How Sir Nose found the funk on Parliament’s classic ‘Flash Light’
Funk is one of the hardest genres to define, but one look at Parliament will tell you all that you need to know.
One of the most exciting bands of the entire decade of the 1970s, P-Funk effectively redefined what it meant for artists to be central to their own universe. Literally – in their world, or perhaps more appropriately, George Clinton’s, nobody was an Earth native but a universe native, our real world appearing from somewhere far more visceral than what we call home.
Planetary and otherworldly fascination in music is not a new thing. In fact, it’s everywhere beyond music at the moment, too, from Ryan Gosling’s upcoming space epic Project Hail Mary to Chanel’s intergalactic theme this week during Paris Fashion Week. In art, it never really goes away. But there are certainly times when it appears more popular, and the ways P-Funk conceptualised space themes with funk that quite literally sounded out of this world are undeniably captivating.
In the world of P-Funk, funk was a feeling. A groove. Something that made you feel more alive, more a part of something bigger. This came to life during their live shows through various spectacles, like Clinton’s Mothership, a giant spaceship belonging to the man himself under his alias, Dr Funkenstein. The Mothership became a huge part of the band’s own universe, representing a vessel on a mission to deliver funk to all those who were prepared to listen and go along for the ride.
One of their biggest tracks, ‘Flash Light’, was initially intended for Bootsy Collins’ side project, Bootsy’s Rubber Band. But it ended up going through the typical Parliament treatment, morphing into their mythology with two central characters: Sir Nose D’Voidoffunk and Starchild. As a character, Sir Nose appears as something of an antihero, the kind you might come across on a kid’s pantomime, completely adverse to anything fun and unwilling to even try.
In the song, Sir Nose lacks the funk. He’s stuck in his ways, a bit Scrooge-like in that sense, until Starchild helps him see the light (quite literally). A brood who doesn’t dance at first eventually finds the funk, a transition brought to life on stage when Clinton would hold a giant flashlight pointed at Sir Nose until he gave in and joined in with the fun.
The more endearing aspect here isn’t how much the song still holds up, nor is it about the age-old story of a grunt eventually finding their way and letting their hair down. The more interesting feat – and the one that proves just how crazy P-Funk were at sparking their own cultural moments – was that fans started bringing their own flashlights to the show so they could get in on the action of getting Sir Nose to open his eyes.
This eventually spawned into something bigger, and the band started selling flashlights at shows to make it into an even bigger thing. The sound and everything it represented also ended up becoming an even bigger beast, becoming not only influential in its own right but on the entirety of the new wave scene thereafter. And when you think about the fact that it’s also one of Clinton’s most sampled songs, its success speaks for itself.
