By Spoiks
You
really can't deny that Billy Preston is the funkiest, grooviest motherfucker
on the planet. And to anyone that says Billy Preston isn't the funkiest,
grooviest motherfucker on the planet, I say "Step back, bitch! I've
got words for your mother!"
It all comes down to the Preston
classic, "Outta-Space" (a tune most recently re-introduced to American
culture through a series of Intel ads.) How can you not groove to this
funkified intrumental madness - a montage of clavinet grooves, moog madness
and spiny guitar. It's not a song about "melody" or "chord
progressions" but simply vibe. A vibe of spacy grooviness: the kind
of hoodoo John Glenn must have tripped out on when he was jiving with
the star people. That is "Outta-Space": pure mood music, man... and the
mood is full speed freak!
Granted, Preston pulled a few
more rabbits out of his hat later in life. His gig in Sgt. Peppers (Bee-Gees
era), his mellow "I Wrote an Simple Song" sing-a-long, his prison time
for cocaine... But the cream that rises to the top of Billy's
career is always "Outta-Space" The way it zooms in and out of cosmic asteroids
towards the trippathon of lunar madness. No doubt, P-Funk owes a lot of
it's spacey iconography to way out groves of Billy P. James Brown may
have invented Funk, but it was Billy Preston who invented Psychedelic
Funk - the kind of juice you get flowing when you mix your Angel Dust
with your LSD. Laid down and groovy, it's the kind of funk that let's
you soak up the sweet sugar of the opposite sex while tripping the light
galactic. With Preston, funk flew to a whole new level, and those who
didn't catch the ride were left dripping in their own jizz.
Rock on brother!
When you clean the lint out
of your bellybutton, there you will find Spoiks.
