Live: P-Funk Earth Tour

Live: P-Funk Earth Tour

Parliament

As amazing as most of the '70s P-Funk albums are, the group was arguably a better live act than a studio act. Once the aggregation's patience and ambition wore thin with studio albums in the late '70s, Clinton was able to sustain his career merely on the merits of live performances, cult-like experiences that were rivaled only by the Grateful Dead 's in terms of legacy. Unfortunately, unlike the Dead , Clinton 's ensemble never went to excessive lengths to preserve its shows. Live: P-Funk Earth Tour stands as the band's only live album from the '70s, when it was at its peak (not counting bootlegs or posthumous imports). To be quite honest, there couldn't have been a better performance chosen for release; this is Parliament at its prime. Recorded in 1977 (the band's zenith) during the infamous "landing of the mothership" tour (its most extravagant), with the Bootsy - Worrell - Wesly - Parker - Hazel - Shider - Hampton lineup (its most talented), and a California audience (its most exuberant), this is almost a perfect document. Unfortunately, for the most part the album doesn't include any Funkadelic material, and at 70 minutes it's a bit brief relative to the band's shows, not leaving much room for extended jams. However, the album compensates by including a 15-minute version of "Dr. Funkenstein" that alludes to the group's potential to turn any song into an epic jam session, and also by including "Landing (Of the Holy Mothership)," a studio-produced three-minute interlude included for conceptual reasons but ultimately functioning better as a P-Funk montage (foreshadowing rap's excessive sampling). Over the years, other live P-Funk recordings have surfaced, but none are as widely available as this one, and none are as succinct. It's all the live P-Funk most fans will need.