Blessed be the funk! (11 photos)

A major question of physics was solved Wednesday night at Foggy Notions.

That of perpetual motion.

All that is required to construct this perpetual motion machine is one venue, a willing audience and Canadian Nu-Funk band extraordinaire, God Made Me Funky.

From their first soul-inspiring note, they had every booty a shakin'.

Including my own.

This is a big deal as I rarely partake in the dance without the influence of many frosty adult beverages.

I even spotted former Foggy Notions owner, Jon Ferguson be-bopping to the band's grooves although he tried to hide in a dark corner by the sound board.

Yes, God Made Me Funky laid out some phat beats and let loose a welcome epidemic of fevered grooves for nearly two hours solid.

No breaks.

Barely even a breather between their own originals and previously-owned tunes from Blondie, the Rolling Stones, the Digital Underground, Grand Master Flash and House of Pain just to name a few.

Not only did the Almighty make these eight individuals funky, he miraculously prevented the Foggy's floor from caving in as all us NuFunktonian converts did what everyone does during Jump Around.

It was a mass baptism the likes of which would make James Brown, George Clinton and Sly Stone proud.

I sat with singer Kaybe and MC Phatt Al following their performance and posed this first question.

"You're in a boat in the ocean and you happen across both Sly Stone and George Clinton drowning and you only have one life preserver. Which one do you save?"

"As amazing as Sly was for the movement of unity of the races in America, which is vitally important, George Clinton brought a musical magic which was funk and took the next logical step of rock and disco and made the beginning of what was to become hip-hop," was Phatt Al's reply.

"Him and James Brown, that's what started hip-hop right there."

Kaybe went the other way.

"I'd have to go with Sly because as a singer, I mean that man's voice and Rose's voice.

"And as he said, they started the whole rock/funk thing. Look at our band. We're a mixed band and they started that too. And I just love where Sly went and he's an amazing singer, producer, writer. I would go home and take out my Sly Cds and..." he said as he finished off by singing Everybody is a Star.

With eight members in the touring unit of God Made Me Funky and countless other studio contributers, creative differences are bound to occur.

But perseverance and the common goal of brinin' the party to the people quell any potential conflicts.

Their fans, or NuFunktonians as they have been christened, always have the final word.

"Somebody will bring a song to the band and based on that song, we'll jam," explained Phatt Al.

"Then we introduce it to the audience and the audience tells us whether they like what we're doing. If they don't like it, we don't go with it. That song belongs to the band and the rest of the NuFunktonians. So if we bring it and the people aren't feeling it – next."

Taking their name from Herbie Hancock and starting life as a cover band, a lot of pressure sat on the shoulders of God made Me Funky to produce stand-out originals.

"Our dilemma was how do we write songs that captivate the audience like these classic songs," recalled Phatt Al.

"We spent basically two years trying to write the first song. It took us two years to get to If Ur Funky on our first record and that was our breakthrough. We played that and the NuKunktonians dug it and kept it moving. Once we realized we could do that, we put our egos aside and essentially that's how we write now."

Kaybe added: "We figured out that we wanted to make it really party, really up-tempo. Really rock orientated funk music was the direction we chose with our live show."

Phatt Al continued: "We're here to have a good time. Step on stage, we're gonna have fun and the audience has some fun, like tonight. It's such a beautiful exchange. There's no hierarchy of bulls*** or anything. It's all Nu-Funk. It's all NuFunktonia and we're all NuFunktonians just partying. Tomorrow we can worry about how cold it's gonna get."

Judging by the packed enthusiastic house at Foggy Notions and the fact that the dullest of gatherings can abruptly switch to the hippest of shindigs by throwing on a Parliament record, one would think the beauty that is funk would be everywhere.

Phatt Al shed a bit of light on why this is not the case.

"Technology has made it so easy to make music that now music has become so minimal due to that ease. It's become really frightening to people to look back and say 'a Kool and the Gang? I can't do that. It's too much work.'

"Radio is so rigidly formatted now, it's kinda silly. When we're writing, in the back of our minds we have to keep in mind that we do have to compete with Jay Z and what's out there, but we can't pander to that. That's not our style. Hopefully radio picks up on it, but if they don't it doesn't matter. We're doin' it with the NuFunktonians and that's the most important thing to us."

With a Canadian and US tour ahead of them this coming summer, the promise of their return has me setting a watchful eye on the vintage finds at Value Village to assemble some new funky digs for the occasion.

Long live NuFunktonia!