all changed in the autumn of 1973 when a mild mannered, lanky streak of piss called Gary befriended us. A softly spoken boy from the backstreets of central Reading rather than the salubrious suburbs like the rest of us, his specialist subject was all things funk. To us Neanderthal plebs who had no idea what funk actually was, we thought he meant the Chi-Lites or Stylistics hamming it up in their shiny, satin suits on Top Of The Pops. Consequently, Gary’s passion was met with amusement, ridicule and not a little confusion.
In fact, so unsettling did we find it that during our regular record swap in the Rafina café on West Street, Gary would sit nursing his cold cappuccino bemoaning the fact that no-one ever wanted to borrow his coveted albums. That didn’t change until one week I found myself so underwhelmed by the choice of Wings Red Rose Speedway or Van Morrison’s Hard Nose The Highway I borrowed his Sly & The Family Stone Fresh album instead (closely followed by Curtis Mayfield’s Back To The World and Stevie Wonder’s Innervisions), and became intoxicated by some of the most radical and galvanizing music I’d ever heard.
Fired up by these selections, I immediately found out for myself that funk was as much about the feeling as the sound. Whether it hit you in your feet, your gut or your head, it was easy to detect on records as diverse as Chairman Of The Board’s top thirty hit ‘Finders Keepers’, George McCrae’s ‘I Get Lifted’ from a girlfriends copy of his Rock Your Baby album and Graham Central Station and Tower Of Power’s stellar contributions to a Warner Brothers Music sampler, a spur-of-the-moment album purchase for the price of a single.
Raised largely on a diet of chart singles, the funk on those records sounded like it came from another planet, which in a way it did, certainly to a lower middle class, grammar school kid from the Home Counties. Yet they were nothing compared to the out there, fantastical world of P-Funk, Parliament and in particular Funkadelic’s raw, slower than sludge mess of grunts and groans. Hearing them for the first time in 1975, when my interest in the same old rock shit was fading fast, Up For The Down Stroke, Let’s Take It To The Stage and Mothership Connection provided a handy staging post, dripping with carnal energy and heavy duty rhythms.
By then funk in its many forms had become as much a soundtrack to my life as any other genre; The Calcot Hotel disco on Monday’s, The Peacock cellar bar on Friday’s and The Top Rank on Saturday’s becoming regular hang outs as I edged closer to sixteen. Entry was for over eighteen’s only, yet rarely did I see anyone as old as that there. A major step up from the musty church hall dance’s I had been frequenting, discotheques and nightclubs were basic and unsophisticated by today’s plush standards, but to me they were the height of luxury and excitement.
Most of the records played in these places were from the top thirty, as much Elton John, Bay City Rollers and 10cc as Barry White, Hot Chocolate and Disco Tex. Alternatively, upstairs at The Top Rank was The Night Owl, a club within a club for the slightly older, more discerning connoisseurs of funk and what would soon be known as disco. Thick with the fug of dope, I would stand in a corner open mouthed in amazement as lithe, exotic, black girls and boys grooved the night away to an array of awe inspiring rare cuts. The only time I actively engaged with club culture, I wasn’t averse to pulling the occasional move of my own, but that was about it. I was no dancer and I knew it. I was just happy to be there furthering my musical education.
Bookended by Stevie Wonder’s ‘Superstition’ and James Brown’s ‘Get Up Offa That Thing’, my funky seventies ended abruptly in the summer of 1976 when Johnny Rotten, the Sex Pistols and punk changed my life literally overnight. In my new year zero everything really did have to go meaning that just like all the other music from my adolescence, funk was consigned to the margins. Ironically, by the time ‘Play That Funky Music’ arrived to get all the white boys strutting their stuff, my mind was somewhere else entirely. I lost touch with Gary soon after, although by then funk had become increasingly distilled and whitewashed, a wave of insipid, new, dance groups leading to the inevitable rise of disco and the end of the genre as we knew it.
Maybe that’s why I wrote this piece in the first place. More likely is that I wrote it in appreciation of my old mate Gary and his small yet perfectly formed record collection. Even now I find it hard to believe that within the microcosm of my mid-seventies, an unimposing white boy who more or less merged into the background was the only one flying the flag for cool black music. Then again, I guess that’s what makes this brief history my most personal yet.
01. STEVIE WONDER ‘Superstition’ (A Side January 1973)
02. CURTIS MAYFIELD ‘Future Shock’ (Back To The World LP May 1973)
03. CHAIRMEN OF THE BOARD ‘Finders Keepers’ (A Side June 1973)
04. SLY & THE FAMILY STONE ‘In Time’ (Fresh LP June 1973)
05. FRED WESLEY & THE J.B.’S ‘Doing It To Death’ (A Side July 1973)
06. STEVIE WONDER ‘Living For The City’ (Innervisions LP August 1973)
07. THE ISLEY BROTHERS ‘Sunshine (Go Away Today)’ (3+3 LP August 1973)
08. WAR ‘Me And Baby Brother’ (Deliver The Word LP August 1973)
09. MANDRILL ‘Fencewalk’ (A Side September 1973)
10. KOOL & THE GANG ‘Funky Stuff’ (A Side November 1973)
11. JAMES BROWN ‘The Payback’ (The Payback LP January 1974)
12. TOWER OF POWER ‘Don’t Change Horses (In The Middle Of The Stream)’ (Back To Oakland LP February 1974)
13. BETTY DAVIS ‘Shoo-B-Doop And Cop Him’ (They Say I’m Different LP April 1974)
14. EDWIN STARR ‘Easin’ In’ (Hell Up In Harlem LP May 1974)
15. CYMANDE ‘Brothers On The Slide’ (A Side June 1974)
16. OHIO PLAYERS ‘Smoke’ (Fire LP June 1974)
17. STEVIE WONDER ‘You Haven’t Done Nothin’ (Fulfillingness’ First Finale LP July 1974)
18. GEORGE MCCRAE ‘I Get Lifted’ (Rock Your Baby LP July 1974)
19. THE METERS ‘Just Kissed My Baby’ (Rejuvenation LP July 1974)
20. PARLIAMENT ‘Up For The Down Stroke’ (Up For The Down Stroke LP July 1974)
21. GRAHAM CENTRAL STATION ‘Release Yourself’ (Release Yourself LP September 1974)
22. B.T. EXPRESS ‘Do It (‘Til You’re Satisfied)’ (A Side October 1974)
23. RUFUS & CHAKA KHAN ‘I’m A Woman (I’m A Backbone)’ (Rufusized LP December 1974)
24. THE TEMPTATIONS ‘Shakey Ground’ (A Song For You LP January 1975)
25. BEN E. KING ‘Supernatural Thing Pt. 1’ (A Side February 1975)
26. AVERAGE WHITE BAND ‘Cut The Cake’ (A Side March 1975)
27. CURTIS MAYFIELD ‘Billy Jack’ (There’s No Place Like America Today LP May 1975)
28. THE UNDISPUTED TRUTH ‘UFO’s’ (Cosmic Truth LP June 1975)
29. THE ISLEY BROTHERS ‘Fight The Power Pts. 1 & 2’ (The Heat Is On LP June 1975)
30. FUNKADELIC ‘Let’s Take It To The Stage’ (Let’s Take It To The Stage LP July 1975)
31. CHOCOLATE MILK ‘Action Speaks Louder Than Words’ (Action Speaks Louder Than Words LP October 1975)
32. SLY STONE ‘Crossword Puzzle’ (High On You LP October 1975)
33. COMMODORES ‘Gimme My Mule’ (Movin’ On LP October 1975)
34. BANBARRA ‘Shack Up’ (A Side December 1975)
35. PARLIAMENT ‘Give Up The Funk (Tear The Roof Off The Sucker)’ (Mothership Connection LP December 1975)
36. BOOTSY COLLINS ‘Stretchin’ Out (In A Rubber Band)’ (Stretchin’ Out In Bootsy’s Rubber Band LP January 1976)
37. WAR ‘Low Rider’ (A Side January 1976)
38. BRASS CONSTRUCTION ‘Movin’ (A Side March 1976)
39. OHIO PLAYERS ‘Fopp’ (B Side June 1976)
40. JAMES BROWN ‘Get Up Offa That Thing’ (A Side July 1976)
*All dates signify UK release