Bootsy Collins, Bonnaroo 2011: HISTORY, BLISS + Star Spangled Banner

"Shhh I wanna hear the keyboard!", Bootsy hushes the band and the crowd, reading my mind. During soundcheck, unlike others training their lenses on Sean Lennon and Kareem Adbul-Jabbar -- the latter of whom was bespectacled in Bootsy's patented star-burst frames -- I instead watched "The Wizard of Woo", aka Bernie Worrell, who I'd admired since copping my brothers' Parliament and Funkadelic records at age 11 in 'the 70s. And for me, Worrell goes back to my very first Bonnaroo. I've been to the last seven of ten (I was always a C student) and at this first Bonnaroo I was in the pit at the X-Men, aka The X-Ecutioners when I got the most delicious soundbleed form another show I had really wanted to make and which constituted another cosmic scheduling overlap (Praxis or X-ecutioners.) The version of "Maggot Brain" delivered at that Praxis show by Worrell, Lily Hayden, Buckethead, Bill Laswell, et, al, remains a personal Bonnaroo high note, as I recall playing the 7" of this record discovering it my brothers' records — it was the first 7" 33RPM (not counting flexi-discs) I'd ever seen, and I remember thinking it was a good idea to have a small hole on 7"s, since the 45 adapter always gets lost anyway...
Many more notes on this show to come.

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Music

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• Beekman Park
• George Clinton 70th birthday