Something in me needs metal. The seed was planted at 16 when my friend Aaron inexpertly rocked the Metallica "Four Horsemen" riff in his basement, forever melding my young energy to the driving force of its dorky power.

This is the kind of orchestral, explosive metal that makes me want to listen to it over and over and over.

Just take a deep breath and let it wash over you.  Who cares what it's about?  The album is a concept album about like, Rasputin and astral travel and gnarly stuff like that, like metal should be.   

But… wait.  There's more to it than that.  Is that some strange rockabilly lick?  Is he teasing us with some kind of LA hair metal shit?  Why does he sound so much like Ozzy?  Is it wrong to let Heavy Metal caress you?

If you don't find yourself saying "whoa" at sometime in this 13 minutes then pack it in.  You have no metal in you.

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Do you know what this album MEANS TO ME?  DO YOU?!  Tears have streamed down my eyes as I listened to this album, high on hallucinogenic mushrooms.  Roommates have nearly killed me for listening to the title track too many times ("That song sounds like Spinal Tap's 'Sex Farm Girl'!").  I have told the (dubious) story of its title track to anyone who I thought would sit through all 9 minutes of it and really listen.

I have real love for long-play albums that can realize their full potential in five or six songs (see Joanna Newsom's Ys (see my word record for parenthetical statements in this review (it's like Lisp))).  Maggot Brain is no exception.

First of all, for the totally clueless, who is Funkadelic, right?  I could answer by referring to the song, "Mommy, What's a Funkadelic?" which I bet George Clinton would prefer, but I won't.  Oh the venerable George Clinton, he's still touring, doing both songs from his older Funk/Rock band Funkadelic, and his late 70's horn ensemble funk band Parliament.  I just about guarantee you've heard a Parliament song.

The first few Funkadelic albums are amazing rock albums.  These dudes were stoned out of their gourds and clearly taking some amazing shit, because they were fountains of love, excitement and creativity.  They invented their own sonic worlds and terminology.  Rappers have been biting their style and getting Clinton to come do cameos, and probably will be propping up Clinton's old bones on stage 50 years from now for street cred.

Dr. Dre points at his Funkadelic weed leaf t-shirt in his The Chronic videos from the 90's.  En Vogue had a hit in the 90's with "Free Your Mind and The Rest Will Follow", a sad rip-off of Funkadelic's "Free Your Mind and Your Ass Will Follow".  Countless hip-hop artists have sampled Funkadelic and chanted, "Think!  Think!  It ain't illegal yet!"  But this album came from back in the days when they weren't so influential.

The album opens with a little bit of machine gun sounds in the distance, and George Clinton's low growling chant, that I still play for people sometimes when they're feeling hopeless about the world:

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 then begins Eddie Hazel's nine-minute guitar solo, the story of which goes like this (cobbled from a biography and interviews I've read over the years and totally unsourced but widely believed):

Eddie Hazel and the rest of the band were total junkies by this point and Clinton is having a hard time even getting a decent recording out of them.  Hazel is totally gone on some Orange Sunshine LSD.  Clinton stands him up and says, "Think about the saddest thing you can think of."  Hazel's like, "My mom dying, man." Clinton says, "Okay, play a solo about that."

So Hazel plays this solo that really has to be heard to be believed (don't worry, I'm embedding it!) where the guitar goes through the 5 stages of grieving or whatever, howling, sobbing, accepting, raging, all that.  Clinton was so amazed he faded out the rest of the band and just let Eddie's amazing solo stand.

But that's not all.  "Can You Get to That", just totally changes the whole game with a simple, joyous funk song that warns, "When you place your love on credit, then when your lovin' days are done, checks you signed with the love and kisses later come back sayin' insufficient funds."  Words to live by, people.

The next three songs are just three unbelievably solid funk songs, and "Back in our Minds" is a reconciliation song that features some kind of strange water glass percussion.  "You and Your Folks, Me and My Folks" in particular moved me so much I always thought it would be the perfect song in a film soundtrack.  When I actually heard it in a film soundtrack I was happy but a little disappointed it wasn't what I had in my head.

Finally, the songs ends with another semi-epic, "Wars of Armageddon".  The whole album is kind of about household and family love and war, and Wars is a cowbell and tom-tom peppered noise poem on the topic.  Babies cry, someone shouts, "Shut up, I gotta go to work!"  Sirens blare.  People chant, "What do we want?  FREEDOM!  When do we want it?  NOW!"  Clinton stonedly intones, "More power to the people, more power to the pussy, more pussy to the people, right on!"

The song and album end with a huge atomic explosion and someone says softly, "Revolution!  It's a fat, funky person."  Right, dude.  Then one last funk lick and a mother's heartbeat bring it to a close.  Now that's a goddamn album.

Gotta do two on this one.  Maggot Brain itself:

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and Can You Get to That:

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Enjoy!

Peter Bogdonavich, wrote a screenplay from a novel called The Last Picture Show. He was a director with a few stinker movies trying to make his big break. He sees a teenage Cybil Shepherd on the cover of a magazine and says, "Holy Crap, I've got to have that girl as my hot young affai… I mean, leading lady!"

He finds the girl, casts her, has an affair with her, threatens to stop "giving her direction" if she doesn't agree to show her tits on film.  He sequesters the cast from the crew because he wants them to be uncorrupted by the riff raff.

Then he shot the first major motion picture in black and white since the early 60's, in 1971.  He shot it in the actual hometown of the guy who wrote the novel.  He even used one of the local kids who lived there in a speaking role.

Sounds like a recipe for total disaster to me, except the movie is truly a thing of beauty.  The stark, simple setting of a small town on the decline, gives a bunch of young actors who went on to be really big a place to shine, and every still is something you could hang on your wall.

It's not hard to imagine this kind of vulnerability, treachery and love happening in a real small town in the 50's.  Every scene has it's own secret rhythm.

Jeff Bridges' character Sonny walks into a pool hall owned by Sam the Lion.  Sam looks on while Sonny grabs a soda, some little snack, and saunters over to the pool table.  Finally Sam speaks, "You ain't never gonna amount to nothing.  You've already spent a nickel today and you haven't even had a decent breakfast."

It looks like it's going to be a simple, naive tale of a small town, but it's really about taking that small town and showing its little fish bowl of reality.  The town tart shrewdly works every situation for all it's worth.  The gay coach's wife courts a boy just out of high school.  The lady who owns the diner and will "probaby be making hamburgers for your grandchildren" calmly dispenses advice.

You can see it's not easy for someone to make a simple black and white movie with such heat and human warmth.  It's a masterwork, and every scene plays out with perfection and has its own special rhythm.  Each one could be it's own tiny one-act play.  Only one maudlin scene mars its perfection, with one tragic death too many.

I just read this and sadly realized I didn't get across why I love this movie so much.

Artist: Nina Simone
Album: Sings the Blues

I had the chance to see Nina twice before she died.  The first time I had just got into this amazing album and I figured she must be washed up and not that great anymore by now.  When my coworker showed up the next day and told me how amazing she was, I kicked myself and vowed I wouldn't miss her again.  The next time she came, it was to Benaroya hall with $60 tickets that I just. could. not. afford.  There wasn't a next time.  She died shortly after that.

Could this be my favorite album of all time?  It's in the top five for sure.

This was Nina's first album after moving to a new record label in 1967, and she just laid down something so raw and beautiful here.  I just don't think there's any album quite like it.  Under any conditions, Nina is a master at work.  This album is just a power-packed collection of songs, some political, some sexual, some dangerous, but all with a similar potency and a direct and clear recorded sound.  These are simple, strong recordings, with Nina on piano, and able players all around.

I wish there were some way to explain the emotional power that she packs into each song.  You can listen to the best music released this year and I don't think you will hear another singer with the same kind of unique punch.   I've played Nina Simone for people for the first time before, and had them say after 5 minutes, "Is this a man or a woman?"

The key to the album is in how she closes it.  The last two songs are the Bob Dylan cover "I Shall Be Released", and the blues standard "Gin House Blues".   Many talented performers have taken the brilliant works of Dylan, and turned them into something much larger with their voice than Dylan ever could (see: All Along the Watchtower), and Nina Simone is up in that league for sure.  It's particularly intense, because it's a song explicitly talking about the world of men and it's accountability and disappointments, and there's Simone, belting it out like Dylan didn't mean "man" or "woman" when he said "man".  Compared to Dylan's version, it's even more heartbreaking.

She could have left it at that, and it would have been a great end to the album, but she turns it up to 11 and ends with Gin House Blues, singing like a belligerent drunk, "I don't care!  Give me my gin!"

Then there's the album opener, and it's companions, the sexy songs: Do I Move You, In The Dark, I Want A Little Sugar In My Bowl, Buck (written by her husband at the time), and Turn Me On.  This is the smoldering suite, and these songs are truly pure, raw, uncut sex.  They have taken my breath away so many times I can't believe they still have the ability to do it.  The very first words of the album are from the Simone original:

Do I move you, are you willing
Do I groove you, is it thrilling
Do I soothe you, tell the truth now
Do I move you, are you loose now
The answer better be yes
That pleases me

That's right.  The answer better be yes.  This album shows her at her absolute best, and her best is pretty damn good.

Nina Simone – I Shall Be Released

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