The P-Funk mythology is a group of recurring characters, themes, and ideas primarily contained in the output of George Clinton's bands Parliament and Funkadelic.
[8] After the bands' earlier releases, Clinton began to feel that something more conceptual was in order, and he expressed deep admiration for The Who's Tommy and The Beatles' Sgt.
Bell's felt-tip illustrations included prolonged essays that expanded the mythos of Clinton's lyrics with a complementary syntax that "forged a new realm of black language".
[10] Though Bell coined terms like "Rumpasaurus" and made extensive contributions to the P-Funk mythology, his work has been largely overlooked.
[11] Clinton has pointed to the show The Outer Limits as an influence in his elaborate narrative, but more importantly, he and Bootsy Collins allegedly encountered a UFO together while driving to Detroit.
Clinton recalls light bouncing from one side of the street to the other, and remarking to Collins, "The Mothership was angry with us for giving up the funk without permission."
By the mid-1970s, Clinton was rebranding funk as many things at once, "an aesthetic, a marketing ploy, a black cultural nationalist battle-plan and a way of being if not a spiritual discipline."
Clinton was positioning P-Funk as a "radical response to the American police state" and "the antithesis of everything that was sterile, one-dimensional, monochromatic, arhythmic and otherwise against freedom of bodily expression in the known universe.
One of the defining traits of the P-Funk mythology is that it is indeed a form of social commentary in that it "took all the cheese America had to offer and ran with it, taking the fashions and technology of the day to their ultimate, preposterous conclusions, amplifying the aesthetics of the 70s into a throbbing, fish-eyed cartoon of itself, and in so doing glorified American culture and their role in its continuing evolution.
[16] This sentiment is echoed in subsequent songs like "Standing on the Verge of Getting It On" (1974) which contains the verse, "Music is designed to free your funky mind.
[19] At the beginning of "The Electronic Spanking of War Babies", Clinton explains that he was "adopted by aliens" at the age of 17, and that "they have long since programmed me to return with this message.
"[20] The liner notes of Standing on the Verge of Getting It On explain that, "On the Eighth Day, the Cosmic Strumpet of Mother Nature was spawned to envelope this Third Planet in FUNKADELICAL VIBRATIONS.
"[22][23] The song "Super Stupid" links maggot brain to fear with lyrics about a protagonist who snorts heroin thinking it is cocaine.
"[25] The liner notes for One Nation Under a Groove (1978) are a typical example of how the P-Funk mythology expanded on song lyrics to develop a sprawling, satirical narrative.
The hero, JASPER SPATIC, has invented a Throb Gun, which he unleashes at a disco, triggering an epic battle and defeat for Barft Vada.
The story ends with Jasper pondering what would happen the next time Barft Vada caused trouble, hoping that someone would warn people to "THINK!
The place was so beautiful that the narrator did not want to leave, but felt that he must return to help the listener be a parent and to "show you the way, the right way, I feel you gotta live".
[28] The P-Funk mythology begins in earnest on Parliament's 1975 album Mothership Connection, which features Clinton emerging from a spaceship on the cover.
He exhorts the listener to lay their body on the radio in order to be healed by the music because "Funk not only moves, it can re-move".
[33] The album's closing track introduces an important concept in the P-Funk mythology with its title: "Night Of The Thumpasorous Peoples".
Protect yourself!...Shoot them with the bop gun"[34] The next song, "Sir Nose d'Voidoffunk (Pay Attention - B3M)", introduces the title character who claims to be "the subliminal seducer" and "devoid of funk".
[35] The concept for the character originated in "The Pinocchio Theory" by Bootsy's Rubber Band, which asserts that if "you fake the funk; your nose got to grow".
[37] "Funkentelechy" sees a return of DJ Lollipop as he narrates a free-association meditation on overstimulation, which he terms "urge overkill", from things like pills and commercial jingles for Big Macs and Whoppers.
It contains a glancing reference to the P-Funk mythology when the Nose finds the funk, with the aid of the titular device, and begins to "Get on down".
[41] Overton Loyd's album art depicted the motto "We got ta raise Atlantis to the top", signifying the need for upward social mobility among African-Americans.
[44] The film of P-Funk's Halloween 1976 concert at the Houston Summit provides an excellent snapshot of what the Earth Tour production was like.
The incantation from "Prelude" from The Clones of Dr. Funkenstein plays in darkness as spotlights illuminate a pyramid with the Eye of Providence at its summit, echoing the official seal of the United States: The show is loosely structured around preparing the pyramid for the resurrection of the Afronauts, with dim oblations paid by members of the troupe during the first half of the set.
[50] By appropriating the song to score the arrival of the Mothership, it becomes a modern-day chariot sent to deliver the audience not back home to Africa, but to Outer Space.
Clinton's stage show created a narrative link from the Egyptian pyramids, which often were used to symbolize black pride in a past achievements, to a Utopian vision of existence off-world.