It’s the beginning of an epic. I know the basic facts about George Clinton, head honcho of the funk collective that stands just the other side of the Funkadelic looking glass. That makes listening to Mothership Connection double the pleasure: band history doesn’t struggle in my mind to take over from the vibes and the message. What’s the message? On Mothership Connection, it seems to be a command to have a right-on party. Fun is the priority, with a serious message peeping through. I bought this album online in September 2000, on CD, and it worked out at about £6. Although I’ve got quite a few albums since, this one has been a solid player.

By 1975, the date of Mothership Connection’s release, a reformed Parliament had already completed 2 albums: Up for the Downstroke and Chocolate City. With Mothership, Clinton’s band began playing with themed song cycles. The cover is humorous but laid-back. George, dressed as the “Star-Child” character, is pictured emerging from a metallic, nipple shaped UFO against a space background. He’s clicking his fingers in mid- zero-gravity boogie. On the back cover, the UFO is landing in the ghetto: this is a collection of freaked out metaphor tunes with their feet well on the ground.

This is pre-rap, post classic era Sly music. It has nothing to do with tepid disco or the Doobie Brothers approximation of funk that George ribs good-naturedly on the album. The first track, “P‑Funk (Wants to Get Funked Up)” begins with a spoken word intro by the DJ character who first appeared on “Chocolate City”. It’s a clever parody of a radio station. On first listen, it’s just like tuning into a mid-70’s station that never was. The DJ, aka Lollipop Man, alias the Long Haired Sucker, informs us that we are listening to station W.E. FUNK. As George’s music got relatively little airplay at the time, he wryly invented his own station to solve matters, at least on vinyl.…Our radios have been taken over until we “are grooving.” Forget about hang-ups and tensions, just chill. As the DJ says, bridging the spoken intro and the mighty throbbing drums/bass/keyboards/vocal chant, his “motto is”, and a throng of background vocalists yell “Make my funk the p‑funk.…I wants to get to funked up.”

P‑funk. Pure funk, Parliament Funk. As the DJ would say, “uncut funk, the Bomb.” Imagine a thematically spaced out Sly Stone with a slightly heavier sound, add an array of colourful half-improvised keyboards (courtesy of Bernie Worrell), heavy chanting, impossible to forget simplistic/complicated melodies and that’s the Parliament deal.

The Mothership Connection occurs on track two, “Star Child.” Clinton was impressed by Bowies array of characters in the early seventies. Bowie had one persona throughout each album — Parliament albums introduced one or more with each release and used previous creations again too. The Star Child character asks us if we’re “hip to Easter Island” and the pyramids. He’s a loose, soul-powered guy who holds brings the healing vibes of funk to inhibited humans, who need his feelgood motivation as the third track, “Unfunky UFO” testifies.

Track four, “Supergroovalisticprosifunkstication,” begins with an array of unexpected percussive instruments grooving along with a thumping bass line and drum beat. Sounds bizzare — ringing bells, the lot. Everytime I hear it, it sounds like a bicycle being ridden through space. Parliament’s ace card was the use of a platoon of vocalists to chant phrases over and over. Here, they yell “Give the people what they want when they want and they wants it all the time.” It’s repetition is focussed and combined with the music totally enervating.

“Handcuffs” makes me laugh. I can’t take it seriously and I hope Parliament have their tongues drilling through their cheeks on this hyper “love” song. The character the vocalist portrays is too possessive to take seriously. “Do I have to put my handcuffs on you momma,” he yells to his lover, “Do I have to keep you under lock and key?” Amidst the threats to make “you barefoot and pregnant to keep you in my world” is a warm desire, a passion for commitment that erodes the possessiveness.

“Give Up the Funk” is a famous Parliament release. I think it’s the weakest track on the album, at least conceptually, as it is quite disconnected from the playful space theme. As a stand alone track it’s a killer, a hungry plea for more and more p‑funk.

Everything coalesces for a final time on the closing track. “Night of the Thumpasorus Peoples” is a a glorious, all-but-wordless chant instrumental, based around a three-tunes-in-one sequence of thumping horn riffs, bass rhythms from Bootsy Collins, an unbelievable player, stomping drums and stellar extended fuzz-synth improvisation from Bernie Worrell. It’s primitivism meets celluloid pulp science fiction, gleefully referred to in the title which is totally suggestive of UFO/earth tribes funk stomping around a fireplace under the stars. The “ga-ga-goo-ga” chant is indelible, it will live in your eardrums long after the 5′10″ fade out.

The story continues on the next Parliament album, “Brides of Dr Funkenstein”, and then in “Funkentelechy vs. the Placebo Syndrome”, “Motor Booty Affair”, “Gloryhallastoopid (or, Pin the Tail on the Funky)” and Trombipulation.

Ain’t nothin’ but a party!