Artist: Pastor Funkpleez

Artist: Pastor Funkpleez

Links: https://www.facebook.com/pages/PASTOR-FUNKPLEEZ/126250914055892

http://www.reverbnation.com/pastorfunkpleez

I love Bootsy Collins, but not really for Parliament-Funkadelic reasons. He's also a sort of “hype man” for super-group Praxis, which features fellow instrumentalist masters Buckethead and Bernie Worrell. Relevant here, Bootsy didn't perform the prominent bassline of P-Funk's #1 R&B hit “Flash Light” – Worrell did (on keys). This becomes slightly less strange in light of the fact that Bootsy did funk up the track – on drums. All of this is to say: I'm pretty sure Pastor Funkpleez is the second coming of Bootsy Collins.

Yes it's in the names – Bootsy wears boots (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Play_with_Bootsy) and Pastor Funkpleez preaches funk (http://www.reverbnation.com/pastorfunkpleez/songs) – but it's more than that. Pastor Funkpleez is first and foremost a bassist, structuring deliciously “funky things to play with” from the bassment all the way up to that funkified weathercock.

And he's vocally compelling too, whether smoothly singing or delivering a string of funky utterances (all it takes is a few: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Df7_skLvbsU). But in blending his vocals, Pastor Funkpleez's “Something' from Nothin'” crafts a vocal hook that rivals “So Fresh, So Clean” by funk contemporaries OutKast.

Pastor Funkpleez has the requisite swagger. On “T.O.T.R,” our funk-master is shocked, positively “pissed, you don't notice [him].” It's the same flash that distinguishes Morris Day on the Time's “Jerk Out.” The titular acronym of Funkpleez's “T.O.T.R.” is fleshed out with its lyric, “T[urn] O[ff] T[he] R[adio],” as in “Turn off the radio / Let's go to a live show.” Indeed. Because there's not much funkier than Pastor Funkpleez, live.

*** The author of this review, Jack Morgan, plays the dahol for the following band: http://youtu.be/tMS73-1kCr8