Day After Day #19: Flash Light

Day After Day is an ambitious attempt to write about a song every day in 2024 (starting on Jan. 4).

Flash Light (1977)

Coming off the psychedelic end of the '60s, the 1970s were a lot of things: Messy, sweaty, wild and wooly. It was the Me Decade. After decades of repression and conservatism, people were just doing whatever they felt like. 

One of those people was a songwriter named George Clinton, who started out as a doo wop singer in the '50s and was a staff songwriter for Motown in the '60s before eventually forming two groups in 1970: Parliament and Funkadelic. With a rotating cast of musicians, Clinton explored different sides of funk. Parliament was horn-driven R&B while Funkadelic played psychedelic guitar-heavy funk rock. Each act released albums but they would tour as a combined group called Parliament-Funkadelic, or P-Funk. The group included some amazing players including Eddie Hazel, Bootsy Collins, Maceo Parker, Bernie Worrell, Fred Wesley, Garry Shider and many more.

Throughout the '70s, Clinton explored a space-themed "funkology" with recurring characters like Dr. Funkenstein and Sir Nose d'Voidoffunk, and concepts involving UFOs, Afrocentric themes and of course, feeling the funk. The P-Funk stage show included an actual spaceship that would drop from the ceiling and upwards of 20 people on stage at any given time. Sure, disco was in full effect in the mid- to late '70s, but P-Funk was way beyond that. There was a lot there and it could be overwhelming at times, but the mission statement was clear: Free your mind and your ass will follow.

One of Parliament's biggest hits was "Flash Light" from the 1977 album Funkentelechy Vs. the Placebo Syndrome. The album closer details how the group defeats the evil Sir Nose d'Voidoffunk by getting him to dance. "Most of all he needs the funk/Help him find the funk."

The song features a supremely funky bass line that many assume is played by Bootsy Collins, but it's actually played by Worrell on synths. Clinton handles lead vocals on the song, which hit #1 on the R&B charts and #16 on the Billboard Hot 100. The song has been sampled more than 60 times, including by Digital Underground, Salt-N-Pepa and Aaliyah.

By the early '80s, there was plenty of legal confusion from the multiple band names and groups, so Clinton dissolved Parliament and Funkdadelic as official groups. But he continued to release albums and tour under the name George Clinton and the P-Funk All Stars. Parliament was reunited in 2018 to release a new album, Medicaid Fraud Dogg.

I didn't discover P-Funk until the '80s and didn't see Clinton until 2018 when he brought the show to the Cabot Theater in Beverly, Mass. He was 77 at the time and did most of his performing sitting in a chair, but the band was tight and the show was terrific.

But if you want to get a real sense of the P-Funk insanity, go on YouTube and watch some of their live performances from 1970s. It's just amazing stuff, super-tight extended jams, crazy costumes and all. I can't even imagine what it must have been like to be in the audience for one of those shows, but I do know it was pure, uncut funk.