Monday, June 12, 2006

Celebrating eMusic's recent acquisition of the Funkadelic Westbound catalogue (check it out) by listening to the albums in order. In the middle of "You and Your Folks, Me and My Folks" from Maggot Brain, a verse stuck out: "You want peace, I want peace, they want peace, and the kids need peace." Not unusual, it was 1971 and the band was fried to fuck on acid, but it's the last line that struck me. A band like the Who would have meant "the kids" to mean them, too. George Clinton was too old and experienced to kid himself that "the kids" included him. So there's a distance, a perspective that, while skewed by acid, is separate from that of, say, Jefferson Airplane's revolution-now brouhaha. Among other things, they're simply old enough to know better.