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   The genres of rhythm and blues, funk and hip-hop would be very different today without George Clinton and his bands. Clinton and his colleagues were perhaps the first to merge the soul music of the 1960s with acid rock, free jazz, and other genres previously unseen in rhythm and blues (not to mention Clinton’s own unique, bawdy, eccentric worldview and language). In doing so, they defined the sound that came to be known as funk. In the 1970s Clinton’s bands, Parliament and Funkadelic (which consisted of mostly the same musicians and toured as a single unit, often called P-Funk for short, but recorded under different names for legal reasons) dominated the R&B charts with over 40 hit singles and three platinum albums. In the 1980s singer/songwriter/arranger Clinton consolidated the different outfits under his own name and had a few more hits. By the end of that decade, a number of hip-hop grooves were relying on samples from Clinton’s ’70s oeuvre, and a new generation was introduced to its genius and madness. Throughout the 1990s and into the 21st century, a number of jambands began covering Clinton’s songs. One memorable collaboration occurred on 7/2/96, when all four members of Phish sat in with Santana for three songs including the classic Funkadelic instrumental “Maggot Brain.”
    Clinton got his start in music when he formed a doo-wop group, the Parliaments, in New Jersey in 1955. They had one hit single, “(I Wanna) Testify,” in 1967, but by the end of that decade, Clinton had moved the outfit to Detroit and it began experimenting with the sound it would soon unleash upon the world. Due to a legal dispute with a record label, Clinton and company temporarily abandoned the Parliaments name and recorded as Funkadelic. By 1974 that dispute had been resolved and the collective began regularly issuing records as Parliament also. Initially Parliament’s records were pop-oriented and funkier and Funkadelic’s more experimental, but the distinction blurred as time went on. Anyone with any interest in funk music needs to hear the peak moments of these outfits, including Funkadelic’s “Can You Get to That?” “Red Hot Mama,” and “One Nation Under a Groove,” Parliament’s “Up for the Down Stroke,” “Give Up the Funk (Tear the Roof off the Sucker),” and “Flash Light,” and Clinton’s “Atomic Dog” and “Paint the White House Black.” Pretty much all the 1970s albums are worth owning; the best are arguably Parliament’s Mothership Connection (1976) and Funkadelic’s One Nation Under a Groove (1978). A number of legendary musicians have passed through Clinton’s bands, including Bernie Worrell, Maceo Parker, William “Bootsy” Collins, Fred Wesley, Gary Shider, Walter “Junie” Morrison, Jerome Brailey, and the late Eddie Hazel. The group continues to tour today. When keyboard whiz Worrell, who owns at least part of the rights to the “Parliament” and “Funkadelic” names, plays with them, they are billed as “George Clinton and Parliament/Funkadelic.” When Worrell is not part of the band, they are billed as “George Clinton and the P-Funk All-Stars.”
    The strange worlds of P-Funk and Phish collided on 12/30/03, when both were in Miami, FL to perform, Phish at the American Airlines Arena and P-Funk for a late-night post-Phish show at the Ice Palace Soundstage. Phish foreshadowed a collaboration when its first-set-closing “2001” contained a “P.Funk (Wants to Get Funked Up)” jam, including some lyrics. The madness began during the second set’s “Makisupa Policeman,” when, instead of saying a keyword, Trey gave a short speech. “I was just asking Page if we could play `Touch Me,’ with Fish, but we don’t have the horn section and we don’t know it so… we can’t!” he said. Then, after another pass through the “Makisupa” chorus, he added, “Ahhh, it’s such a let down. I feel like I let you all down, saying Fish would sing `Touch Me’ and we can’t because we can’t remember it and we don’t have a horn section with us. So instead of playing `Touch Me,’ if you could just wait for a second, we’d like to bring Parliament/Funkadelic on stage with us to play a song... and that’s even better than ‘Touch Me!’” Clinton and a number of his colleagues (including Worrell, a bassist, a female singer and a drummer who played Fish’s kit while he moved to a mini-kit and then to vacuum) came out and led Phish through a 20-minute jam that was essentially a medley of P-Funk songs. It included snippets of “Give Up the Funk (Tear the Roof off the Sucker),” “P.Funk (Wants to Get Funked Up),” “Get Off Your Ass and Jam” and “One Nation Under a Groove.” For much of the jam an unidentified teenage boy was on stage, dancing next to Trey. At the end of the medley, everyone left the stage except Fish, who soloed on the vacuum before departing. A minute later, Phish returned and resumed “Makisupa,” during which Trey said that to prove having P-Funk sit in was better than having Fish sing “Touch Me,” Fish would now sing one line of that song. Page played the intro and Fish then sang the first line a cappella. During the “Contact” encore, Trey sang lines like “Make my funk the P-Funk” instead of his usual harmonies. But the collaboration was not over: At P-Funk’s show later that night, Mike sat in on bass.