I gotta git som'mo

The crazed energy that seeps out of your speakers when listening to Parliament's Live P-Funk Earth Tour, the double-album documentation of two performances in January 1977 on the West Coast (Oakland and Los Angeles), is an album I return to at least once a month, many times when faced with some task appearing far too involved to attempt while nursing a hangover.

The opening track alone, with its slightly sloppy trumpet solo paving the way for the signature sax intro for P-Funk (Wants to Get Funked Up), wafts up to your ears slowly and then slaps you upside the head like the fat side of a rowing oar when the crowd explodes in song. Gets you juiced, even when you still reek like a bar mat at the end of a double-shift in an Irish Pub.

One of the choice moments early on is when Bootsy, in the middle of "Dr. Funkenstein's Supergroovalisticprosifunkstication Medley", treats the crowd to an impromtu spoken-word performance while the band holds the line behind him:

There once was a man from Peru,
who went to sleep in his canoe.
He was stringin' up fish,
took out his penis,
woke up with a hand full of goo.

The whole recording is as nasty, in the pocket, bizzare and jarbled as the few remaining brain cells scrambling in the dark to find one another in George Clinton's brain, which at this point probably more closely resembles the inside of your college-days bong, or even a burnt match.