1969 was a momentous year. Man first walked on the moon; Nixon arrived in the White House. Woodstock seemed to celebrate the peace and love of the decade, but the disintegration of the Beatles and the murder of Meredith Hunter at the Rolling Stones’ Altamont concert towards the end of the year proved to be a more accurate prediction for what was to come.
In Detroit, a city that had been scarred by rioting in 1967, a new group, Funkadelic, were issuing their first singles in 1968. Although a black group, they revelled in many of the outward signs of the peace and love of the 60s: psychedelic clothes, loud crunching guitars and plenty of drugs, but they were offering no vision of Utopia. One listen to their early single, ‘Music For My Mother’, would show you that, as it is a disturbed blues dirge whose opening line is “Man, I was in a place called ‘Keep Running’, Mississippi”.
From 1969 to 1981 they made many ground-breaking tracks, rewriting the rules of what a group could do. This compilation is the very first that looks at the band’s entire career, from their previously unreissued debut 45 for their own Funkedelic (sic) label through to their chart-topping 45s for Warner Brothers. In between we see a twisted vision and many musical high-points.
