Pity the poor young suckers in the skin-on-skin crowd who tried to keep pace with Chuck Brown and George Clinton at the 9:30 club Friday. On their own, the Godfather of Go-Go and the Master of Funk can unleash enough booty-bumping grooves to bring the heartiest of party pros to their wobbly knees. But put these legends together on a historic double bill and, well, that's just wicked.
And exhausting.
To the window! To the wall! Fans get in on the action -- and oh, was there action -- at the Chuck Brown and George Clinton concert Friday at the 9:30 club.
(Photos Dudley M. Brooks -- The Washington Post)
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And downright life-affirming.
So congrats to the sturdy few who heeded the 63-year-old Clinton's midnight warning to "pace yourselves" and were still around to witness the four-hour show's 2:26 a.m. finish. Even when the house lights were up and roadies were dismantling the stage, an oblivious Clinton, his technicolor geyser of hair whipping everywhere, still refused to stop the funk.
This was a shindig to top them all.
Decked out in a dark three-piece suit and fedora, Brown and his Soul Searchers backing band opened the sold-out endurance test with a one-hour set that played like the chummiest house party you've ever crashed.
Born in 1933 and a certified local for all but the first three years of his life, Brown is as important to our city as that tall monument down on the Mall. Go-go -- a celebratory form of R&B built on syncopated rhythms, staccato blasts of brass and call-and-response merriment -- is Washington's greatest musical export, and Brown is largely responsible for kick-starting it back in the '70s. If you live in the District and haven't seen Brown in action, shame on you.
But from the look and sound of Brown, there's still time to catch him. Lots of time. Like a blues man who just can't stop smiling, the tireless, ageless Brown sings his get-down instruction with growly camaraderie, kind of like James Brown gone go-go. Like George Benson, he also enjoys scatting along to his plucky guitar solos, just another reason you want to hug the guy. (And I'm not saying that just because Brown recently shot a TV spot promoting The Washington Post's Style section. Although I love him for that, too.)
As the crowd chanted its requisite command -- "Wind me up, Chuck!" -- the man cradled his guitar like a dear friend and led his massive band -- at one point there were 17 people -- through the mid-tempo gem "It Don't Mean a Thing (If It Don't Have the Go-Go Swing)," the jazz-go-go fusion of "Midnight Sun," and the buskers' anthem "We Need Some Money."
Just before Brown dropped a 10-minute encore version of his biggest hit, "Bustin' Loose," he invited another D.C. go-go legend to join him: Sugar Bear, from Experience Unlimited (EU to those in the know), who gripped the mike and led a sing-along of his band's bawdy backside homage "Da Butt." Let's just say there haven't been that many hip checks under one roof since the Capitals last skated at MCI Center.
The beaming Brown lingered onstage after his show, introducing his granddaughter to the throngs and chatting up the crowd like he knew each and every face. Unfortunately, he didn't stay long enough to play with Clinton and his P-Funk All-Stars. Now that would have been something to see.
Clinton -- perhaps because his hair needed a few more rainbow ribbons (he was a barber before he was a musician!) -- didn't come onstage for a good 20 minutes. Instead, Gary "Starchild" Shider -- who wore nothing more than his trademark giant diaper -- fronted the All-Stars, which also crammed enough talent onstage to field a football team, plus a very sexy cheerleader squad. "This is gonna be a long one tonight," Starchild said. "We're gonna party like it's 1979." He wasn't kidding.
(A quick, entirely confusing P-Funk history lesson: Clinton, who originally started his career as a doo-wop artist, formed two bands in the '70s: Parliament and Funkadelic. Both bands shared musicians and experimented in mixing R&B, soul and funk, with Funkadelic journeying into psychedelic rock. Clinton eventually merged the bands in the '80s. These days, the P-Funk All-Stars roam the galaxy in a spaceship called the Mothership. Got that? Good.)
P-Funk opened with the bass-heavy "Funkentelechy (Where'd You Get That Funk From)," then jammed and jammed and jammed, rarely stopping for a breath. Not everything was brilliant in the three-hour set, especially when Clinton took a break: At five minutes, trippy instrumental classic "Maggot Brain" is a great song, with guitarist Blackbyrd McKnight doing a blistering Jimi Hendrix impression. At 15 minutes, "Maggot Brain" was enough to make you contemplate your car keys. And on several occasions, P-Funk's improvisation just seemed like so much tinkering. Just when you thought (hoped?) a song was ending -- it wasn't. Instead, there was a 10-minute theremin solo just around the corner.
But for better or worse, there ain't no party like a P-Funk party. It was impossible not to shimmy when Clinton hollered, "To the window! To the wall! Till the sweat runs down my wall!" and then commenced "Give Up the Funk (Tear the Roof Off)."
At 1:30 a.m., and with bodies in the crowd dropping left and right, Clinton finally unloaded his biggest hits: "One Nation Under a Groove," "Flashlight" and that peerless piece of funk majesty, "Atomic Dog" ("Bow wow wow, yippie yo, yippie yay!").
It wasn't until Starchild grabbed his boss's microphone and told him to leave that the show ended. And there's a lesson for you: When a man who wears a diaper for a living tells you the party's over, it really is time to go home.
