The band emerged screaming from the shadows cast by Vietnam, the racial uprisings in their old home of New Jersey and their new home in Detroit, a heroin epidemic, poverty, Kent State and the death of Hendrix himself, whose passing was rife with symbolism. It was the sound of the Woodstock dream deferred. However, Funkadelic’s third album, “Maggot Brain,” wasn’t a Technicolor romp. “Free your mind and your ass will follow,” they famously sang. They were turned on by psychedelic rockers like Jimi Hendrix and Cream they hung out with punks like the MC5 and the Stooges they enjoyed Black Power, free love and underground comics. The Parliaments transformed from a Motown-aspiring, matching-tie-and-handkerchief vocal group into tripped-out hippies in bell bottoms, headdresses and the occasional American flag diaper. Ultimately they absorbed the culture of the late ’60s like sponges. Formed by singers in the orbit of a New Jersey barbershop in 1955, the group started as a Frankie Lymon and the Teenagers-style doo-wop act before leaning into Detroit soul. On more than three dozen virtuosic, genre-blurring studio albums released from 1970 to 1982, George Clinton and the members of his rollicking Parliament-Funkadelic collective shaped the backbone and shook loose the booty of modern groove.
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