cosmicben's Full Review: Maggot Brain by Funkadelic
Dreadfully unspectacular. Maybe I'm a pretentious wiener-dog, but my favorite track is the one most people bash: the 9:42 "Wars of Armageddon" has less to do with "Revolution 9" than a really cool Santana-esque funk jam, admittedly made funnier by interspersed sound effects ("More power to the p***y! More power to the peter!"), but it wouldn't have worked without an awesome backbeat and insistent organ riffing.
The middle of the album features a bunch of short tunes that start out brilliantly (beautiful acoustic strumming on "Can You Get To That", mindbending keyboard riff on "Hit It And Quit It", ferocious fuzzy riff and vocals on "Super Stupid", quirky Jew's Harp on "Back In Our Minds") but dissolve into fun, but mediocre, pop songs. The harmonies are pretty, but there's not much behind them.
And the ten-minute title track gets hyped as the greatest guitar solo ever, but aside from a few shimmering passages, much of it is boring and ordinary: it's cool how Clinton double-tracked it, delaying the second track, and the low-key backing is haunting, but the solo itself is less inspired than people give it credit for. Maybe I gots no soul?
The whole album is engagingly freakish, but it also sounds like it was recorded down the hall -- it's hard to believe Clinton produced the ultra-lush America Eats Its Young just a few years later. Completists will like this fun, undemanding slice of Funkadelica, but there's not even one classic track to snare the casual fan.
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