‘Do That Stuff’ has the type of groove Parliament-Funkadelic could ride for 10-plus minutes on stage. It just feels so good. Like many P-Funk songs, the main groove is elevated by an expert arrangement. The horns (played by Fred Wesley, Maceo Parker, Michael Brecker and Randy Brecker) do so many jobs: at times they’re complementing the end of a bass phrase; at others they’re playing or “singing” in unison with the vocals; and then they’re the lead instruments. It’s a good example of Parliament’s classic mic passing, with George Clinton, Glenn Goins, and Garry Shider all singing lead. The backing vocals in the chorus—“Oooh, oooh”—seem so simple, but add variation in melody (1:55) and then lead the way (2:14) to the brief instrumental bridge.
The chord changes take you places you might not expect from a song so funky. There are five chords (with a variation on the E), which isn’t a lot, but it’s four more than some James Brown classics. Despite the relative abundance of harmony, it’s still so groovy. The bridge—“Do that stuff, just do that stuff / Do that stuff, ahh, do that stuff”—jams on the E. The guitar and bass play ultra tight, and the singers and horns play just enough, not too much. Then Randy plays a trumpet solo (3:35), supported only by drums. Even when Jerome Brailey plays fidgety snare fills, it feels like he’s holding back. It’s a composed, even relaxed song, a far throw from James Brown’s protofunk 12 years earlier.
As Daniel Bedrosian points out in his excellent book, The Authorized P-Funk Song Reference, the main guitar riff (starting with the first verse, from 0:29) was lifted from Funkadelic’s ‘You Can’t Miss What You Can’t Measure’. That song, released three years earlier, had a similar chill funk vibe. But its lyrics told a different story: “My nerves are shot, I smoke a lot / In my loneliness / And until I see your face once again / My lonely heart won't rest”.
On the face of it, the lyrics in ‘Do That Stuff’ don’t matter all that much: ‘Everybody was feeling real’, for example, could be replaced by any number of similar, vague sentiments. But the ‘everybody’ ties to the theme of community widely present in ’70s funk. As John Blake recently wrote for CNN, “The lyrical emphasis in funk songs (...) was often on ‘we,’ not ‘I.’”
Blake spoke to Nicole London, co-director of the excellent PBS documentary, We Want the Funk (named after Parliament’s lyric from ‘Give Up The Funk (Tear The Roof Off The Sucker)’, sometimes known as ‘We Want the Funk’). London said, “(Funk is) like a religious experience that has to be shared with others. It’s a channeling that happens when people are together in a groove. There’s something that, as Sly and the Family Stone sings, ‘takes you higher.’”
We dance out this funky Friday to a live performance of ‘Do That Stuff’, recorded at Parliament’s legendary 1976 Houston concert. Bernie Worrell infuses the groove with some synth freakery (his electric piano was comparatively contained in the studio version, adding a floatiness to the “It was a thrill upon a hill” chorus); Clinton’s well-worn voice and some distorted guitar add a surprising snarl.