Written by: Dave Cantrell
I believe the phrase is “Oh…my…FKING GOD!!” But first a bit of personal history for context. In 1977 your by-now senior correspondent was but a lickspittle young’n of a mere twenty-one years looking with some inchoate yearning to escape the cultural blight and stasis of that none-more-dreaded (to him) surroundings known as ‘the suburbs.’ To his great fortune, however, said suburb was but a brief drive from the bustling hives of active curiosity that were Berkeley and San Francisco where said young’n would increasingly find himself not least due to attending uni in the former during which truncated stint he happened to wander one day into the by-now legendary Rather Ripped Records on the lesser known north side of campus (which is to say not Telegraph Ave) which in turn would lure him out of school – what on earth was an art degree gonna get him anyway – and into the one-stop¹ in Oakland where in a further turn his musical education exploded and within that explosion was the discovery of, well, a shit ton of stuff of course but most pointedly for our purposes here the introduction to the funk end of the discomania craze which was due primarily to a certain Jeff V wandering over to the warehouse turntable one day in 1978 and dropping the needle on a promo copy of the title track single off the then just-reissued Funkadelic masterwork Maggot Brain at which point yours truly, still dabbing at the wet behind his ears, went into immediate audio shock as the searing (and I mean searing) guitar work of one Eddie Hazel escorted him with due haste into that listener’s stratosphere wherein the only word worth speaking – which is good considering the state’s inherent speechlessness – is ‘Wow‘ that invariably manages to be both hushed and ecstatic that, in turn, via a process of some kind of incomparable osmosis brings us to Into the Public Domain from Parliament/Funkadelic alumnus Michael Hampton, whose work on that front not only matches lick for lick those legendary Hazelian heights but amounts to a singularly heroic legacy of its own.
Released back in December – hey, life’s busy – on the fabled Ruffhouse Records co-founder (and this record’s producier) Joe “The Butcher” Nicolo’s new Sound Mind Records imprint, Into…is a splendidly bent whammy bar of an all-instrumental album that scorches from base to base around the jazz slash funk slash rock slash whatever else suits the almost ridiculously limitless menu of meshed genres that, taken as a whole, could arguably be interpreted as an all-encompassing nod to the depth and breadth of this guitarist’s playing field.
Supported by the only-word-for-it sterling roster of musicians that presents like a modern-day Wrecking Crew², (Phil Keaggy guest lead guitar, Philip Samuel Smith rhythm guitar, John Schreffler pedal steel and bass, Matt Lesser drums, Moke Labombard sax, Shooter Jennings keys/guest production) Into the Public Domain isn’t simply a stunner of an instrumental album, it slays all comers which isn’t a surprise, really, given that, by the end of this thing one’s left with a natural feeling of it being an act of nature, something irrepressible, beautiful, and cutting, like a slice of illuminative lightning above the by-now-fractured fruited plains.
“Fight or Flight,” kicking off (and we mean kicking off), begins with an almost inconspicuous bass intro and a touch of light percussion that within ten seconds roars to extraordinary life, Hampton giving absolutely no quarter as he unleashes a tightly incendiary torrent of electric that – guaranteed – will freeze you in place in the most animated way imaginable and, just like that, we’re off.
Be it follow-up track “Savanna” that carroms through its near three-minute duration with wicked aplomb, the electric-guitar-as-horns opening giving way to a cascade of astutue movements that layer one across the other with something like a force-of-nature nonchalance, managing to (somehow) interweave the ‘relaxed and natural’ with the ‘savagely wonderful’ without breaking a sweat; “Canyon Jam” – respectfully, mind – lighting the funk on fire before the title track (minus the “Into the”) takes a bit of a step back for a sec so the sax can lay down a couple meaty measures of groundwork before Hampton hands the mix another expert squall that truly sounds as if the ‘Controlled’ and the ‘Primal’ decided to find out what it’d be like to hook up and thus does it unspool into a journey that truly should be heard to be believed.
And thus it goes.
“Steve’s Kadillac” stepping out past a bit of scratching into a staccato intro that takes little time to morph into another subtle-slash-unhinged stunner that’s something of a modern-day headphone masterpiece and then, before last track “Public Domain Remix” seals the deal by just plain crushing it, we’ll be damned if the fetching “Technicolor Mobile Home” doesn’t present ample evidence (though who’s surprised) that this Hampton fellow knows full well how to allow the funky to get down and go a bit easy, proving that rather odd conundrum wherein the relaxed can be every bit as groovetastic as the outight ‘out there’ and that, dear reader folks, is artistic dexterity personified, which itself is a bit hen’s-tooth rare these days and you’ll pardon me a moment if I step away from the keyboard to order this sucker on vinyl.
So, rather naturally, the specters of both the aforementioned Eddie Hazel and, of course, a certain version of “The Star Spangled Banner,” may inevitably lay across the sky above Hampton’s work here, neither cast any degree or manner of shadow but rather underline the undying whirlwind of tradition/inspiration that Into the Public Domain itself momentarily – and thereby undyingly – captures in its own storm-blown bottle. In short, a freaking revelation.
- One-stops, back in ‘the day,’ were distrubution warehouses like any other except the stock being distributed was comprised of LPs, cassettes, vinyl maintenance supplies etc. The place referenced here was called All Records Service where the author made over a dozen lifelong friends.
- For those not familiar with The Wrecking Crew, hit that link
