Tuesday Tuneage
Funkadelic - “Funky Dollar Bill”
1970

A certain circle of friends of mine sometimes call me “Dolla Bill.” (Because I’m an accountant, get it? Ha ha.) This is as whiteboy a nickname as “TPaw”, but in my own defense I am not a bore like Tim Pawlenty is, plus I support and genuinely like the Metro Transit bus drivers, while TPaw’s constituency is middle-aged white guys who are pissed that a Metro Transit bus is in HIS way on HIS road and HIS car can’t pass it! TPaw also Tpanders to evangelical voters (also always white, but not always middle-aged or male) who live in far-flung suburbs and exburbs where they don’t always have great bus service, or don’t have busses altogether, and in many cases don’t even have sidewalks. So that’s TFraud’s base: metro road-ragers and suburban holy rollers. Don’t bike near these people, even if you’re wearing a helmet.

Anyway - in my case, “Dollar Bill” would work better than "Dolla Bill", it doesn’t have that faux hip-hop flavor (I like hip-hop just fine, but I’m a middle-aged white guy and can’t pull off hip-hop) and is the name featured in Chank Diesel’s portrait of me that hangs in my living room (thanks Steve.) Also don’t forget that Dollar Bill was a minor character in Watchmen.

But to this week’s song ... “Funky Dollar Bill” is Exhibit A of what Jimi Hendrix, an artist every bit as inventive and daring as the Beatles, The Roling Stones, and Bob Dylan were in the sixties, wrought. Brilliant guitar in both the rhythm and effects area, a beat that’s just off-and-on enough to kinda reflect America’s War With Itself in that era, plus grade-A vocals (lead and harmony), and an odd keyboard that seems to prophesize Sly’s breakdown a few short year hence. Funkadelic at its prime was hard-hitting, chilling, and weird weird weird.

Oh, and the album that’s it’s on? The song before it references my birthday in the song title. As the Russian kid said to Curtis Jackson in the Russians-are-coming episode of The White Shadow: "Funk-a-what?"