The great U.S. Funk Mob had hotter jams than this, but their oeuvre never readily boiled down to high points. This aggregation (“band” is inadequate to a project this conceptual) got far more mileage than anyone else out of what would be filler from anyone else: midtempo grooves on which the harmony group at its core could expound vocally and, above all, rhetorically. This track was edited and shortened by half for single release in 1975, but it makes no sense reduced to its hooky bits. It requires its full six minute length for the groove to unwind properly, underlined by Bernie Worrell’s sublime bridge sections, interlaced with Fred Wesley and Maceo Parker’s horn lines, interrupting the overall flow periodically while underlining George Clinton’s explication of his extended metaphor. The Mothership on the album cover (and in the shows) was not just slick science fiction marketing; it was a chariot to the next life. Certainly, Electric Light Orchestra could hardly land their own copycat spaceship and start quoting the Book of Revelations -- saying “it’s nothing but a party” and “it’s just me and the boys,” and then caution listeners thus: “When Gabriel's horn blows, you better be ready to go.”
Note: For Advent, 25 secular essays about 25 songs, one per day from Dec. 1 through Dec. 25. Each essay is exactly 200 words long.
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