#tim fielder

Smash Pages Q&A: Tim Fielder on ‘Infinitum’

For those who may not know, Funkadelic was a 1970s group led by conceptualist/ producer George Clinton that led the way in terms of musical, style and graphic innovation. Musically, if it wasn’t for Funkadelic there might not have been a Rick James, a Prince or a West Coast hip-hop sound, to name but three of the group’s sonic descendents. With the release of its 1970 debut album, Free Your Mind and Your Ass Will Follow, Funkadelic established its mission to reclaim the roots of rock from those who would deny that Black folks were the original rollers.

Clinton, along with a cast of cosmic characters that included keyboardist Bernie Worell and guitarist Garry Shider, merrily broke down the musical barriers that divided various genres. Although Funkadelic’s sound was often considered too white for Black radio stations and too Black for white ones, the group began to amass a considerable cult following that absorbed its groundbreaking albums. It promoted a ghetto-hippie-punk aesthetic that included digesting fistfuls of hallucinogens, toking devil dust and performing wild-styled live shows that blared on for hours.

Meanwhile, dwelling in Chicago, there was a young cat in his early 20s named Pedro Bell, who started sending Clinton illustrated fan letters that got everyone’s attention including the postmaster general. “He (Bell) doodled these intricate, wild worlds filled with hypersexual characters and strange slogans,” Clinton said in his memoir Brothas Be, Yo Like George, Ain’t That Funkin’ Kinda Hard on You? (2014) penned by Ben Greenman. It was through these postal exchanges that the young artist was recruited into the Funkadelic fold.

“Pedro’s correspondence gave me an idea for how we could move Funkadelic up a notch, how we could take what we were doing musically and onstage and capture some of that anarchic energy in album packages,” Clinton wrote. “I talked through ‘Cosmic Slop’ with Pedro on the telephone, and his mind translated it into a strange vision told in half-visual and half-verbal language. When he sent us his interpretation I was blown away. It was nightmarish and funny and beautiful, a perfect fit for the music.”

A decade before, both the Isley Brothers and James Brown had white models on their album jackets, but by 1973, the year Bell painted the cover of Funkadelic’s Cosmic Slop, America had entered the golden age of cover art. With illustrators like Corky McCoy teaming-up with Miles Davis the year before, for On the Corner, the time was right to introduce Bell’s visual mojo, which would soon cast a spell over us mere mortals.

HIGHJOHN CONQUEROR Prologue 6 The Last Walk

Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture to Host the 9th Annual Black Comic Book Festival January 13-16, 2021

Our first festival press release of 2021 has arrived with news of the Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture’s Black Comic Book Festival next week. Full details below including links for what looks like an excellent line-up of programming! Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture Hosts 9th Annual Black Comic Book Festival The four-day virtual event will feature a tribute to actor…

by Andy Oliver

Our first festival press release of 2021 has arrived with news of the Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture’s Black Comic Book Festival next week. Full details below including…

Author, illustrator, and animator Tim Fielder, lands on Friday February 2nd, 2018, at Sisters Uptown Bookstore in Harlem. You may have seen Tim at the 6th Annual Black Comic Book Day at the Schomburg Center. (more…)