Royal First Family of Funk
(with Garry Shider & Jerome "Bigfoot" Brailey)

At the Knitting Factory, NYC - 3/13/99 [REVISED]

 

 

I greeted Mr. Bigfoot himself, Jerome Brailey, outside the club about 90 minutes before the show....he was still waiting for his drum gear. After I met a good friend of mine, Garry Shider entered the bar room and was nice enough to autograph my friend's ONE NATION flag! As my friend once said, "It's so amazing how down to earth these P-Funk guys are!" Speaking of friendly funkers, I was conversing with Treylewd about my website, Pedro Bell and the new P-Funk album that's coming out later this year.....Treylewd says it's part Funkadelic, part Parliament and part hip-hop shit!! I ran into Stozo The Clown who hipped me to a couple of great funk concerts coming in April to New York City! Stozo and I were talking about Pedro Bell and the fact that Garry Shider never gets a chance to really shine like the bad muthafucka he is!! It's a shame that Tim Kinley (DJ Groove Maneuvers) could not make it.




At 9:30pm, the Royal First Family of Funk started their first set!!

Royal First Family of Funk Personnel:

·         Garry Shider - vocalist supreme, FONKY guitarist (lead & rhythm)

·         Jerome "Bigfoot" Brailey - tremor-causing drummer, master ofthe electronic drum machine

·         Linda Shider - beautiful vocalist

·         Garrett Shider - chip-off-the-old-"nappy-wearing"-block guitarist/vocalist (alumnus of Plainfield funk group, Funk-Kinn)

·         Marshall Shider - lil' man on vocals & crowd chants!

·         Treylewd (Tracey Lewis) - nasty guitarist with a mouth to match

·         Andre - bad-ass guitarist

·         Tony - funky keyboardist

·         Paul - thumpasorus bassist

·         Keith - ear-pleasing vocalist

·         Dax - holding up the funk with the congas

 

The group started with one of Funkadelic's funkiest Garry Shidertunes, "Cholly (Funk Gettin' Ready To Roll)". Garry is one of the funkiest member of the P-Funk Mob......probably the funkiest!!!! The next tune was the Garry Shider classic "Cosmic Slop",which was excellent, with Garry singing the vocals close to the way he performed them on the original album. The band took their time by doing a long version of the song.By request, Garry and the funkband started a nasty-funk guitar introduction to what was supposed to "Red Hot Momma", but the band stopped. Garry joked with the audience, "I fooled y'all, didn't I?" After a minute, the band started again with this nasty-funk guitar introduction, leading into "Red Hot Momma"......"Red Hot Momma" was slammin' with Garry & Linda on lead vocals!!! HOT!!! The Royal Family did a funky, little hip-hop thang called "Fire It Up", featuring Marshall, Linda, Garrett & Keith on vocals. Garry led the audience into a sing-along of "Baby, please won't you dance with me.....round & round", before jumping into "One Nation Under a Groove"..... Garry was on fire as he leaped into the audience and begansinging his ass off, but was dancin' like a crazy man!! Before I forget, Funk-Kinn members Nowell Haskins (son ofFuzzy Haskins) and Nate & Tim Shider (brothers of Garry) showed up to support the Royal Funk.


The first set ended at 11:00pm.


The Royal First Family of Funk started their second set at 11:30pm.Garry appointed one of the audience members to act as the "funky hype-man"....he was in control of hyping up the crowd with commands of hand-clapping or screaming. The second set included stuff fromthe first set, like "Cholly (Funk Gettin' Ready To Roll)", "Cosmic Slop", and "Fire It Up". Garry gavethe audience some good ear candy with a portion of "Mr. Wiggles" and "Music For My Mother". People were chanting phrases like "Fire It Up" and "Ain't Nothin' But a Jam Y'All". "Tear The Roof Off The Sucka" was included in the set, but "Maggot Brain" was a much-needed treat!! The featured lead guitarist was Mr. Garry Shider himself, playing some truly psychedelic riffs that sound exactly like Eddie Hazel himself.

It's amazing that the Knitting Factory was able towithstand all of this funky energy without crumbling down to its foundation!!! I told Garry that I thought he was a very good musician before the Royal Funk performances, but I didn't know that he was all that!!! His response: "Hey, I'm no better than my surroundings!"



The second set ended at 1:15am.


CORRECTION FROM THE EARLIER VERSION OF THE REVIEW:

This is a revision, done to correct any misinformation that appeared in the original review. I had so much information to write but relatively little time, so I posted a relatively short review and accentuated the positive! Perhaps that was the incorrect thing to do.........so here are the low points of the show:

1.     Garry had to stop the show to tell the sound engineer toturn up the monitors on the microphones & instruments! The P-Funk fans could have definitely done without the sound problems!! Seriously, this shit could have been done BEFORE the show!

2.     For many people, it wasn't fun to see Garry pistol-whipping the crowd into clapping onbeat! The thing that stuck out in my mind was when Garry called out this guy to my left for not clapping.....the guy was caught off-guard and probably embarassed by it.

3.     Garry called out several members of the band when they were playing too loud--he barked to them to relax! He added the somewhat chastising remark, "If you can hear yourself, you're wrong!"

4.     I didn't know this at the time but a friend of mine said that Garry ran into her pretty hard, when he came offstage. Garry didn't say anything to her!



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