George Clinton, P-Funk frontman turned 80 this week. For a while it was two bands - Parliament and Funkadelic, or maybe two facets of the same group. Funkadelic - and Parliament on their first album, Osmium (1970)  -  played a looser, rock-based, ragged, funky soul. Parliament, from 1974 on played a tighter, straight, polished funk. What follows here, is a selection from the early Funkadelic albums on Westbound. I put it together some years ago while looking for songs that reminded me of peak period Sly and the Family Stone. There really isn't much out there that sounds like this.  Missing are some of the songs with the nastier lyrics. That way I can maybe get away with playing it while Wife is in the car without having to answer the question: Honey...what are we listening to? There are a few albums that are missing from the streaming service. The first, Osmium,  was released in July of 1970. It sounds a lot like Funkadelic  and Free Your Mind ...And Your Ass Wi...

Happy 75th birthday to Linda Ronstadt.  She doesn't have the same alt-country cred as Emmylou, but she deserved it. She didn't have that direct link to Gram, but she probably did the best job of pulling off his mix of rock, country and soul. Maybe our ilk holds the Eagles against her. Maybe it's because there was nothing "alt" about her. Growing up, her music was everywhere, whether it was Dad's country station - WMAQ, or my aunt's pop station - WOKY.  Her last two "rock" albums - Mad Love and Get Closer - ventured away from the country. Perhaps too established to be new wave or power pop, she put some punchy covers by the Cretones and Billy Thermal and Elvis Costello. While her earlier cover of "Allison" featured the anodyne west coast production values of the time, two of the three covers on Mad Love  hold their own. Even her oldies covers are primarily British Invasion era pop of the type favored by the skinny tie set. Over the pas...

On this night in 1958, Riverside Records producer Orrin Keepnews dragged bis recording equipment across the Hudson to the Five Spot Cafe. To record Thelonious Monk for a live album. With the restoration of his cabaret card, Monk had been playing at the Five Spot for about a year and was in the midst of a second residency there.  For some reason, the recordings were deemed lacking. They sound good to me, but I am partial to Monk's work with Griffin on sax. Keepnews returned a month  later  an recorded two sets, from which the albums Thelonious in Action and Misterioso were released. This set shares "Blues Five Spot", "Evidence", "In Walked Bud"*, and "Epistrophy (Theme)" with those two albums. It adds "'Round Midnight", "Bye-Ya", and "Unidentified Piano Solo" - which some identify as "Sweet Stranger"- the sources are unclear. *Bud Powell: it was probably Bud's packet of heroin that police found...