eddie hazel

Funkadelic’s Maggot Brain is one of the strangest records you’ll ever hear, not in a way that’s necessarily alienating, but don’t look to this slab of wax for warmth and reassurance in the face of a cold and harsh world.  ...Amidst the first real wave of American deindustrialization in the late 60s, Detroit became an increasingly bleak city and a pressure cooker of racial dissatisfaction and anger after having been the epicenter of (white) working class upward mobility in the two decades after the end of World War II. Maggot Brain can be heard as the musical accompaniment to this transformation, told from the point of view of those forced to live in Detroit’s broken-down, boarded-up ghettos. The record is highly eclectic and will remind careful listeners that motor city was not only the point of origin for so many great R&B acts but also for bands like the Stooges and the MC5, each of which also provided their own disaffected perspective on the profound changes taking place in Detroit.  The title track on Maggot Brain is a ten-minute Eddie Hazel guitar freak out. It's a helluva way to open an album. With a nod to Jimi Hendrix, Hazel’s impassioned playing runs the gamut from hot rage, to desperate sadness, to the yearning for human recognition in a country that cares little for its poorest and most vulnerable citizens.  It’s very powerful stuff and shows that Eddie Hazel might just be the greatest guitarist you’ve never heard of…