By GARRET ELLISON
TRAVERSE CITY -- Funk fans, you are officially on notice: P-funk father George Clinton is landing his mothership at Streeters in Traverse City on Saturday night.
Be there, or wish you were on Sunday.
"Bring two booties to the show because we gonna wear one of 'em out," Clinton said. "We gonna kick them butts."
Clinton arrives with Parliament-Funkadelic, the ever-shifting-because-of-legal-issues name for his famous collective of funk musicians who innovated the style of music known as P-Funk in the late 1960s and '70s.
Over the years, the group has performed as "Parliament" and "Funkadelic" (two bands, same members, different labels), but also in numerous offshoots and solo projects.
Funk itself originated in the mid-to-late '60s as a rhythmic, danceable blend of soul, jazz and R&B.; P-Funk in particular is heavily influenced by psychedelic rock.
Parliament-Funkadelic racked up 13 U.S. R&B; chart Top Ten hits under its various guises, six R&B; chart No. 1 hits; and 15 members including Clinton were inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in 1997.
The band is known for extended live sets, politically charged lyrics and -- particularly Clinton -- outlandish outfits. And in the tradition of jam bands like the Grateful Dead and Phish, audiences are allowed to tape shows for non-commercial use.
Clinton, who records under his own label, The C Kunspyruhzy, after a long history of wrangling with various labels, said fans stay with a band longer if it's willing to tap the underground.
"Record business is over," he said. "They done played themselves completely out by not letting the artists participate in the overall thing."
These days, he said, musicians are better served by putting their material on YouTube than "worrying about the politics of getting on MTV."
Clinton started his first doo-wop quintet, The Parliaments, in Plainfield, N.J. in the early '60s. He was also a Motown staff songwriter for a period. His influence with P-Funk spawned disciples like Dr. Dre, Prince, Public Enemy, The Red Hot Chili Peppers, Outkast and more.
Today, he enjoys the distinction of being among the most sampled musicians of all time. He even released three volumes of a disc with tracks tailored for hip-hop musicians, called "Sample Some of Disc, Sample Some Of D.A.T."
"Funk is the DNA for hip-hop," he said. "Funk is the DNA for techno and all the other dance music."
Having lived through the various mud slung initially at rock 'n roll, then hip-hop, he said there's a kind of cleverness about new music genres. For him, watching young people is the best way to discover the new wave of sound.
"If I hear a musician say 'I hate that' or parents say 'I hate that'-- that's gonna be the new music," he said. "A lot of people don't want to believe it, just like they didn't want to believe that 'aw-wop-bop-a-loo-bop-a-wap-bam-boom' was lyrics."
Long a voice of protest, Clinton can be heard in "When the World's at Peace" on "A Soulful Tale of Two Cities," a 2006 album of Philadelphia and Detroit musicians performing material from each other's cities.
"That was the first one (protest song) in a long time," he said. "I would rather be somewhere dancin' and jammin', but it seems so much like the '60s, now."
Clinton said his next studio release will be a doo-wop album featuring collaborations with Santana, Kim Burrell and others. He is recording material for a live album as the P-Funk tour winds through Russia, Singapore and Malaysia for the first time next month.
He sees high energy from the international fans, he said, even if they don't always know the words. In Japan, the music is written down phonetically and distributed to the crowd "so, when they leave, you see all these pieces of paper on the floor," he said.
Doors open at 7 p.m. Tickets are $32 plus handling, available to 21 and older. Call 932-1300 or visit www.streetersonline.com for more information.
