Various - Running the Voodoo Down

  by Kimberly Bright

published: 27 / 5 / 2017

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Review

Festival Fest Records’ 'Running the Voodoo Down' compilation highlights a turbulent, vibrant era in American black music, presided over by Miles Davis, George Clinton, Jimi Hendrix, and Sly Stone. The wild, innovative, uninhibited music of this time begins at the moment in the late 1960's that a faction of the civil rights movement became politically radicalized and took a hard left turn. Following the assassination and imprisonment of so many early civil rights leaders, communities’ festering anger erupted into open talk of revolution, Marxism, destroying capitalism, violent rhetoric, and dismantling American institutions entirely. Coming out of this political milieu, these psychedelic-rock-funk-soul-jazz songs are naturally angry and confrontational, with references to racism, social unrest, the Vietnam War, police, arrests, jail, being unable to afford bail, drugs, sex, prostitutes, and outrageous con games (the latter three in the proto-rap spoken word of Last Poet Lightnin’ Rod with Jimi Hendrix 'Doriella du Fontaine'). The compilation includes the already well known (James Brown’s 'Talkin’ Loud and Saying Nothin’ (Pt. 1 & Pt. 2)', Funkadelic’s 'Maggot Brain' and 'Red Hot Mama'. the Chambers Brothers’ 'Time Has Come Today'), along with the headscratchingly obscure (Keith Jarrett’s 'Have a Real Time'). George Clinton used Afrofuturism science fiction tropes in Funkadelic to allegorically address racism, with dystopian images not far off already burning cities. His instruction to guitarist Eddie Hazel on how to approach the blistering solo on 'Maggot Brain' was to play as though he had just learned his mother had died. Clinton, a self-avowed grunge rock fan, told 'Rolling Stone' in 2015 that Kurt Cobain had reminded him of Eddie. With the inclusion of Miles Davis at his most iconoclastic ('Willie Nelson', featuring John McLaughlin and Sonny Sharrock), there is also a thread of uncompromising experimentalism, with no thought whatsoever to the commercial market. Miles Davis said in 1969, “I didn’t use John [McLaughlin] as a rock player, but for special effects. John’s no more a rock guitar player than I’m a rock trumpet player. You don’t have to be a special kind of player to play rock.” Several of these projects were boldly uncommercial in every way, but were hugely influential on later generations of musicians. Pure Hell’s (cited by Bad Brains as a major inspiration) 'I Feel Bad' should have been in the punk canon ages ago. The exciting no-rules approach sometimes produced strange results: freeform fusion ambling, endless jamming, songs pushing ten minutes or more, including the psychedelic full-length version of the Chamber Brothers’ 'Time Has Come Today', with an impromptu riff of 'The Little Drummer Boy' during its long drawn-out middle part. The occasional darkness and avant-garde twists are eased by the Meters, the top session band in New Orleans ('Liar'), Fugi’s 'Mary Don’t Take Me On No Bad Trip', the undisputed grooviness of Sly & the Family Stone, and the Mothers of Invention-like 'If You’ve Got It, You’ll Get It' by the Headhunters. The choices of cover versions of songs by white artists are intriguing: the Isley Brothers with Crosby, Stills, Nash & Young’s 'Ohio', Eddie Hazel’s gorgeous, soulful version of the Mamas and the Papas’ 'California Dreamin’, Buddy Miles’ take on Neil Young’s 'Down by the River,” and the Undisputed Truth’s cover of Dylan’s 'Like a Rolling Stone.” Journalist Tom Wolfe discussed this alliance of the Black Power movement with predominantly white middle-class counterculture in his essay 'Radical Chic', in which members of the Black Panthers and a smattering of hippies awkwardly socialize with left-learning New York intellectuals at a Manhattan fundraiser cocktail party hosted by Leonard Bernstein. It’s easy to imagine either of the albums in this compilation being the soundtrack for that evening. 'Running the Voodoo Down!' is a well-crafted compilation that provides a snapshot of what the gritty revolution really sounded like in late 1960's America.

Track Listing:-

1 Talkin' Loud And Saying Nothin' (Pt.1 & Pt.2)
2 Red Hot Mama
3 Mary Don't Take Me On No Bad Trip
4 Cherrystones
5 Patience Is Virtue
6 Willie Nelson (Take 3)
7 Thrills Of Love
8 Liar
9 Down By The River
10 California Dreamin'
11 Like a Rolling Stone
12 Thank You For Talkin' To Me, Africa
13 Doriella Du Fontaine
14 Maggot Brain
15 In A Silent Way (Live)