BOOTSY: Ththumping To P-Funk’s Bumping

United Sound is one of Detroit's most famous studios, the place where many early Motown sessions were cut, where just about every one of the major Motor City acts recorded one time or another; but to the unwary, it's just another large house in a row of frat houses by the edge of Wayne State University. Now, there may be some scary shit going on in some of the science labs at Wayne State, recombinant DNA research or shellfish toxin research or even motivational programming research for all I know, but I know for certain that there is a monster in United Sound. Oh, not all the time, but most of the time that George Clinton, maggot overlord of Funkadelia, is down in his special P-Funk Lab at United Sound, there's a monster.

Naturally, visitors have to be protected—even P-Funk insurance has its restrictive clauses—so while I was in the room, I could see nothing of the monster, who was ensconced behind thick one-way glass in a padded booth over a hundred feet across the studio. We were further protected by similar insulation shielding us from the studio room, but even so, we could hear the monster: THUMP THUMPTHTHUMP BUMP. Clinton, resembling Dr. Funkenstein, hunched over the control panel a bit more, then picked up an oblong microphone of a sort I haven't seen since high school French language lab, and crooned into it. The thumping stopped. There was a pause. The monster was about to speak. The monster spoke: