POP AND JAZZ REVIEWS : George Clinton’s World Keeps Spinning at UC Irvine

“Welcome to the world of Parliament-Funkadelic,” an announcer intoned as George Clinton and the P-Funk All-Stars launched their marathon proceedings on Friday at UC Irvine’s Bren Events Center.

It is no hollow boast, calling Clinton’s musical oeuvre a world . Since 1970, the man now esteemed as a patriarch by the hip-hop nation has created his own parallel universe, with its own mythology, its own large constellation of expert players fusing a multitude of styles, and its own distinctive blend of costume-party silliness, dance-floor celebration and biting social commentary.

It is doubtful that any other sector of the pop universe contains a major figure who, having just released an album perceived as an important comeback bid, would give a concert lasting nearly 3 1/2 hours and perform just one song from it.

But there is a sense of timeless continuity in the world Clinton has created--for example, characters and concepts he introduced in the 1970s reappear on the new release, “Hey Man . . . Smell My Finger.” So, despite the dearth of new-album material, this young, college-gig crowd received a fairly inclusive tour of Clinton’s world.

It wasn’t quite the grand tour. On this night, P-Funk’s performance didn’t live up to its pledge to “tear the roof off the sucker” (it was disappointing that Clinton didn’t make room in his spacious show for “Give Up the Funk,” the signature song in which that pledge is made). But the performance was tireless, varied, and funky enough, judging from the arena floor full of fans shuffling nonstop to the beat.

Along with such filler as DeWayne (Blackbird) McKnight’s formless, seemingly endless solo-guitar spot, the show included stripped-down moments proving that within the P-Funk horde is contained one of the better small-unit hard-rock bands around. At the same time, it was also an R&B; big band, numbering more than 20 players and singers who flitted in and out of the mix, achieving the pleasurable overload, the mixture of precision dancing with chaos, that is a P-Funk trademark.

Clinton and P-Funk can do their thang better than they did on this good-not-great night; it might help if they focused their efforts by getting the running time down to three hours or less. But for anyone who thinks the Red Hot Chili Peppers are the last word in funk-meets-rock, this band is a must.