free your mind … and your ass will follow (1970) – funkadelic: westbound records (french pressing), SEW-012

The late 60’s and early 70’s were a turbulent time for culture in the USA. Hippies were questioning authority; freaks were tuning in turning on and dropping out; women were burning their bras; gays got fed up with all the fagbashing and stood up for themselves at Stonewall; weird communes and cults started springing up in the desert of SoCal threatening the suburban nuclear family; college students were demanding an end to the war in Vietnam … oh, and black folks finally got tired of passive resistance and peace-marches and began to aggressively demand their basic human rights as guaranteed by the constitution, by any means necessary.

The revolution was indeed on, and (with apologies to Gil Scott Heron) not only was it televised, it also came with a groovy soundtrack that put some serious fear into the squares.

Remember, nothing scares The Man as much as angry blacks, and so the stuff coming from new black musicians in the late 60's and early 70's was particularly of concern. And there were few black musicians who were scarier than George Clinton and Funkadelic. It wasn't their music (which avoided more explicit confrontational lyrics), nearly as much as their appearance. They had weird hair, they had bizarre clothes, but most of all they were unapologetically black.

Free Your Mind … And Your Ass Will Follow is their second album.

Side 1: Free Your Mind And Your Ass Will Follow Friday Night, August 14th
Side 2: Funky Dollar Bill I Wanna Know If It’s Good To You Some More Eulogy And Light

The first thing this album does is remind one that Funkadelic is NOT Parliament, and even though both are George Clinton bands recording at the same time and often had the same musicians, there are no butt-shaking extended bass grooves or hip-grinding beats. You won’t be hearing Flash Light or Atomic Dog on this.

What you do get is some of the grooviest, weirdest, gnarliest psychedelic rock along with solid R&B and socio-politically astute jams.

The first time I heard this album was over at a friend’s house when I was about 13, in my second year of Junior High (that’s what we used to call Middle School back in the Mesozoic era). His older brother was playing it and it just blew me away. At the time I knew about George Clinton and Funkadelic, but only as the hybridized P-Funk, so my assumption about them was that they were like the Ohio Players, Bar-Kays, or the Gap Band. You know, serious butt-shaking, bass-thumping, hip-grinding stuff. So when I heard the high-voltage guitar and seriously trippy acid grooves from this album coming out of the speakers , I had to do some serious recalibration.

Needless to say, I went out and grabbed a copy of the album for myself and damn near wore out side one from the constant play.  I also damn near wore out the cover from the constant ogling.

Side one is definitely the more trippy, with Free Your Mind And Your Ass Will Follow taking you on a near-11 minute journey down a rabbit hole of mind-expanding sonic pulses. Side Two brings more of a mix, with a bit of funk (Funky Dollar Bill), some more rock (I Wanna Know If It’s Good To You), a bit of Staxx Records organ-driven Memphis soul (Some More), ending with some wonderfully indulgent weirdness (Eulogy And Light).

Free Your Mind is one of the albums I always whip out whenever I want to introduce someone to the true beauty and experimentation of post-60’s, pre-disco music of the early 70's. It’s not as weird as Zappa or Captain Beefheart, not as aggressive as Zeppelin or Cream, and not as non-threatening as the Beach Boys or Springsteen. It’s really one of those albums that encompasses that spirit that there were no boundaries or limits, and that a bunch of talented musicians open to letting themselves just be open could make something freaking awesome.

And seriously, that cover is too cool for school, too.

Up next: We’re all crazy!