Funk is Cancelled.

I was well late to it but I eventually got decently into that whole 80s boogie, synth-funk, etc revival

mainly I guess as a corollary to my previous/often noted general love of world of post-disco/pre-house dance music, of which boogie is a definite component

I really like the way the bass transitions 70s funk proper (rubbery, popping) to the 80s (gluey, squelching)

this is off-topic I suppose, but there are some real jams, i.e.

bassbeyondreason said:

I personally concieve a continuum between "groove funk" and "spasm funk", the intensification of groove funk leads to disco/house/hip hop, the intensification of spasm leads to jungle.

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Spasm funk is a very postpunk compatible concept - that's what James Chance's music was, really

And in fact there is a This Heat track which has fast sort-of-funky drums on it fed through a Harmoniser so they're all texturised - and it's like an uncanny advance glimpse of jungle

but going even further back, i suppose On The Corner is heading towards spasm-funk

thirdform said:

oldskool nerd section

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ya idk I hear current pop music pretty often diagetically, especially at the gym

I don't like most of it but I like having a sense of what's going on

it's not particularly funky these days. Uptown Funk was what, 5 years ago?

if anything I've noticed a mostly welcome early 90s pop house (C+C Music Factory etc) vibe creeping in the last year or two

the London + UK specific vibe I obviously can't really speak to

Looking back I think a turning point - or turning-off point more like it - with Da Funk was buying the first Red Hot Chilli Peppers album (or was it the second? at any rate the one produced by Andy Gill from Go4, who had once seemed like the ultimate in white funk to my sheltered ears). I liked it actually but you could tell it was exhausted as a sound template and ethos - the slap bass, the party-up spirit, the P-funk cover version. (Later the Chilli Peppers became absolutely the worst group on Earth).

Mind you i suppose - even as funk was outmoding itself and getting worn out in the Eighties - there was electro, which was funky but in a different way... and also all through the 80s Prince was keeping it alive (his most overtly James Browninan stuff = least interesting, though. And "Kiss" quickly paled for me, i could happily never listen to that again). Probably some others.

It's the distinction between funk-as-its-always-been-done-preserved-and-venerated versus funk-made-different / funk-renewed-and-estranged, maybe. Jamiroquai versus Dem 2, or Brand New Heavies versus Timbaland.

blissblogger said:

Spasm funk is a very postpunk compatible concept

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in fact, does it even exist before post-punk?

I'd think of spasm as contiguous with the deconstruction of funk

A Certain Ratio, Gang of Four, Medium Medium, etc

they share the same elements - chicken scratch guitar, negative space, on the 1, etc - but turned inside out in way of post-punk

in other words, spasm can't exist before deconstruction of funk

even at its furthest out funk proper never turns inside out, becomes ironic, etc

you could say the same of disco not disco vs disco proper tho there the line is a bit blurrier

btw spasm is a great term here. makes think of among other things Cuchulainn's warp spasm.

blissblogger said:

the distinction between funk-as-its-always-been-done-preserved-and-venerated versus funk-made-different / funk-renewed-and-estranged

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yeah that's a key insight I think

there is a whole raft of 80s funk revival stuff that I've never warmed too outside the odd tune

it's like the jungle revival stuff or any revival stuff, might produce the odd tune but pales in comparison to and is made totally redundant the original

I might posit Uptown Funk as the ne plus ultra of redundant pales in comparison to the originals, actually

luka said:

Yes, true enough, but I think a variety of arguments, particularly political arguments, from the 80s, have been resuscitated, brought back to ghoulish half-life. That doesn't mean we can shirk them.

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fair enough

the metanarrative answer is, as I said above and have probably said elsewhere many times, good things will always be repurposed to bad ends

I think the answer isn't to then ignore or cancel it all, but to use our critical faculties to parse the good from the bad

tbf some people might find it more worthwhile to say fuck it and focus their energies elsewhere

we all have a limit of mental energy innit

padraig (u.s.) said:

in fact, does it even exist before post-punk?

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I still don't think it categorically can

but this is a strange, obscure, deeply wonderful tune, personal favorite

proper ultra obscure (since reissued, of course, like every other thing) limited press funk from Atlanta ca. 1980

what makes it so unusual is that it sounds very much like the kind of records ACR was making at the same time


compare to ACR's cover of Shack Up


pretty much the only example like that I can think, funk proper having (unintentionally I have to think) an avant funk vibe

luka said:

Bartys childhood drum teacher was the drummer from This Heat. Barty said he's a terrible drummer and that when Barty turned 12 he said I can't teach you anymore Barty you are already better than me.

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perfect

blissblogger said:

but going even further back, i suppose On The Corner is heading towards spasm-funk

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I'd put the genesis here:

luka said:

Bartys childhood drum teacher was the drummer from This Heat. Barty said he's a terrible drummer and that when Barty turned 12 he said I can't teach you anymore Barty you are already better than me.

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no way! Charles Hayward?!

(I'd have to politely disagree with Barty there having seen CH doing a solo set several years ago at a festival - just drums and singing)

i don't believe in retrospective cancelling of things because of their enshitenment (although sometimes the enshitement of a genre - or within an individual career - can cast a reverse shadow)

but i think it's fair to say that sometimes a whole way of going about things, or a style of music, becomes obsolete - in the sense that it's got nothing more to give, it can't be stretched any further

but equally, you can think that, and move to other things, and then someone unexpectedly finds some new potential in what seemed exhausted

the other things with all these sorts of words - funk, soul, etc - they have a double meaning - a narrow one, where it refers to a genre - and a looser one where it's a quality or a feel that can be possessed by other types of music, usually the ones that are adjacent to the narrow-defined genre

So 'funk' is a property of a lot of rock music in the early Seventies, simply because it's the same instrumental line-up, it all comes from black music ultimately

also - being musicians with sponge-like ability to absorb and natural curiosity - they are listening to what's going on and copping ideas from the latest black sounds, partly because that's what they started with, but also cos they fancy having a hit, keeping the mortage payments going on their mansions etc

so overt moments of that would be Foghat having a little slap-bass interlude (most likely copped directly from Larry Graham) in the middle of "Slowride", or Beck Bogert Appice covering Stevie's "Superstition", or the Stones's various funky-discoey efforts

there's really quite a thin membrane separating funk and boogie and raunch - so you get something like James Gang's "Funk #49" making that overt, and it's a track that funks and rocks at the same time

this was a time when rock was still music to dance to - sluggishly compared to what's going on in the discos or the black clubs - but people are moving their bodies in the arena shows

bassbeyondreason said:

I'd put the genesis here

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right, OK

I guess I think of spasm as more spasm than that, but I see what you mean

looking for the sonic qualities of spasm - the squalling sax is big there, drums much busier than usual JB, everything busier, general air of chaos

been awhile since I went thru JB or funk canon in general, but that seems like an outlier? his grooves usually much tighter, focused, less chaotic.

only thing I can think of is maybe Get Up Offa That Thing, a bit. would be interested in any other pre-postpunk examples.