poeticone16's Full Review: Maggot Brain by Funkadelic
"Mother Earth is pregnant for the third time...for y'all have knocked her up"
It was a bizarre yet truthful statement back when George Clinton uttered it in 1971. He may have been talking about what inspired Sly Stone to make his record of decadence - the failure of the counterculture, the impact of several riots on the country, to name a few possibilities. However, Clinton's statement can still hold resonance today in a world where more attention is given to immature acts by celebrities than is given to the fact that the government has "misled" people into believing there are weapons in places where there wasn't. Even the group Outkast took inspiration from Clinton's lone statement, creating songs that were based on the same idea. It's kinda funny that Clinton's intro statement on the opening instrumental track of Maggot Brain almost took attention from Eddie Hazel's classic guitar solo on the record.
Playing like "[his] momma just died", Hazel evokes a superb scope of emotions throughout his guitar solo, ranging from the melancholic and mournful lows to the euphoric and ecstatical highs (when Clinton reportedly told him to play as if he had found out his mother was alive). It's a shame that Hazel wasn't regarded as one of the greatest guitarists of all time, because on this track, he experiments with rhythm in a soul-wrenching fashion that has rarely been touched. It's as if his guitar playing is representing the depressed and downtrodden souls of the period until he reaches his climax, where it represents the chance for hope in the future. Listened to in conjunction with the concluding track "Wars of Armageddon", it combines to make an effective social critique.
If "Maggot Brain" was a solo voice wailing out against the negativity of the time, then the aforementioned "Wars of Armageddon" was multiple voices living out that depressing lifestyle. Constantly being described as a "freak-out" song - yes, Funkadelic enjoyably jams out on this one with a heavy-metal edge - it features numerous sound effects (cows' mooing, canned studio laughter, nonsensical freedom chants), it gives off the feeling that everything is falling apart at the seams (in fact, it does, when this song ends in an atomic blast then silence). Given the atmosphere at the time - where riots were seemingly rampant and the continuances of the FBI in violating the civil rights of Americans - this song effectively portrayed the confusedness of it all.
Those two book-ending songs were the focus of this album (taking over half the running length of the album), but there were other songs on here that deserve a listen. The catchy and groovy "You and Your Folks, Me and My Folks" preached the idea of loving thy brother in a simple yet unforgettable sense: "And if in our tears, we don't learn to share with your brother/You know that hate is gonna keep on multiplying", while the enjoyable metal-inspiring jams "Hit It and Quit It" and "Super Stupid" preached against the evils of living a life that only consists of drugs and sex - certainly a departure from the happy-go-lucky feelings that emanated from a Parliament record.
Maggot Brain is an essential album that deserves to be heard by anyone, funk-fans or not. Its message that the early 70s was not a great time to live has been repeated ad nauseum, but rarely has it been done like on this record. Guess you could say that this album is similar to Sly Stone's brilliant yet depressing record in the fact that they both portray the voices of the oppressed, but Maggot Brain a bit more encouraging than Sly's effort. All in all, some of the important releases that came out this year - Maggot Brain, There's a Riot Goin' On, and even the classic movie A Clockwork Orange, to name a few - all described problems that were caused by more than race – problems that somewhat still exist today.
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