muser

Well-known member
Eddie hazel and Hendrix really come together at Band of Gypsys and Funkadelic but from two different directions. Hendrix trying to bring funk into rock music and Hazel vice versa. I much prefer Eddie Hazel, its unfortunate he got so overshadowed by Hendrix's legacy.
 

version

Well-known member
Is it Simon who has the thing about 1983… (A Merman I Should Turn to Be)? I remember Barty or someone bringing it up a while ago.
 

linebaugh

Well-known member
Eddie hazel and Hendrix really come together at Band of Gypsys and Funkadelic but from two different directions. Hendrix trying to bring funk into rock music and Hazel vice versa. I much prefer Eddie Hazel, its unfortunate he got so overshadowed by Hendrix's legacy.
Hazel may have made better music but as a guitarist he's really uninteresting to me. always felt his solos were too by the book
 

version

Well-known member
Ah, Kodwo talks about it too.
"Marine militarisation
Hendrix's "1983...(A Merman I Should Turn To Be)", Parliament's "I'm A Fish (And You're A Water Sign", Can's "Future Days", LTJ Bukem's "Atlantis (I Need You)", the late 90s Vincent Floyd*inspired Deep House of Aqua Bassino and 16B: all these are aquatopian. Aquatopias cradle and lull you into a deep end of placid angles. Like UR's X*103 Atlantis project, Drexciya paves over this underwater paradise, requisitions the Bermuda Triangle for a fifth theatre of war. Modern science knows more about the Red Planet than the abyssal plains of the deep sea. Therefore, these unknown depths are the appropriate environment for concepts secreted deep in track subtitles, impressed in the vinyl, hidden notions you have to dive for.
The Future feeds forward into the Past
The sleevenotes to The Quest CD are an origin story, a prequel that links genetic mutation to recent breakthroughs in liquid oxygen technology and retroacts both back to the Slave Trade. "During the greatest Holocaust the world has ever known, pregnant America*bound African slaves were thrown overboard by the thousands during labour for being sick and disruptive cargo. Is it possible that they could have given birth at sea to babies that never needed air? Are Drexciyans water*breathing aquatically mutated descendents of those unfortunate victims of human greed? Recent experiements have shown a premature human infant saved from certain death by breathing liquid oxyden through its underdeveloped lungs."
https://arena-attachments.s3.amazonaws.com/1504716/07bb3bc69a5c41c0ea96b1874990f4a2.pdf?1513176216
 

version

Well-known member
1983 A Merman is more about the mythology tho, especially in dissensus terms where most people aren't truly into guitars

idk if the Drexciya guys ever listened to it as children or teenagers, or if they did what they thought

and unlike Drexciya - tho, not unlike P-Funk - there's a healthy does of white hippiedom in there, Atlantis way down beneath the ocean where I wanna be

but Jimi flips it ofc - a black man turns on his back on a dying earth (speaking of apocalyptic fantasies) and takes The Journey Home to Neptune's Lair etc

not merely escapism but active flight from a dystopia. which Drexciya then brings all the way back around to the active creation of a different kind of utopia.

why I have always found Drexciya so fascinating, even all the faceless techno mystery (which was before my time anyway) and incredible quality of the music aside

to refashion the impossible trauma of the Middle Passage and all that followed into this equally impossibly creative counternarrative

I just, idk, I can't even articulate. the level of creative genius it takes to transcend even for a moment the insane toxicity of American racial history + race relations.
 

padraig (u.s.)

a monkey that will go ape
Eddie hazel and Hendrix really come together at Band of Gypsys and Funkadelic but from two different directions. Hendrix trying to bring funk into rock music and Hazel vice versa.
there is no Funkadelic Eddie Hazel without Hendrix

Jimi was almost a decade older and he was revolutionizing the guitar - opening those new worlds - when Eddie Hazel was still in high school

that's nothing against Hazel, just how it is
 

padraig (u.s.)

a monkey that will go ape
the dissensus - more broadly, the Jimi was truly great/isn't overrated - argument for him exists in the space between "1983..." and "Machine Gun"
 

padraig (u.s.)

a monkey that will go ape
that's what all his copycats and direct followers never got

anyone can recreate his solos with the right gear and enough practice - with sufficient talent you can even do better versions of them i.e. "Maggot Brain"

but toward the end he was trying to do for rock music what Coleman, Ayler, et al did for jazz

or tbh what Bruce Lee was trying to do with martial arts (25 years before "MMA" was a twinkle in anyone's eye)

master the form so completely that you learn how to break all its rules and use the form to go beyond the form to create something else
 

padraig (u.s.)

a monkey that will go ape
not that I'm trying to get into another argument about modernism and whether new is "better" than reworking existing forms

but that's what makes him different from millions of heavy shredding guitar dudes to follow
 

muser

Well-known member
there is no Funkadelic Eddie Hazel without Hendrix

Jimi was almost a decade older and he was revolutionizing the guitar - opening those new worlds - when Eddie Hazel was still in high school

that's nothing against Hazel, just how it is

Undoubtedly he owed a lot to Jimi but I think lost a lot of recognition he deserved due to there not being enough space for anyone remotely similar at that time. I see him as a kind of a missing link between Jimi and Prince. Might be a bit much but I'm biased because he was one of the first guitarists I really got into.
 

padraig (u.s.)

a monkey that will go ape
I think lost a lot of recognition he deserved due to there not being enough space for anyone remotely similar at that time
that could be true. it depends how much recognition you think he deserves 1) outside Jimi's shadow 2) outside of George Clinton/Funkadelic as a whole

my answer would be 1) not a ton, tho more than straight up Jimi clones 2) hard to say, tho he was seamlessly replaced by Michael Hampton

don't get me wrong, "Maggot Brain" is on the very short list of best guitar things ever, and Games Dames + Guitar Thangs is a cool record

just yunno it ain't really comparable between him and Hendrix in terms of footprint etc

Prince claimed to have been influenced in guitar-playing more by Santana which [shrugs] sure, if that's what he says
 

padraig (u.s.)

a monkey that will go ape
the influence of George Clinton and and P-funk on 80s funk - boogie, electrofunk, Prince - is inestimable

but that's more about Bootsy Collins, electronics, vibe, vocoders, his protege Roger Troutman, etc

than guitar-playing specifically
 
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