The Waxonia Desk on Funk
Five records where rhythm stopped being the setting for a song and became the song. Every rhythm guitarist and every sampler of the last fifty years has been living off this tradition.
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James Brown / Cold Sweat
The moment the accent moved and harmony stopped being the point. Everything filed under funk since is an argument with the arrangement on this one record.
Sly & the Family Stone / Thank You (Falettinme Be Mice Elf Agin)
A bass technique invented to cover for a missing drummer, and imitated for fifty years afterwards. Limitations make signatures far more often than intentions do.
Stevie Wonder / Superstition
One man playing nearly everything, at a moment when funk was supposed to be a band sport. The studio turned out not to be the enemy of the group after all.
Herbie Hancock / Chameleon
A jazz musician of the first rank deciding that the groove was the interesting problem. The traffic between jazz training and dance records ran both ways, and this is the busiest lane on it.
Parliament / Give Up the Funk (Tear the Roof off the Sucker)
Enormous theatre over a bass part of complete discipline. The theatre is what everybody remembers and the discipline is the reason it still works fifty years later.