That's what it said on the sign we made for the office door when my oldest friend Jason and I were dippy from fatigue at the 3/4-mark on a quarter-million-dollar graphics project we did last year, just the two of us. We downloaded $30 worth of Parliament from iTunes and cranked the laptop as loud as it would go. The sign on the door said:

Today is P-Funk day.
Please find your funk


There doesn't seem to be a hell of a lot of good funk made anymore. I can think of maybe three recent tracks that get it. Ben Harper's Bring the Funk, Nikka Costa's Everybody's Got Their Something, and...

Okay, maybe two. (And the Nikka Costa track, which I love, is on the light side compared to where funk can go, though it's got a beautiful little crafty bassline.) For a second I was thinking about Beck's new album, but while it's definitely got funky parts, it's not funk.

I've got an iPod full of P-Funk and Bootsy, James Brown and Me'Shell, Stevie Wonder (not the sappy tracks, yuck), and a bunch of stuff by bands that had maybe one funky gem on an otherwise okay album: K-Jee from the Niteliters, Holy Ghost by the Bar-Kays (with an extended jam in the middle that I really need to edit out of there). Got a few Tower of Power tracks that, okay, they're not funk, but they slip right into the mix. Even got a few songs that have maybe one funky section in an otherwise undistinguished song, like Eddie Kendricks' Keep on Truckin' (Pt. 1). Got some funk-flavored party rock, too, like Sam's House's The Planet With Too Much Soul.

But... where's the new funk? It must be out there. Got my Ben Harper, got my Nikka Costa. Where's the rest?

If you got 'em, share 'em.

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