Funked Up Funk

Wanna funk up your Groovy Pad, cat? Look no further than this collection of weird wild sounds from The In Sound which collects some of the jazziest funk and some avante garde jazz. It's the real deal, Neil. This ain't no wack attack, Jack!

Getting us off to a groovy start is Gary Burton's "Vibrafinger". Also featured on the first side is Sun Ra, surely jazz' answer to Jack Kirby, whose experimental cosmic cool sounds right at home here. On my copy the tracks have been listed incorrectly on the sleeve, so that the first side ends with Freddie Hubbard's surreal "This Is Combat I Know", German cabaret on acid with an anti war message. Side two kicks off with Yusef Luteef's "Raymond Winchester" (listed as the last track of the first side), with a swaying background against which is set some bizarrely whining horns going into some straightforward fuzzed out funk guitar that only seems to be lulling us into complacency so we'll be taken once again by the whining horns. It calls to mind some of Kool & The Gang's more experimental stuff. This along with the next cut, Charles Lloyd's "Sorcery", may be my favourite cuts on the record. The latter crosses Superfly-style chase music with Sonny Rollins-style expressionism for a very soulful and fun musical ride.

Track Three on side two may be my least favourite. Not that the music is bad, it just seems fairly pedestrian after what has preceded it. Possibly the compilers figured we needed a break. It is Black Heat's "Check It All Out", which is a proto rap funk break over which are shouted lyrics of seventies social commentary, so general that in fact they end up sounding completely current, ie The president's responsible for all that is bad, prices increasing, jobs decreasing, we are using up the earth's resources, etc. Music to read Dennis O'Neil's Green Lantern/Green Arrow by.

They saved one of the weirdest for the last. Freddie Hubbard (again) with "Threnody For Sharon Tate", a tuneless tune over which are spoken lines that sound like they're sound bites from a European Satansploitation film. Which is just my speed. I might have to track down more Freddie Hubbard.

What we end up with is something that sounds like the soundtrack of the ultimate psychedelic exploitation movie of the late sixties/early seventies, the era that the tracks are from. Like if Jess Franco and Jack Hill went on a binge and made a movie together. We are left only able to imagine the unimaginable movie this sound track would go with.

Next time you have a Groovy Lady over at your Soul Shack, cat, lay this platter on down and see if the chick digs. If she bolts, she is not that groovy and it was not meant to be.