Bootsy? Player of the Year

Personnel: Bootsy Collins; Gary "Mudd-Bone" Johnson (vocals, drums); Robert "P-Nut" Johnson (vocals); Casper (guitar, drums); Phelps "Catfish" Collins (guitar); Fred Wesley, Maceo Parker, Rick Gardner, Richard Griffith (horns); Frankie "Kash" Waddy (drums); Joel "Razor Sharp" Johnson. Bootsy Collins's 1978 solo album, BOOTSY? PLAYER OF THE YEAR, has a title that shows, without bragging, just how essential the bassist/songwriter/producer/all-around creative sparkplug was to George Clinton and the P-Funk empire. For the first time since starting his own project in the P-Funk extended family, Collins seems to have focused intently on his own material, which means that these seven songs lack the occasionally meandering jams that weighed down earlier Bootsy's Rubber Band albums. The grooves here are sharper, but the tempos are also slower, with over half of the record perfecting the deep-groove ballad style that Collins had first experimented with on 1977's "Munchies for Your Love." In particular, the centerpiece track, "May the Force Be with You," makes the listener wonder if Collins and Clinton (a producer on this outing) had been listening to Lee Perry's classic mid-'70s dub sides; a similarly spaced-out feel predominates here and on its extended follow-up, "Very Yes." Although the over-extended P-Funk crew was about to crack up for good, this album features Collins, Clinton, and the rest at the peaks of their powers.