Mothership Connection: Live 1976

Synopsis

In the wake of the hit 1976 album Mothership Connection, Parliament Funkadelic launched a tour that was wildly extravagant and expensive by the era's standards, and in fact probably pretty extravagant even by 21st century measurements. This DVD captures the show in all its glory and excess at a concert at the Houston Summit on Halloween 1976, adeptly filmed in vivid color. Lasting about 80 minutes, the document includes performances of a few key tracks from the Mothership Connection ("P-Funk (Wants to Get Funked Up)," "Night of the Thumpasorus Peoples," "Mothership Connection (Star Child)," and "Give Up the Funk (Tear the Roof Off the Sucker)"), but also ten other songs from the sprawl of P-Funk's repertoire, notably "Undisco Kidd," "Dr. Funkenstein," and "Cosmic Slop." Even some major Parliament Funkadelic fans might find the music secondary, at least as caught by this film, to the visuals, particularly the explosively colorful and irreverent costumes. Fright wigs, bug eyes, tie-dyed pants, skimpy briefs, painted faces, robes that looked like a cross between Star Wars and the Goodwill store -- nothing was too outrageous for the troupe to fool around in. And it really was a troupe, it being difficult to even count the number of singers (both lead and backup) and dancers. Perhaps unfortunately for those viewers whose principal interest in the band is musical, the instrumentalists are barely seen, the cameras focusing almost exclusively on those vocalists and dancers. Still, the performance is tight in both musical and visual terms, even if the nearly uninterrupted drift between songs and rotating singing roles will likely disorient those not familiar with P-Funk's world. Members of support acts Bootsy's Rubber Band and Sly & the Family Stone (not including Sly Stone) appear on-stage near the end for the film's most arresting sequence, though most everything else is upstaged by the scenes in which "the mothership" -- an actual miniature spaceship from which George Clinton descends -- lands on-stage midway concert, its departing blastoff highlighting a suitable finale. ~ Richie Unterberger