The Open Mouth:

A Bi-Weekly Crash

of All Forms of Music Video

ILV's exclusive column from Blake Carlisle of End of An Ear Records,

Austin's main source for eccentric, ecstatic, experimental & reckless outsider music & video.

This week: The Mothership Connection Live From Houston (Paliament live at the Summit) 1976 / 1978

When I try to think of a band that went further out than Parliament, I can't do it. There's something about the sound that is created when Bernie Worrell hits notes on his synthesizer and Bootsy's bass answers back and the drums come in...it's like a donut on a conveyer belt getting glazed, and that donut is your brain. These people were lazer-injected down to Earth to play music. Every single thing about this band was over the top. Best hair and outfits, check. Best mindblowing stage show, check. Best drugs, check. Best musicians, check. Best songs, check. Most freaked-out, check. This DVD was filmed in Houston at the Summit (which sadly, is now one of those church-arena things) during the P-Funk Earth Tour of '77. The only band that could even come close to rivaling the stage show of Parliament was Kiss, and they did'nt even come close (sorry, Ace). Kiss didn't have the Bop gun, they didn't have a 20-foot skull that smoked bud, and they didn't have a giant UFO landing on stage.
        You can tell from the get-go that this concert is going to be a rager when George Clinton comes onstage smoking a joint (which he smokes down to nothing) while wearing a white Pocahontas wig. The band glides into "Let's Take It To The Stage" like pancake batter being poured on a grill. The crowd is in the palm of George's hand the entire show. The whole time I was watching this I was thinking about the audience a lot. I've heard a lot of musicians talk about playing small venues and how the barrier between band and audience vanishes that way. Well, I like the idea of that too, but Parliament's live shows proved that a whole fucking arena of people could be right next to the stage. It would suck if you had to do security at the Summit for a Parliament concert. Funk-freaks high on acid and high school kids do not follow rules or laws. I'm sure if you were in the nosebleed section and wanted to get near the front, by the time "Standing On The Verge Of Gettin' It On" was playing, you could do that.
        Many Costume changes happen, and after a while, I'm pretty sure someone is wearing giant chicken feet. When a gold, wooden car rolls out on stage during "Night Of The Thumposaurus People" carrying George Clinton and a bevy of female vocalists, the crowd most certainly tears the roof off. If you weren't twirling your underwear on your pointer finger by that point in the concert, you were a corpse. These concerts were like the biggest form of an out-of-control house party that you could ever have. Doing two 2-hour long sets a night in each city was par for the course for these maniacs, and each show was played like it was the last. One of the encores on these shows features Bootsy Collins joing the band as well as members of the Brides Of Funkenstein which included members of Sly Stone's band. The tape that I've seen has both the 1976 and 1978 Houston concerts. Nowadays, they're both available individually on two seperate DVD's. Check 'em out.