Love Jones

From 1974 through 1980, Johnny "Guitar" Watson was on a tear no one, including George Clinton or Bootsy Collins, could equal. While the P-Funk machine began to run out of steam by 1978 -- with the exception of the Brides of Funkenstein -- Watson kept churning out the weird, kinky funk well into the era of Rick James. Love Jones, his last fine record for quite awhile, had all the trademarks in place: the choppy, heavily reverbed and wah-wahed guitar that had made Watson a blues sensation, the sci-fi keyboards, the handclap that Nile Rogers and Bernard Edwards ripped off for Chic, the expandable horn section that intertwined with the guitar riffs, and the punched up basic basslines that kept the funk a simple but ultimately moving thing. It's true that some of the crazy lyrics that graced Ain't That a Bitch had given way to chanted cliches by this time, but it hardly mattered since Watson was making music for discos and clubs, and not for radio play any longer. He got hip to the fact that if you wanted to break a record you had to get a club DJ to play the hell out of it. Here, the standouts are "Booty Ooty," the truly weird and wonderful "Goin' Up in Smoke," "Telephone Bill," and the hilarious -- and extremely funky -- "Lone Ranger." This may have been the last real winner in Watson's catalog for a long time, but there is plenty of magic still present in these grooves. ~ Thom Jurek|