My Top 1000 Songs #794: You Hit The Nail On The Head

[I've been writing up my Top 1000 songs on a daily basis--you can see them all in descending order by hitting the All My Favorite Songs tag.]

I've got a thing for early Funkadelic, those first few years of the 70s when they were a true cosmic stew--sure, deeply steeped in funk and R&B, but also random bits of psychedelia and jazz and who knows what else. Pretty much all of that makes an appearance in "You Hit The Nail On The Head," the epic opener on 1972's America Eats Its Young. It's an elongated jam, funky and jazzy and seriously trippy, a headphone-friendly groove that feels more like Dark Side Of The Moon crossed with Remain In Light as performed by a highly adrenalized funk band. But then it takes a brief detour into this pleasant little bit of swing before sliding back into that frenetic jam, and then mashes the whole damn thing up into what feels like an alternate universe version of the Benny Hill theme. Crazy.