George Clinton and the P-Funk All-Stars tore the roof offthe sucka at the fifth annual Bacchanal to the Future.
By Ariel Mutha-Tafoya
Fantasy Sports News
The largest Bacchanal crowd ever turned out last week for the most subdued Bacchanal To The Future in the five-year history of the event.
In the wake of the sudden and gruesome death of Bacchanal cofounder Boyd X. Biggs — and with police investigators viewing the other cofounder, QCurl Sharif, as a suspect — festival organizers almost decided to pull the plug on the annual gala. But a cell phone call from the ghost of Biggs to Bakers’ PR Maven Faith Popcorn, in which Biggs allegedly expressed his wish for the Bacchanal to continue, enabled the show to go on, albeit in a scaled-down, one-day form.
Ticket sales exceeded 250,000 for the event, but police estimated the crowd in Centennial Park at nearly 300,000. Absent was the traditional “birth of Venus” ceremony that kicked off the Bacchanal in years past. Missing, too, were the chariot races in the Nashvegas Hippodrome that the Bakers and Beelzebubbas jointly built and donated to the city. Missing, too, was Haven Hamilton, who emceed every Bacchanal since the event began in 2004. Hamilton died earlier this year. Festival organizers billed this year’s gathering as a tribute to both Hamilton and Biggs, whom 'Bubbas’ PR Director Chuck Barris described as “martyrs for peace.”
In a money-saving move, Nashvegas mayor Karl Dean announced that the city’s annual Christmas parade would be combined with the Bacchanal. As the parade ended at Centennial Park, Grand Marshal Charlie Rotier, dressed as Santa, walked to the Parthenon steps and launched the Bacchanal, as Hamilton always had done, by leading the crowd in the Pledge of Allegiance. Then, strapping on a waiting Jet-Pack, Rotier rocketed across the park to his review stand on the roof of the Athlon Building.
In tribute to Biggs, a lone bagpiper played “House of the Rising Sun” to begin the show. Then Al “Buck Dharma” Roeser — a Bakers’ season ticket holder — led a reunited Blue Oyster Cult in an hour-long jam version of “Don’t Fear the Reaper.”
In one of the highlights of the afternoon, Beelzebubbas’ Community Relations Director Anton Chigur joined Ray Manzarek and the Doors as they performed the songs from the band’s “L.A. Woman” LP in sequence. Chigur, who provided lead vocals, told the crowd that “Break on Through” was Biggs’ favorite song, and that the late 'Bubbas’ owner and Dr. Jorgé Linardo loved to sing it together as they cruised the streets of Nashvegas in Linardo’s blood-red Lincoln Navigator.
Dave the Animal joined the Doors for “The Crystal Ship,” apparently as part of a promotion for his Methlon organization. During the performance of the song, a replica of a sailing ship made of translucent fiberglass and bearing the Methlon logo appeared on Lake Watauga. Crew members used large slingshots to hurl goodie bags from the Animal’s Crystal and Cracky D’s restaurants into the receptive crowd.
The set concluded as a large video screen played sometimes violent images from Biggs’ Waziristan safari during “The End” — a song that Chigur said had changed his life for good when he first heard it at age seven.
In a surprise move, Amy Winehouse, aka QGurl Sharis, next took the stage and performed an acoustic version of John Lennon’s “Woman Is the Nigger of the World.” Then she launched into “Imagine,” changing the lyrics twice to sing “Imagine there’s no 'Bubbas” and “Imagine there’s no Snoop Dogg” — drawing prolonged boos on both occasions.
The mood nearly turned violent when Peter Gabriel performed his “Shock the Monkey” — an allusion perhaps to Mojo Jojo or to Nefarious George, a chimpanzee associated with several members of the Bakers’ organization. “Kill the monkeys!” the crowd began chanting as the song ended, before Chigur finally took the microphone and calmed them down by saying, “Patience, friends, there’s a time and place for everything.” Sharif, for his part, did not follow his usual custom of appearing onstage, but watched the show from the VIP box with Rotier atop the Athlon Building. Security was said to be heavy.
The concert reached another flashpoint during the three-song set of Memphis-based Dr. Krunkenstein, who had been linked last year with an alleged assassination attempt on Commissioner William D. Money. After performing a brand new song, titled “Q-cifixion,” frontman Vernon “Krunkalicious” Weathers held up a photo of Sharif, tore it in half and shouted, “Fight the real power!” Then he produced a 9mm pistol that had been concealed under his shirt and pointed it in the general direction of the Athlon Building. Security guards quickly swarmed the stage and surrounded Weathers. Barris later explained that the band’s gesture was simply a “publicity stunt” to promote their new CD, Q-Capper. Said Barris: “It’s all good.”
Throughout the afternoon, there were other ominous signs of continuing tension, including one that read: “Biggs’ Jesus Kicks Shiva’s Monkey Ass” and “Nuke Midtown.”
Afterward, the ghost of Biggs issued an official statement via Twitter announcing he wished for peace and that “I know in my dead, gray, decaying heart that my friend QCurl could never have done the Janus-faced things that all those reliable sources all say he did.”
Near the end of the abbreviated concert, Bacchanal regular and Biggs confidante George Clinton announced that he would conduct a “funk funeral” for Biggs and Hamilton. He and the P-Funk All-Stars launched into “Give Up the Funk (Tear the Roof Off the Sucka)” as they led many of the assembled crowd out of the park and down Natchez Trace toward the site of the burned-out Jojo-a-Go-Go, where Biggs met his death.
When they reached the site in Hillsboro Village, still marked off by yellow police tape, they were startled to see Bubbas’ season ticket holder John Doe (who took the name for his former band from Biggs’ middle initial) atop the adjoining Belmont Methodist Church. After performing his sentimental “Just a Little More Time,” Doe was joined by Fergie for an acoustic version of the Troggs’ “Love Is All Around,” which Sharif himself had once performed at the wedding of his friend Furious George. Witnesses reported that Sharif sobbed uncontrollably upon hearing the song and had to be sedated with four Touchdown Tazers™ and three Demerol chasers. On the dark, overcast afternoon, many in the crowd held up lighters and cellphones and sang along as Doe and Fergie performed “Will the Circle Be Unbroken?” — the traditional close for the Bacchanal.
“All things considered, it was pretty amazing,” said Popcorn afterward. “We didn’t have Biggs, who traditionally did all the heavy lifting on the logistics. We didn’t have Haven, who provided the glue (literally). And QCurl, who is the spiritual force behind all this, was mostly AWOL for obvious reasons. It was worse than we hoped but better than we expected. We just give thanks to Shiva.”
In the wake of the sudden and gruesome death of Bacchanal cofounder Boyd X. Biggs — and with police investigators viewing the other cofounder, QCurl Sharif, as a suspect — festival organizers almost decided to pull the plug on the annual gala. But a cell phone call from the ghost of Biggs to Bakers’ PR Maven Faith Popcorn, in which Biggs allegedly expressed his wish for the Bacchanal to continue, enabled the show to go on, albeit in a scaled-down, one-day form.
Ticket sales exceeded 250,000 for the event, but police estimated the crowd in Centennial Park at nearly 300,000. Absent was the traditional “birth of Venus” ceremony that kicked off the Bacchanal in years past. Missing, too, were the chariot races in the Nashvegas Hippodrome that the Bakers and Beelzebubbas jointly built and donated to the city. Missing, too, was Haven Hamilton, who emceed every Bacchanal since the event began in 2004. Hamilton died earlier this year. Festival organizers billed this year’s gathering as a tribute to both Hamilton and Biggs, whom 'Bubbas’ PR Director Chuck Barris described as “martyrs for peace.”
In a money-saving move, Nashvegas mayor Karl Dean announced that the city’s annual Christmas parade would be combined with the Bacchanal. As the parade ended at Centennial Park, Grand Marshal Charlie Rotier, dressed as Santa, walked to the Parthenon steps and launched the Bacchanal, as Hamilton always had done, by leading the crowd in the Pledge of Allegiance. Then, strapping on a waiting Jet-Pack, Rotier rocketed across the park to his review stand on the roof of the Athlon Building.
In tribute to Biggs, a lone bagpiper played “House of the Rising Sun” to begin the show. Then Al “Buck Dharma” Roeser — a Bakers’ season ticket holder — led a reunited Blue Oyster Cult in an hour-long jam version of “Don’t Fear the Reaper.”
In one of the highlights of the afternoon, Beelzebubbas’ Community Relations Director Anton Chigur joined Ray Manzarek and the Doors as they performed the songs from the band’s “L.A. Woman” LP in sequence. Chigur, who provided lead vocals, told the crowd that “Break on Through” was Biggs’ favorite song, and that the late 'Bubbas’ owner and Dr. Jorgé Linardo loved to sing it together as they cruised the streets of Nashvegas in Linardo’s blood-red Lincoln Navigator.
Dave the Animal joined the Doors for “The Crystal Ship,” apparently as part of a promotion for his Methlon organization. During the performance of the song, a replica of a sailing ship made of translucent fiberglass and bearing the Methlon logo appeared on Lake Watauga. Crew members used large slingshots to hurl goodie bags from the Animal’s Crystal and Cracky D’s restaurants into the receptive crowd.
The set concluded as a large video screen played sometimes violent images from Biggs’ Waziristan safari during “The End” — a song that Chigur said had changed his life for good when he first heard it at age seven.
In a surprise move, Amy Winehouse, aka QGurl Sharis, next took the stage and performed an acoustic version of John Lennon’s “Woman Is the Nigger of the World.” Then she launched into “Imagine,” changing the lyrics twice to sing “Imagine there’s no 'Bubbas” and “Imagine there’s no Snoop Dogg” — drawing prolonged boos on both occasions.
The mood nearly turned violent when Peter Gabriel performed his “Shock the Monkey” — an allusion perhaps to Mojo Jojo or to Nefarious George, a chimpanzee associated with several members of the Bakers’ organization. “Kill the monkeys!” the crowd began chanting as the song ended, before Chigur finally took the microphone and calmed them down by saying, “Patience, friends, there’s a time and place for everything.” Sharif, for his part, did not follow his usual custom of appearing onstage, but watched the show from the VIP box with Rotier atop the Athlon Building. Security was said to be heavy.
The concert reached another flashpoint during the three-song set of Memphis-based Dr. Krunkenstein, who had been linked last year with an alleged assassination attempt on Commissioner William D. Money. After performing a brand new song, titled “Q-cifixion,” frontman Vernon “Krunkalicious” Weathers held up a photo of Sharif, tore it in half and shouted, “Fight the real power!” Then he produced a 9mm pistol that had been concealed under his shirt and pointed it in the general direction of the Athlon Building. Security guards quickly swarmed the stage and surrounded Weathers. Barris later explained that the band’s gesture was simply a “publicity stunt” to promote their new CD, Q-Capper. Said Barris: “It’s all good.”
Throughout the afternoon, there were other ominous signs of continuing tension, including one that read: “Biggs’ Jesus Kicks Shiva’s Monkey Ass” and “Nuke Midtown.”
Afterward, the ghost of Biggs issued an official statement via Twitter announcing he wished for peace and that “I know in my dead, gray, decaying heart that my friend QCurl could never have done the Janus-faced things that all those reliable sources all say he did.”
Near the end of the abbreviated concert, Bacchanal regular and Biggs confidante George Clinton announced that he would conduct a “funk funeral” for Biggs and Hamilton. He and the P-Funk All-Stars launched into “Give Up the Funk (Tear the Roof Off the Sucka)” as they led many of the assembled crowd out of the park and down Natchez Trace toward the site of the burned-out Jojo-a-Go-Go, where Biggs met his death.
When they reached the site in Hillsboro Village, still marked off by yellow police tape, they were startled to see Bubbas’ season ticket holder John Doe (who took the name for his former band from Biggs’ middle initial) atop the adjoining Belmont Methodist Church. After performing his sentimental “Just a Little More Time,” Doe was joined by Fergie for an acoustic version of the Troggs’ “Love Is All Around,” which Sharif himself had once performed at the wedding of his friend Furious George. Witnesses reported that Sharif sobbed uncontrollably upon hearing the song and had to be sedated with four Touchdown Tazers™ and three Demerol chasers. On the dark, overcast afternoon, many in the crowd held up lighters and cellphones and sang along as Doe and Fergie performed “Will the Circle Be Unbroken?” — the traditional close for the Bacchanal.
“All things considered, it was pretty amazing,” said Popcorn afterward. “We didn’t have Biggs, who traditionally did all the heavy lifting on the logistics. We didn’t have Haven, who provided the glue (literally). And QCurl, who is the spiritual force behind all this, was mostly AWOL for obvious reasons. It was worse than we hoped but better than we expected. We just give thanks to Shiva.”
