THAT FUNK

Funk is alien music. It is channeled by the cosmos and if you leave your conduit open long and wide enough it might just decide to come on in. Funk is a feeling or better said, a collective of all feelings colliding at once in a perpendicular universe inhabited by civilizations far more advanced than our own. Funk is primal music coated in thick tribal drum nectar. Funk is barbequed get down that cuts through bone and marinates in the bottom of one’s soul. Funk is deep fried creativity served up with a side of goddamn! Funk is a soul brother and a valued companion; the local street prophet in your personal space telling you how it was, how it is, and how it might still come to be. Funk is a greasy shotgun blast of half-gnawed chicken wangs unleashed from a bop gun well within the city limits. Funk is super out-of-body, bass-thumping, freak music for outcasts; the haves and have-nots that can feel it, smell it, touch it and hear it and those that can’t. Funk is a life anthem for the sly and the ugly. Funk is for people from the fringe; tweekers and pluckers who take the best pieces of everything from the galaxy junkyard and pull sounds into a wonderfully syncopated sonic collage held together by the big beat. Funk is democratic in spirit and socialist in nature; rooted in a team concept in which the many work within a unified pursuit of universal rhythm. Funk is not just a state of mind, but of being. Funk is. by Clyde Davenport

A DEATH WISH

When my full force life is over tell the dead yard tender to shelve my mundane remains with the other maniacs; the ones who lived their lives over the rim of the glass like the dark and cloudy insides of the characters I’ve enjoyed in my travels. Please remind the good people who knew me well to celebrate the creative and the ridiculous and share the memories and stories of our finest days, funniest pants-shitters, and most thoughtful idea-spinners. Let the only tears be wet crocodiles shed from honest side-splitters that fall unnoticed into another space and time. Drink and be merry with the green gusto of college freshman, and bear hug one another out of love, gratitude, and shared kinship, perhaps reflecting on why our particular tribe is important. In death celebrate the inevitable transport of our soul to the next plane of existence. Use your imagination like the best children (or if you are a grown up) three full-chamber bong hits from the funkiest, super mind-turner available to create a place of wonderment and beauty for our mutual being. The simple truth is no one confined to the fragile human form is capable of comprehending the mysteries of the universe connected to the afterlife; consider being OK with it and appreciate the capacity to ponder the question… and to the enlightened whose long-standing and cavalier propaganda wreaks of old, long shit please do not use my customary passing as a means to forward your agenda. One man’s dying wish (apologies to Chuck Bronson). by Clyde Davenport