Name of Web: P*Funk Review

Web Author: Bob Davies

This website is totally different to any which has been reviewed in Manifesto before. It is neither English, Rare or Northern, but a genuine bona-fida Black American Soul/Funk site.

The Homepage is set out on a plain white background which although a little unadventurous does provide clarity for the information it contains. At the top of the page is an advertisement for a Delphonics Concert followed by a short commentary on 'Black History Month'. This is an important event in Black American's cultural calendar, which has formerly been known as 'Brotherhood Week' and 'The Negro History Week'. Beneath it is a banner which links to 'Soul Patrol Net Radio' and a collection of scanned images of either posters or CD covers which give access to articles about the five artists concerned. These are 'A Funky Jackson five Site ';' Hear My Train A Comin '(Synopsis of a Jimi Hendrix Presentation)'; 'Mr Edwin Starr/ Agent Double-O Soul'; 'Tribute to Frankie Crocker'; 'Buddy Miles Greatest Hits'. A vertical split in the page follows these Images. The right hand side contains links to 'Sister' sites 'Soul Patrol Net Radio', 'Classic Soul' and 'Soul Patrol Jazz' whilst the left-hand side gives access to the 'P*Funk Review Features Department'. This includes; 'Notes on Funk Culture', 'What is Funk? FAQ' and 'Funk Wavs and Midis'. The page then merges again to provide an impressive 'Wall Of Funk', a matrix of CD or poster scans offering access to information on the singer/band/record label concerned. Artists included in this section are; Earth Wind and Fire, Parliament/Funkadelic, James Brown, Charles Wright, Stax, Erykah Badu, Mandrill, Lonnie Liston Smith, Gill Scott Heron, Wilson Pickett, Sly and the Family Stone, Rick James, Miles Davies, Jimi Hendrix, Buddy Miles, Kool and the Gang, Bloodstone, Minnie Ripperton, Delphonics, Dells, Zapp, Teena Marie, War, Prince, Ohio Players, The Meters, Art of Noise, Gap Band, Sun Ra, Stevie Ray Vaughn, Isley Brothers, Living Colour, Curtis Mayfield, Brass Construction and Isaac Hayes. The page ends with an E-mail Icon allowing surfers to pass comment on the site and a Soul/Funk database search engine.

I decided to start my investigation by looking at the five links at the top of the page. Although they were presented as a group their content was very different. The Jackson Five page for example began with the words, "I bet you're surprised to see a page about the Jackson five on P*funk Review". Well actually, yes I was, but the author goes on to justify his selection by making the following points:

• They Danced Like James Brown and the Temptations combined
• They played the music of The Isley's and Smokey Robinson
• They dominated the Beatles (Hmmmmm, not sure about this one!!!!)
• They have their own cartoon network

Far be it from me to suggest that the author is a bit OTT but he goes on to say, "The Jackson Five became a symbol of what America could be like" and, "The Jackson Five never said a word about politics that I know of! They didn't have to make any political statements, their very existence was a political statement." This rather grandiose introduction was followed by a series of short articles and CD reviews by various contributors, so its quality and content varied considerably. Thankfully the other four options in this group were much shorter and far more realistic. The site's webmaster, Bob Davies had posted his powerpoint slides from a lecture he had given at the 'My Train a Comin' conference about Jimi Hendrix. Besides giving an outline of the four-day programme his presentation included his views on; Jimi's Influence on music around the world, Jimi's childhood, Experience Hendrix and Alan Douglas. Of most interest to Northern fans is undoubtedly the section on Edwin Starr written by Mike Boone. It not only gave a detailed history of his life but also looked at his contribution to Funk with tracks such as 'Funky Music Sho Nuff Turns Me On'. There was also a review of a CD 'The Best Of Edwin Starr'. The Frankie Crocker section was written by Charles Duke and looked at his work not only as an artist but also as a DJ. Finally, the 'Buddy Miles' page was another CD review written by Oscar Jordan.

The main differences between this type of site and an English Northern Site become most starkly apparent when using the online database. On searching for 'Wigan Casino' I found only 1 matching entry, whilst on searching for 'Blackpower' I got 29,335 matches. 'Curtis Mayfield' had 544 matching entries, 'Edwin Starr' 74 matches and 'Soul Review' 1924 matches. The information that the database accesses is the E-mails of the Soul Patrol mailing list. This will surprise anybody who has ever accessed an English list because they operate in a much more social context. Typically they might include postings such as, 'Anybody going to the Ritz this weekend and fancies a beer beforehand' or 'What's the going rate for a Kenny Smith these days?' Hardly the type of material to build a database around. The soul patrol list however is much more focused and all the postings were serious comment on the stars, the labels or the history of Black America. A casual surfer could be seriously out of their depth with some of these letters. Apart from its content the database has some other very useful features such as categorising matches on a scale of one to five and posting hyperlinks at the end of each letter to related topics or other correspondences in the thread. The site is worth visiting just for this database alone.

If the database was impressive the sound features were certainly not. First of all I tried tuning into Soul-Net radio which to my surprise was not a live broadcast. It was a series of radio discussions about soul music that had been converted to real-audio. Unfortunately on trying to load them my computer kept 'timing out'. It was a similar story with the 'Wavs and Midis'. At first I tried to load up Jameas Brown's 'Doin' it to Death' and 'Superbad' but in both cases I got the message 'Not found'. The story was exactly the same with Isaac Hayes 'Theme from Shaft', Ice Cube's 'Americas Most Wanted' and Prince's 'Diamonds and Pearls'. In short, I couldn't get any of the sound files to function.

The main reason I decided to review this site was because of the 'Notes on Funk culture', a collection of twenty-four essays all about the history and social significance of Black American Music. The titles include; 'A Stolen Legacy', 'Art of the Slow Jam', 'Black Media', 'Black Rock Band', 'Blue Eyed Soul', 'Ebrues Record Collection', 'Chitlin Circuit', 'East Coast Groove', 'Ebonics and Black Music', 'Funk and Black Power', 'Funk and Drugs', 'Funk/Soul and the Civil Rights Movement', 'History of Disco part 1', 'Jazz-Funk/Miles Smiles', 'Lee Atwar and the Destruction of Black Music', 'Non Music Funkateers', 'Stomp - Tool of the Devil', 'That Drug Thang', 'The Essence of Funk', 'The First Funk Record', 'The Past Revisited', 'What's a Funkateer?', 'White Funk' and 'Women in Funk'. Besides these essays there were also nine book reviews and a collection of transcripts from chat interviews, none of which I had time to look at. The authors of the essays were not acknowledged, but, judging from other sections of the site, were probably all written by different people. They were at times very heavy going and I would guess that most of them were written by black students, probably taking some kind of 'Black Studies' degree. The 'Funk/Soul and Civil Rights' essay considered the period 1955 to 1970. It concluded that Soul was part and parcel of Martin Luther King's peaceful civil rights movement whereas funk was more closely linked to the more militant Black Power Organisation. Marvin Gaye's 'What's goin' on' was identified as the first record to bridge the gap between soul and funk. The other essays were all in a similar vein, very political, and very conscious of a Black identity. It is impossible to imagine any white man writing this kind of material with such authority and purpose.

The final section of the site, 'The Wall of Funk', was a variety of articles about various soul artists, however there did seem to be a lack of a common theme. The Wilson Pickett section, which had not been finished, seemed to be a CD review whilst The Dells option was a brief profile of the group and an on-line petition to get them voted into the 'Rock and Roll Hall of Fame'. The 'Stax' section was also inconsistent. This article included a very comprehensive history of the label with built in links to artist profiles. It also included a piece about the death of Pop Staples and a section on other Stax groups. In short, the quantity and quality of these selections varied tremendously. Some were detailed histories whilst others very superficial CD reviews.

Despite the fact this is supposedly a 'Funk' site it still contains masses of information about classical soul, certainly more than enough to justify its inclusion in Manifesto. It undoubtedly suffers from many technical faults, it is inconsistent in places and at times badly organised, but the sheer volume of information it contains cannot fail to impress. It is very American and very Black, at times to the point of militancy and as such is very different to an English 'Northern Website'. P*Funk Review is about more than record collecting, it is about the real significance of soul music, its history, its culture and its legacy and will undoubtedly appeal to soul intellectuals. To Afro-Americans their music is about more than pleasant tunes for people to shuffle their feet to, it was an important tool in their emancipation, and this site doesn't let us forget it. This is a site which truly reminds us what Soul Music is all about.

John has been innundated by requests to review people's websites so unfortunately his list is still closed for the time being.  He will open it again once the backlog has been cleared.  None the less if anuone has any comment to make about his column they can E-Mail him at

jsyedu133@localdial.com

or contact him via his website 'The Soul Review' at

http://www.localdial.com/users/jsyedu133/Soulreview/index.htm