Venue:
Palais Theatre
Date: 20/09/2025
The Palais is a beautiful deco style refurbished theatre in Melbourne -capacity 2900. Thkis gig wasn’t sold out -they’ve been here in the last few years and a big footy preliminary final was on late afternoon. And it is a seated venue which is an interesting prospect for a full-on psychedelic funkfest.
We arrived a few minutes in and everyone was standing in their seat space and pretty much stood all night. 14-piece band 3-piece brass, keyboards, drums, 3 vocalists/talkers/rappers/dancers ,bass, 4 guitars and George.
Mr Clinton, resplendent in his gold jacket and cap, spent most of the night in what looked like an armless office chair. He sang little and spent the bulk of the evening clapping or that full length lowered arm waving he does. The only time he was off the chair was to come to the front and exhort us to do the funk, the dog, get on down, get on up etc….or when he fell off the chair. Maybe wheels on that chair were a bad idea. Given he is 84 he wouldn’t want to tumble too often.
It was a continuous stream of songs punctuated by long and loud searing psychedelic funk solos and some rather excellent jazzy brass solos.There was an end to each song or medley but they would start the nexzt one up straight away with no talk or introductions.
Last tour there were 2 female vocalists at an all standing gig with the stage full of audience members. I saw him in Sydney in the early noughties and left after 3 hours. That show the funk was lighter – this one had a lot more chanting and finished on the button of 2 hours.
I’ll admit that I found the constant exhorting to chant and to clap a bit wearing so occasionally I sat down and shut my eyes for a rest and some focussed listening. It would probably have helped to have been drugged up in some form but I drove up from the country so that wasn’t on.
It was a pretty damn good show and probably better than I expected. The final medley including Atomic dog was just great.
Will I go again? Maybe.
I’ll post the set list in comments
Free Your mind and your ass will follow.
The audience:
Wide spead. Even mix of man and women plenty of boomers but lots os young uns – 20’s 30’s with a lot singing along so they knew his stuff.
It made me think..
These long running, multi member bands are really a brand nowadays. Like the Sun Ra Arkestra post Sun Ra ,will it matter that Goerge is no longer touring in the future? It is all about that incredibly distinctive Psychedelic funk.
Setlist from the night before but close enough.
https://www.setlist.fm/setlist/george-clinton-and-parliament-funkadelic/2025/fortitude-music-hall-brisbane-australia-1b59215c.html
Musically, that sounds great. Quite fancy it if it comes back to the UK. But GC’s presence sounds a bit sad, really.
I was at the afore-mentioned Brisbane gig, which was a standing venue, and the atmosphere may have been a bit more vibrant. GC was off his chair for a good 60-70% of the night. The real casualty was other original P-Funker Michael Hampton (Kid Funkadelic) who sat on the drum riser in a onesie barely moving except to play a couple of mechanical, note for note solos, including Maggot Brain, and then wandering aimlessly off the stage about 3/4 of the way through.
What was extraordinary was the breadth of talent on stage, with 4-5 top flight vocalists and fantastic instrumentalists. Personally, I would have left the rapper at home, but that aspect was suitably brief. The funk was had and all P-Funk bases were hit.
The only downer was some shoddy mixing work that several times left feature vocalists silent, most notably when leather boy let down his hair and let rip in Flashlight. He was completely inaudible and he seemed a bit surprised at the muted reaction.
Interesting – as I wrote in the review there were a lot there younger than me and they were right up for it. That kept the energy up. I looked around and a lot of us boomers were happy to let the younguns do the heavy lifting on the crowd participation.
George – a bit sad? I didn’t think so. Pretty amazing he is up with such a high energy show at 84. The fall off the chair was just a miscalculation.
They said they would be coming back as many times as rhey can – dunno whether than would be with or without George.
@Podicle Kid Funkadelic is the heavier set old guy with the psychedelic SG?
He did a lot of long soloing at my show. Maybe either he was not feeling well in Brissie or underwhelmed by the muted crowd reception.
Having an 84 year old parent, I was stunned by how active GC was during the gig. As I said, he was mostly on his feet for the gig. The crowd overall was rapturous and very high energy.
Yes, Michael Hampton has the SG. He played on Super Stupid, Maggot Brain and maybe one other. He appeared to be asleep the rest of the time.
There is a ‘Ship of Theseus’ feel to P-Funk, but it’s always been like that. Bootsy and Eddie Hazel came and went, Glenn Goins (my favourite vocalist) was only there for a few years and the lineup seemed reasonably arbitrary. I thought the current team did a good job keeping the spirit going, but when GC goes, surely P-Funk will be no more despite 93% of the people on stage being unchanged.