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Funkadelic

Funkadelic "Maggot Brain" Listening Party - Friday, September 11 at GOOD TASTE Records

We are throwing a listening party for Funkadelic's Maggot Brain on Friday, September 11, starting at 5pm. Org Music's long-awaited all-analog reissue arrives that day, and we will be playing it start to finish on the shop system at 4 Thacher St.

This one has been a long time coming. The album was mastered straight from the original analog tapes, and the vinyl was cut direct from tape to lathe with no digital step in between. If you have only ever heard Maggot Brain through a stream or a later pressing, this is a different animal, and a room full of people is the right place to find that out.

Come by, hear the record, pick up a copy on release day, and stick around for the giveaways. Org Music sent over a prize pack for the night.

The Details

  • Friday, September 11, from 5pm
  • GOOD TASTE Records, 4 Thacher St, Boston, North End
  • Free to attend, no ticket needed
  • The full album played front to back, all seven tracks
  • Giveaways and prizes from Org Music: Maggot Brain trucker hat, mug, sticker, and a double-sided poster

The Album

Funkadelic cut Maggot Brain at United Sound Systems in Detroit across late 1970 and early 1971, with George Clinton producing. It was the last record made by the original lineup, and nothing about it sounds like a band playing it safe. The title track is ten minutes of Eddie Hazel captured in a single take, and the story that has followed it ever since, that Clinton told Hazel to play as though he had just learned his mother had died, has become part of how people hear it.

The rest of the album covers a startling amount of ground in half an hour: the gospel-leaning acoustic turn of "Can You Get To That," the hard swing of "Hit It And Quit It," the proto-metal charge of "Super Stupid," and the ten minutes of controlled chaos that close it out on "Wars Of Armageddon." Psychedelic rock, soul, jazz and funk, all in one place, none of it filed neatly.

The Reissue

Dave Gardner mastered the album from the original analog tapes at DSG Mastering, with tape restoration by Catherine Vericolli, and the two of them cut the lacquers direct from tape. Every vinyl edition is all analog and comes in a gatefold jacket, pressed at Furnace Record Pressing. Henry H. Owings handled the visual restoration, so the artwork got the same care as the audio.

The 45 RPM edition spreads the album across four sides in a case-wrapped Stoughton gatefold jacket. The hybrid SACD was captured from that same all-analog chain and carries a standard CD layer, so it plays in any CD player. There is a format here for whatever you are running at home.

Editions at the Shop

More Funkadelic in the Racks

Org Music has been moving through the Westbound catalog with the same all-analog treatment, and we have been following along. Funkadelic (self-titled) is where the story starts in 1970, all fuzz and organ and Hazel finding his voice. Free Your Mind and Your Ass Will Follow is the strange, searching record that sits directly between that one and this one, and it makes a lot more sense once you have heard all three in order.

If you want the wider P-Funk family, Parliament's Osmium is the other side of the same coin from the same era. Everything we carry by the band lives in the Funkadelic collection, and there is plenty more waiting in Funk, Soul and Disco.

See You Friday

Friday, September 11, from 5pm, 4 Thacher St in the North End. Bring your ears, bring a friend, and let us play you a record the way it was meant to be heard. It's all in GOOD TASTE.

Coty Smith