POP MUSIC REVIEW : Clinton’s P.Funk Nation at the Palace

Forget the Woodstock Nation. Here comes the return of the P.Funk Nation--”One nation under a groove,” as P.Funk chief George Clinton first put it a decade ago. And what a nation it could be, at least based on the crowd that jammed the Palace on Tuesday to see Clinton and his P.Funk All-Stars: New Age hippies, music industry cynics, urban funksters, Hollywood rockers, scruffies, upscales . . . the works, in all shades of white, black, brown and tan.

OK, so it wasn’t 300,000 people groping in the mud or anything, but there was a sense of unity among those on hand to pray to the god of funk. And there were overt musical references to Woodstock participants Jimi Hendrix (most prominently in the “Maggot Brain” guitar extravaganza featuring P.Funk long-timers Eddie Hazel, Michael Hampton and DeWayne McKnight) and Sly Stone (a chorus of “I Want to Take You Higher”).

But at nearly three hours, and consisting of numerous long jams, the show often called to mind the Grateful Dead. That’s a compliment. Few aggregations can pull coherence out of potential chaos as the Dead can, and P.Funk--with some 20 or so versatile musicians involved--did just that.

But unlike the Dead, the visual aspect of the show was more on stage than in the audience. Clinton’s flamboyance was matched by P.Funk mainstay and co-vocalist Garry Shider (wearing naught but a diaper and a chauffeur’s cap) and a guy appearing regularly sporting a cartoon dialogue balloon over his head presenting a series of catch-phrases and missives like the key P.Funk watchword, “Think. It ain’t illegal, yet!” Say--that would make a pretty good beginning to a constitution for a new nation. . . .