GEORGE CLINTON COMES BACK FROM THE DEAD

Two years ago, George Clinton's funk train was stalled on the tracks. Parliament had become a non-factor, Funkadelic could not get it up to funk and Bootsy's Rubber Band had been given the boot. Various other clones had never even become serious contenders and such unlikely spinoffs as The Brides Of Funkenstein, Parlet and a Bernie Worrell solo project had been quietly put to rest. To make it worse, the only thing making any noise was Zapp, a band discovered by Clinton and produced by Bootsy that became the center of an incredible legal hassle that put Clinton up against some of the biggest entertainment corporations in the world: Warner Brothers and CBS.

Fast forward to 1983. The dust has settled, the legal hassles have been settled (at least for the time being), and even if the funk train is not exactly steaming ahead at full speed, as in the glory days of '78 and '79, at the very least the engine hasn't derailed. And it may be possible for Clinton to hitch Parliament, Funkadelic and Bootsy's Rubber Band along for the ride around the next bend. His own "solo" album has turned out to be a biggie, helped along by an unlikely single called "Atomic Dog," which was in turn goosed along in the latter stages of its life by an eye-popping video that—even if it never got on my MTV (can't really blame them on this one)—showed that Clinton as a master of the bizarre is still in top form, in spite of everything he's endured.