Funkadelic, Uncle Jam Wants You (1979)

Funkadelic, Uncle Jam Wants You (1979)

Dropped somewhere in between Disco Demolition Night and the beginning of the Iran Hostage Crisis, Uncle Jam Wants You parks Clinton in Huey Newton’s chair, flanked by a flashlight and a bop gun, ready to do his part in recruiting an Army for the nation he aimed to put under his groove despite every sign of resistance cresting over the horizon. Some self-styled recruits, the Los Angeles collective known as Uncle Jamm’s Army, would soon heed that call and start building the West Coast electro and hip-hop sound — which, along with the decade-later incorporation of giddy dance marathon “(Not Just) Knee Deep” into De La Soul’s “Me Myself & I,” helped ensure this album’s historical impact on both coasts would last a lot longer than most malaise-era listeners could’ve even dreamed. Let’s hear it for not-so-small victories.

But impact on history’s one thing; impact on the ears (and the feet) is another matter. And no matter how deep its core is, the truth of the matter is that Uncle Jam Wants You is an exceptional three-song album not-so-heavily concealed in an uneven six-cut LP. That seems like a bad ratio without factoring in timing: Why not cut some slack to a record with ten kinda-frothy, inessential minutes when the remaining 31 are some of the most diabolical grooves put down at the sunset of the ’70s? “(Not Just) Knee Deep” you either know or damn well should know, a monolith of Junie Morrison synth-pulse power rendered even more transcendent with one of the greatest vocal-group ensemble performances in P-Funk history. (Give a good amount of credit to Philippe Wynne, the ex-Spinner making his first appearance in a sadly cut-short career of P-Funk membership.) Leading into that, you’ve got “Freak Of The Week,” P-Funk’s highest-profile answer to disco’s domination of the circa-’79 dancefloor; its midtempo dip-stride strut isn’t so much a damnation of the genre on the whole as a condemnation of the materialistic conformity overtaking it, with “(Not Just) Knee Deep” rescuing it from the blahs. And then the wigged-out “Uncle Jam” takes the funk to boot camp, with Clinton and Wynne chiming in as “thrill sergeants” (“disturbing the peace at the bridge of the river quiet!”) egging on the trenches with hot-footed marching orders. Shrug if you want through the short instrumental “Field Maneuvers,” the drastically out-of-place solo-piano ballad “Holly Wants To Go To California,” and the dippy little reprise “Foot Soldiers (Star Spangled Funky)” — you’ve already heard them at their peak.