Bootsy Collins reissues keep the funk alive

It is safe to say that Bootsy Collins, bassist of Parliament-Funkadelic and funk ambassador extraordinaire, is not of this world.

Perhaps he’s the interplanetary love child of the cosmos and Larry Graham, or just a visitor sent to funkify Earth. Either way, they simply don’t make 'em like Bootsy in this solar system. It’d be easy for us Earthlings to brush off Bootzilla as a caricature in the mold of Flava Flav or David Lee Roth. Except that, unlike those two jesters, Collins has the ridiculous instrumental talent to justify his decadent insanity.

The archive-scouring record label Collector’s Choice aims to prove that fact by reissuing four Bootsy records from his prime, P-funk collective era (mid ‘70s-early ‘80s). By this time, Collins had contributed his space bass stylings to two of funk’s greatest masters: James Brown and George Clinton. Starting in 1976 with Stretchin’ Out in Bootsy’s Rubber Band, Collins began to branch out on his own as a bandleader and took the funk with him into a bizarre new dimension. In addition to Stretchin’ Out, Collector’s Choice will re-release This Boot is Made for Fonk-N (1979), Ultra Wave (1980), and The One Giveth, The Count Taketh Away (1982) on Oct. 16.

Bootsy’s personal motto has always been to “keep the funk alive,” and thanks to these reissues, it looks like the funk will live to fight another day.

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