Parliament-Funkadelic vs Earth, Wind & Fire

Stop trying to rewrite history. EWF was the real deal!!! Nothing wrong with P-Funk but don't insult Maurice, R.I.P.

 

EWF was great, I voted for them, more varied, great albums and songs.

 

You forgot to mention Eddie Hazel! I think you can tell by my comment who I'm voting for, but both bands are of course terrific.

 

This is why I'd have to choose the P-Funk empire, because I like their music across the board.

EWF, on the other hand, gets lame after 1975. The disco movement weakened many a funk band, and EWF was no exception.

 

I didn't vote.
At age 16 there was only one winner for me, EWF. That was my musical awakening and for a couple of years no-one else came close. Funk has always got to me in a way rock never could on a 'deep down' level so when 'One Nation Under A Groove' hit the charts in the UK I had another 'ker-pow!' moment.

Funkadelic weren't as immediately rewarding just then, I found more dead spots in the music and the overall sound was denser. Looking back I'd say their music rewards a listener who is more knowledgeable in that genre and has spent more time with other music in a similar vein- if you took in Sly or The Meters you'd get to Funkadelic a bit quicker. It's kind of like a jazz newbie going from Brubeck straight to Sun Ra - a few may be able to absorb the musical message but for most there would be a lot of head-scratching. Brubeck to Mingus to Monk to Sun Ra takes a lot of the sting out of the process. Generally speaking, EWF is something like Mingus, for the Sun Ra experience you need Funkadelic.

EWF were more musically accessible from the outset, and looked at in terms of socio-economics a far less threatening proposition for a wider, whiter audience. For a middle-class black kid in England in 1977 it was just that much easier for me to bring home a copy of All 'N All than Maggot Brain. Musically it's close, although nothing really matches the unbridled joy you get on All 'N All. It raised fewer eyebrows, it was less obviously deranged, less obviously black, and at that point in time those things got noticed. Maurice White took immense care over the way his outfit were presented, he gave a black RnB/Funk outfit a a distinctly 'rock' image, not perhaps the first to see the crossover potential (Sly beat him to it), but he came up with something much slicker, and less parochial. Funkadelic had a more resonant message with their Mothership- (brothas in space, that's some deep sh!t) only Sun Ra got there first. And EWF didn't no-show at concerts from being stuck under a pile of cocaine. The non-musical P-Funk adornments struck me as being a bit silly and forced, the album covers were mildly amusing but amateurish in execution compared to the Shusei Nagaoka stuff on All 'N All or I Am.

But that was back then. Going forward 30 years the differences matter far less. Both outfits produced mesmerising music that will last, both have legacies that have survived the ignorance and antipathy that disco fostered among a certain section of the music-buying populace. Both will continue to influence future musics. Both offered, for me at least, a way out of the boring and predictable confines of rock.

 

Mmm...the Dan walk away with that one for me, and that's why I didn't vote, I don't like to set up false rivalries that do nothing to help my enjoyment of the music. Enjoy Frank and SD.

 

Love them both! Different vibes... Such great albums they put out in their prime! No "winner" here for me.

 

They followed the money.

 

Yeah, fat and comfortable, that's when I move on. EWF definitely got plump after I Am.

 

I have more E.W.&F. Records so I'm going with them. In terms of funk, Parliament works better for me. In terms of great chords progs and compositions, EWF all the way.

 

It's the inside gatefold art to I Am. First album I ever bought. There was no poster with the original release as far as I'm aware. I have a picture disc version of the album with the same artwork.

 

To me, they really started putting on the pounds - musically - when Spirit was released.

 

The kind of classless response that drag down X v Y threads. Predictable and totally unneccesary.

 

It's a line from a Funkadelic song, "Let's Take It To The Stage." Clinton wasn't a big fan of EWF.

 

Disagree. You see 'Saturday Night' and 'Imagination' or 'Getaway' as overweight?? Not a chance. The music was still tight, the horns were spot on, the songs were well-crafted and White and Bailey were at their vocal peak.

 

Too disco-ish for me. They were better before then.

 

Fine, I know Clinton ragged on EWF, that was a minus then and it's a minus now. What was he afraid of? Success?

 

Most funk bands had a decidedly rock image and sound. Unlike the vocalists, they were more likely to experiment. Funkadelic was dropping acid and cranking up the amps when Maurice White was still playing drums behind Ramsey Lewis.

 

When Funkadelic recorded "Let's Take It To The Stage," supposedly that was a dig at all of the funk bands they were opening for on the circuit (including "Slick & the Family Brick" and "Fool & the Gang"). Evidently a few of those bands weren't nice folks, so "Stage" was born out of that frustration. George Clinton was the king of not giving a ****.

 

Aah, the disco analogy rears it's ugly head. (WTF is so bad about disco?) Spirit wasn't disco, 'Saturday Nite' maybe thematically in a 'party-on-down' lyric but the vocal arrangement goes from straightforward funk to a very un-disco Free Design kind of thang. There's nothing remotely danceable on the rest of that album.

 

I have to take issue with this - I'll admit I'm not as familiar with EWF as with PFunk, but everything I've heard from them is confined to a certain idiom. Mainstream, rock-tinged funk moving towards late 70s dance music. Extremely well-done, but firmly in that vein.

P Funk runs the gamut from doo-wop to psychedelic hard rock to 70s R&B/Funk/disco to hip hop, and takes an eclectic approach that is completely out of left field. I still have yet to hear the EWF equivalent of "March to the Witch's Castle," which sounds like it could belong on a Pink Floyd record, and comes right after "You Can't Miss What You Can't Measure," remake of a 1965 vocal group breakup song. Parliament's high period gets a little formulaic, even if they did pioneer synth bass (for good or ill), but every Funkadelic release has at least one song that has me going 'WTF kind of funk is this?"

I actually like these types of debates, so long as one takes them for what they are. I don't expect to convince anyone who voted for EWF that PFunk is better, but I might correct the record as above or encourage someone to check out something they haven't heard before.

I was going to write I like PFunk because they had a harder edge, and EWF was all just lightweight dance pop like 'September,' but instead I decided to check into that before I made a statement I couldn't back up, and discovered some early EWF that I really like and probably wouldn't have gotten into otherwise.

I'm definitely on the Zappa side myself, SD never did much for me. It's funny he got brought up here though. I watched the George Clinton BD concert the other day and the PFunk horns close down the show-ending jam with the horn line from "I am the Slime."

 

It's like the Beatles and the Stones. One was more commercial, the other more dangerous. They were both excellent and what they did from image makng to music.

 

It sure was competitive, and that's no bad thing. It happened a lot in jazz too, Miles had nothing nice to say about Eric Dolphy. If you have the musical chops, rise above it. I guess that was Maurice White's response. When you're swimming in the same pool, what's the use of taking a dump in it? I never saw the need for Clinton to do that. That apart the guy was a magician.

 

Disco, to me, is funk without the guts.

You may be right. Apart from the hits, I've only heard Spirit once before I got rid of it. And it goes back to what I said about how most funk bands seemed very watered down after 1975. What I love about funk was that, at it's height (let's say 1969-75), it was like the black man's heavy metal and psychedelia rolled into one. Bands like the Ohio Players, Rasputin's Stash, the Watts 103rd St. Rhythm Band, Mandrill, War, etc., all had an "anything goes" attitude that you usually found in rock bands, but never in R&B. Not just in the music, but the way they presented themselves. Esoteric subject matter, wailing Hendrix guitar, conga drums were becoming heavily featured, the bands didn't have a lounge mentality - what can I say? I loved the funk back when it was "black rock."

EWF, Kool & the Gang and even the Commodores were right in that mix.

However, starting in 1976, EWF, Kool and the Commodores started toeing the line more. I think the influence of disco might have been a reason for that. The "black rock" became "black pop."

This is why I close the book on EWF from 1976 onward. P-Funk and, to a lesser extent, the Isleys, kept that "black rock" feeling going. All these other bands seemingly dumbed themselves down a little just to survive.

 

The song in question, I always took it as tongue firmly in cheek: