Raise the Roof

I guess, if you’re blogging about something that the New York Times covers the next day, you’re just too damn slow. Still - now I know that YouTube is a really new phenomenon, having gone online in December, logging 10 million video views a day already. The Times’ Ben Ratliff snooped out some fantastic 1969 TV performance by a very early Parliament/Funkadelic with George Clinton sporting a rather dazed look and a hilariously psychotic hairdo.

You can get kinda lost in the vaults of this site, which you can turn into a peephole to your favorite musical pasts. It can't be more, since the quality is really low-res, but it still gives you a good taste and foreshadows what the video search engines will be like, when they're up on full Internet II speed. Have we seen anything as cool on TV lateley as Curtis Mayfield performing „Superfly“, anything as emotional as Bill Withers doing a stripped down version of „Ain’t No Sunshine“, anything as explosive as Sly and the Family Stone on the Ed Sullivan Show in 1968?

I’ll sure be diggin’ some more. Pun intended.

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Watch Parliament/Funkadelic raise the roof of a TV studio.

Watch Bill Withers sing "Ain’t No Sunshine".

Watch Curtis Mayfield perform "Superfly".

Watch Sly & the Family Stone on the Ed Sullivan Show