Most people who are not in the music biz have the absolute wrong idea about what backstage is like; it’s almost never partying like a rock star with Mick and Keith. It’s much more likely to be a bunch of people (including the artists as well as stage crew, wardrobe, hair-makeup, etc.) working very diligently to do their jobs. You’ll also find a few agents, lawyers, label folk and other bizzers chatting and drumming up work for themselves. Anyone else, as far as the people working to put the show on are concerned, is probably just getting in the way.
If you’re in the music business, you’ve probably heard every act 20 times and catching a set is no big deal (if you really wanted to watch the show, you would have bought tickets through an industry connection and you would be in the house). But once in a while there’s one that you just can’t miss and there you are backstage so let’s go find a spot in the wings where we can see. When we get there, absolute democracy reigns. It doesn’t matter if it’s a headline performer or someone’s kid or a janitor. You’re all fans and people tend to make room for one another as best they can.
This was the situation at a P-Funk show, maybe in the late 90’s. I wasn’t going to miss a performance by George Clinton and his gang of funk buccaneers so I sidled over by the stage and started getting to The One. There was a brother next to me who was really feeling it. Every time a new song started, he yelled out the name of it, usually accentuated with a scream or an “OMG!” Every instrumental solo or new musician joining the fray got the same response. He was riding the wave of the energy coming off the stage and we were laughing and smiling about it all together.
Honestly, I can’t remember if he told me or I just kinda figured it out but it was quite apparent that this guy was under the influence of some serious hallucinogens. He was obviously (as the kids used to say when I went to Grateful Dead shows in the Seventies) “tripping balls” (has the doctoral thesis been written on the connections between P-Funk and the Dead? If not, it’s just sitting there, waiting). He seemed to be in the fat, majestic middle of it and couldn’t have placed himself in a better position in the universe. I was having fun but he was having much more fun.
I didn’t recognize him but he seemed as if he could have been a performer of some kind: casual hipster gear, hair blown out… somewhere between hiphop and hippie. But he wasn’t being showy or stagey in the least. He was right at home in his own head. Everything was landing right on the down beat, as it should.
So now, George starts calling for Shock G to come out on stage and he’s looking in our direction. Oh, of course! This guy was Shock G from Digital Underground. No wonder I didn’t recognize him. He was looking nothing like the outlandish Fifties partymeister he played as Humpty Hump in those DU videos (to say nothing of the fake nose and glasses).
Well, that made sense. Inasmuch as pretty much every late Eighties hiphop act came straight out of P-Funk, no one tracked them more closely than Digital Underground. I mean, how far is it from Sir Nose to Humpty Hump? The beats, the mythology, the self-invention, the overarching group identity… It all fit. Of course Shock G was on the deck watching George’s every move! But did George know that Shock G was on the outer edge of the galaxy at the moment? Probably, yes, he probably did. It didn’t matter. There was no fear in George’s pursuit of The Singularity.
So summoned, Shock G runs out on stage, takes the mic from George and (as far as I could tell) just starts freestyling. His flow is undeniable as he raps about where we all are and what’s happening, the kind of night it is. He doesn’t stay long but he finishes what he started, hands the mic back to George, takes a hug and quickly leaves the stage. He comes right up to me, grabs me by both arms and, with a quizzical and alarmed look on his face, asks me, “What the f#¢& just happened?!” I told him, “George called you out on stage! You went and you killed it!” It was hard to tell but he didn’t seem to have any awareness of the moment having happened; he just seemed utterly mystified.
We went back to digging the show and I never saw Shock G again after that night. He died this week at age 57. No cause of death was announced.