Joyful Tribute To Garry "Starchild" Shider, Master of Funk by Tris McCall/The Star-Ledger

[Old School C]

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Funk musicians often speak, and sing, of the style in spiritual language. The funk, they say, will set you free; it will fill you with its irresistible power; it’s indestructible. Disbelieve if you like, but it’s a rare enterprise that inspires such devotion in its practitioners.

Eyewitnesses insist that the funk can do remarkable things. For instance, Sunday at the B.B. King Blues Club and Grill, at a concert paying tribute to the late Parliament-Funkadelic member Garry “Starchild” Shider, the funk turned Living Colour into a latter-day Parliament.

The Black Rock Coalition flagship band had plenty of help at this concert, which followed a similar Saturday tribute at the Multi Media Arts Center in Bloomfield. Bernie Worrell, P-Funk’s innovative organist, joined Living Colour for a menacingly tight version of Funkadelic’s “Super Stupid.” Melvin Gibbs gave the band a second bassist to reinforce the dirty bottom end. With room on the crowded stage at a premium, the Chops Horns (Englewood’s Sugar Hill Records’ brass section) set up on the dance floor and blared away.

As the music oozed from every corner of the room, many in the audience would have insisted that Shider, P-Funk’s longtime musical director and rhythm guitarist (who died of cancer, at 56, on June 16), was present, too.

In the middle of the stage stood Living Colour’s Vernon Reid, guitar in hand, directing traffic. Shider taught thousands of aspiring guitarists the rudiments of funk-rock; perhaps none has taken those lessons further than Reid has. The Living Colour leader considers Shider “irreplaceable” and a boundary-defying forerunner of contemporary pop exuberance.

Funk-rock is notable for its distinct, sharply drawn characters, and an all-star procession of colorfully dressed musicians stopped in to pay respects and lay down a groove or two: Miles Davis and P-Funk sideman DeWayne “Blackbird” McKnight, Parliament drummer Jerome “Bigfoot” Brailey, rotund 24-7 Spyz axeman Jimi Hazel, Rahway-based saxophonist Darryl Dixon and many others.

The music was interrupted by brief — but poignant — public service announcements from the event’s organizers. Bob Davis of sponsor Soul Patrol, an internet radio station, implored audience members and performers alike to get health and life insurance. Emcee Darrell McNeill tried to dispel the misconception that P-Funk’s hits made the band members rich. The popular “Glee,” he reminded us, recently featured a “watered-down, milquetoast” version of “Give Up the Funk (Tear the Roof Off the Sucker).” Parliament, reported McNeill, didn’t receive a dime.

Worrell, whose daring set with SociaLybrium was an evening highlight, encouraged listeners to donate to the Sweet Relief charity for musicians (sweetrelief.org) and directly to the Garry Shider Medical Fund (garryshidermedicalfund.com).

There was, however, nothing elegiac about the show-opening performance by Funk-Kin, a band composed of the late guitarist’s brothers, cousins and friends. In funk tradition, they sang about girls in tight clothing and sunny days in Shider’s hometown of Plainfield, “where the funk came from.” Shider’s son Garrett joined Funk-Kin for a moving rendition of “Cosmic Slop,” his father’s signature song.

Guitarist Kevin Shider, who played with his brother in several prominent pre-Parliament gospel bands, came dressed for the occasion: He wore a silver cap, huge white sunglasses, tight leather pants and thigh-high boots with stars on the kneecaps, and sucked a glow-in-the-dark pacifier. The crowd recognized the outlandish costume as a gesture of faith, not merely in his fallen brother, but in Technicolor funk-rock in general.

True believers stood on the dance floor, singing along to animated versions of classic songs. The fiery Sophia Ramos, supported by the BRC Orchestra, glitter all over her pregnant belly, stormed through Shider’s pre-Parliament “Baby I Owe You Something Good.” Better still was jazz-soul singer Maya Azucena’s celebratory take on “Bop Gun,” a song about a cosmic weapon that fires the funk into the hearts of the ignorant, bringing them to cosmic consciousness on the spot. She sang it as if she believed every word.

“Garry’s going to be here forever,” said Kevin Snider, during the Funk-Kin set. “The funk will never die.”

[Edie Antoinette]

Excellent. Thanks C!

[Dr. Simon F. Quattlebaum]

Wonderful and well written. R.I.P. Gary!