Wednesday, October 10, 2007

A free Bernie Worrell download

Yeaaah baby. The mailman delivered that new DVD I’ve been waiting for... “Stranger: Bernie Worrell on Earth.” (In stores now!)

So if you’re a P-Funk fan, you know what time it is. If you’re not into Bernie, maybe you just haven’t heard enough of his keyboardial wizardry.

Let me point you to a FREE MP3.

Bernie Worrell rolls with a barnstorming quartet called Colonel Claypool’s Bucket of Bernie Brains (C2B3 for short) – alongside progressive rockers Les Claypool, Buckethead and Brian “Brain” Mantia.

On the C2B3 website, there’s a free downloadable track from the band’s Sept. 29, 2004, gig in Boston. Happened to be Les Claypool’s birthday, so you’ll hear Bernie jam a little bit of “Happy Birthday to You.”

To get that MP3, follow this link to the band’s homepage, look on the left-hand side, and click where it says “FREE DOWNLOAD: Les’ Birthday Show.”

To hear that track (“Scott Taylor”) streaming on my Vox site, click here. It will give you a sense of Bernie’s wigged-out virtuosity and nutty sense of humor.

2 comments:

Dacks said...
This comment has been removed by the author.
Dacks said...

I wrote another comment to this post, but suffice to say that while every true believing P Funkateer should see this, it's not a great documentary by any stretch. For one thing, Bernie is repeatedly labelled as "troubled" throughout the doc, but he's never interviewed to explain his personal situation. The POV that "his keys do the talking" doesn't wash with me - he gave a very lucid and informative interview to Wax Poetics last year.

It seems irresponsible to imply that Bernie is not in his right mind but not give him a chance to explain himself, esp. given that the filmmaker is white and Bernie is black, and that there is an ongoing theme of the injustice of the "music industry" not having any use for an 'eccentric' 59 year black man of singular, unclassifiable talent.

You've probably seen this by now, what did you think?