In the first Friday Funk to explore two songs since Friday Funk #17 with The Meters, today we look at two tracks from Parliament’s 1976 classic, The Clones of Dr. Funkenstein.

The almost title track, ‘Dr. Funkenstein’ is a midtempo groover and one of two songs on the record that mention the One: “Hit me with the One and then / If you like hit me again”. That beat is emphasised right from the start, particularly by the bass, which only plays one note in certain bars.

The album’s ‘Prelude’ has introduced us to the chief character, Dr. Funkenstein, the boss of Star Child and whose clones have been waiting in the pyramids. Now on track 3, we hear from the doctor, who calls himself “the big pill”, ready to quell any headache. He’s not like any doctor, but rather “Preoccupied and dedicated to the preservation of the motion of hips”.

Clones was one of Parliament’s most fully realised concept albums. Even tracks that could easily slot in other records and don’t explicitly mention the characters, like the odes to grooving (this and ‘Do That Stuff’) fit the theme of funkin’. Clinton had read a science fiction novel called Clones, and was inspired to head to the library and read about cloning, which “summarized the thinking about genetics and what constitutes original life” (per his excellent memoir, Brothas Be Yo, Like George, Ain’t That Funkin’ Kinda Hard on You?).

The concept of cloning resonated with him, having led his doowop group The Parliaments to a new band, Funkadelic, whose same members played in the rebranded Parliament.

Some of the album’s songs (such as ‘Children Of Production’) are among the wordiest in the P-Funk discography, but every word flows so well.

And they feel so good. One verse, spoke-sung, “Microbiologically speaking, when I start churnin’, burnin’ and turnin’, I'll make your atoms move so fast, expandin' your molecules, causing a friction fire, burnin’ you on your neutron, causing you to scream

‘Hit me in the proton, BABY!’” is a waterfall of clashing syllables until the “neutron”/“proton” rhyme and the release of “BABY!”

That verse is a distinguished part of a song that’s in no hurry. The chorus is almost lackadaisal, with the singers’ sounding like they’d be glad to be doing this all day: “We love to funk you, Funkenstein / Your funk is the best”. The backing singers were credited as “Extra-Singing Clones”. There’s a childlike innocence to many of their vocals, contrasting with George Clinton’s—Dr. Funkenstein’s—baritone.

The horns keep the track and the doctor’s narration bouncy. Asides from the intro section, they play largely on offbeats. They supply much of the instrumental melody, with the guitar playing really minimally and Bernie Worrell’s keys and synthesiser usually only adding flourishes towards the end of bars.

The second song to mention the One, as one might guess from scanning the tracklisting, is ‘Everything Is On The One’.

Though the song’s main lyric talks of the One, the band really make us wait for it, with that long first syllable—“Eeeeeverything”—making the first beat two bars later even sweeter.

As discussed in Further Explorations of Funk, part 3, Fred Wesley, who arranged half the album’s horns and was one of the prime P-Funk hornsters, had no real concept of the One, once saying:

“Now, on the One, musically, in a 4/4 bar, you have one, two, three, four, of course, which is – one is the One, but as James Brown characterises the One, I don’t think he really meant, ‘One, two, three, four.’ I think he meant wherever he put his foot down the hardest is the One. Like I say, I’m not sure about this. Everybody takes the One as something different. Like George said, ‘Everything Is On The One’, which was on the four right there. So when you ask me about the One, you’re not asking somebody that’s real knowledgable about it. I’m just someone who puts the One wherever someone else thinks the One is, and I go with the One as strong as I can. I have no One. Everything is One to me.”

This is even more remarkable considering Bootsy Collins, another prime P-Funker and ex-J.B.’s member, often speaks of Brown teaching him about the One.

It’s not clear why Wesley considers the emphasis to be on the four. It may be due to the snare, but then the snare plays on the two and four across much of Western music. Although one of Wesley or Worrell were credited with a horn arrangement on each track on the album (Wesley on ‘Dr. Funkenstein’ and Worrell here), Clinton wrote in his memoir that they worked on the same songs. Clinton told Worrell to do it “artsy-farty, jazzy” and “Fred was going to be funky no matter what he was going to do, based on his training” (with Brown).

It would be interesting to know which half Wesley arranged. Either way, the horns repeatedly hit the One in the bridge from 2:30, particularly satisfyingly with the kick drum at 2:40. Wesley might not have known exactly what he was doing, but he contributed to the peak of P-Funk hornery.

Top image from Discogs.