P-Funk Earth Tour

The P-Funk Earth Tour was a concert tour by Parliament-Funkadelic in 1976-1977, featuring absurd costumes, lavish staging and special effects, and music from both the Parliament and Funkadelic repertoires.

The P-Funk Earth Tour was ambitious from the start. Casablanca Records executive Neil Bogart gave George Clinton a $275,000 budget for production, the largest amount ever allocated for a Black music act to tour.[1] Clinton hired Jules Fischer as set designer, who had previously worked on tours for The Rolling Stones, KISS, and other rock bands.[1][2] Both the show's music and production elements were extensively rehearsed at an aircraft hangar in Newburgh, New York.[1][2] The show required seven trucks to transport its equipment and scenery.[2] With a broad range of themes embodied in the show's production, culminating in the Afrofuturist landing of the P-Funk Mothership, author Rickey Vincent states that the P-Funk Earth Tour "drew from the ribald, uncensored entirety of the Black tradition in mind-blowing ways no one had yet even attempted."[1] Rolling Stone viewed the tour as embracing Clinton's "semiserious funk mythology" with "[a] mixture of tribal funk, elaborate stage props and the relentless assault on personal inhibition [that] resembled nothing so much as a Space Age Mardi Gras."[3] The New York Times described the tour as featuring "superbly silly, lavish costumes" and an "opulent Baroque ... stage show".[4]

The tour began in April 1976 in Nashville.[1] The 1977 live album Live: P-Funk Earth Tour was recorded at two early 1977 concerts, January 19 at the Los Angeles Forum and January 21 at the Oakland Coliseum.[1] The tour drew to a close in mid-1977; its expenses were as high as its innovation level and it was losing money steadily;[5] indeed one tour assistant's job was "to tell the musicians why they weren't getting paid."[5] Nevertheless, the tour served as valuable publicity and marketing for "the P-Funk brand",[5] making reference to the greater Parliament-Funkadelic-Clinton enterprise of acts, records, side projects, spin-offs, andso forth.

In 1986, Capitol issued a recording of a late 1976 concert as Mothership Connection: Live From Houston, attributed to George Clinton and Parliament-Funkadelic.

Date City Country Venue
April 16, 1976 Nashville United States Nashville Municipal Auditorium
April 18, 1976 Cleveland Allen Theatre
April 24, 1976 Richmond Richmond Coliseum
May 14, 1976 Cincinnati Riverfront Coliseum
May 15, 1976 Pittsburgh Civic Arena
May 29, 1976 Philadelphia Spectrum
June 11, 1976 Tulsa Tulsa Assembly Center
June 20, 1976 Detroit Masonic Temple
July 13, 1976 Orlando Orlando Sports Stadium
July 18, 1976 Nashville Nashville Municipal Auditorium
August 12, 1976 Seattle Paramount Theatre
August 14, 1976 Los Angeles Shrine Auditorium
September 26, 1976 Newburgh Stewart International Airport
October 2, 1976 Providence Providence Civic Center
October 27, 1976 New Orleans Municipal Auditorium
October 28, 1976 Baton Rouge LSU Assembly Center
October 29, 1976 Jackson Mississippi Coliseum
October 30, 1976 Lake Charles Lake Charles Civic Center
October 31, 1976 Houston The Summit
November 3, 1976 San Antonio HemisFair Arena
November 5, 1976 Dallas Dallas Convention Center
November 6, 1976 Norman Lloyd Noble Center
November 7, 1976 Tulsa Tulsa Assembly Center

References

  1. Vincent, Rickey (1996). Funk: The Music, the People, and the Rhythm of the One. St. Martin's Press. ISBN 0-312-13499-1. p. 245.
  2. Thompson, Dave (2001). Funk. Backbeat Books. ISBN 0-87930-629-7. p. 90.
  3. McEwen, Joe (1980). "Funk". The Rolling Stone Illustrated History of Rock & Roll. New York: Random House/Rolling Stone Press. ISBN 0-394-73938-8. p. 375.
  4. John Rockwell (1977-07-01). "The Pop Life: A Secular Niche For Gospel and 'Jesus Rock'". The New York Times. Retrieved 2007-12-16.
  5. Kempton, Arthur (2005). Boogaloo: The Quintessence of American Popular Music. University of Michigan Press. ISBN 0-472-03087-6. pp. 380–381.
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