Bootsy Collins: Stretchin' Out in Bootsy's Rubber Band (Rhino Reserve series) [RHINO]

Why you'll love it

This Rhino Reserve series pressing is on 180g vinyl with lacquers cut from the original analog master. The album reached No. 10 on the R&B chart and gave us "I'd Rather Be with You," later sampled by Childish Gambino on "Redbone" and Beyoncé on "Be with You."

This edition

• Rhino Reserve series
• 180g vinyl
• Cut from the original analog master

About the album

By 1976 Bootsy Collins had already laid down the bass on James Brown's "Sex Machine" and "Super Bad" and become a pillar of Parliament-Funkadelic. Then George Clinton gave him his own spaceship. Bootsy's Rubber Band, with his brother Phelps "Catfish" Collins on guitar, Frankie "Kash" Waddy, Gary "Mudbone" Cooper and the Horny Horns, made this debut at United Sound Systems in Detroit, at the same time as Parliament's Mothership Connection.

Bootsy co-wrote all seven songs, arranged them and shared the horn charts with Fred Wesley. The title track (No. 18 R&B) is a rubbery, cartoonish groove with his starry-eyed vocals out front, "Psychoticbumpschool" is P-Funk at its loosest, and "Another Point of View" stretches out with ease. Then the mood drops for "I'd Rather Be with You," a slow, sweet ballad that went to No. 25 R&B and has since been borrowed by everyone from Adina Howard to Too Short. "Physical Love" and "Vanish in Our Sleep" close things down gently.

It's widely held up as one of the quintessential P-Funk records, the first of three classic Rubber Band albums. Bootsy's mother gave him the nickname because, in her words, he looked like a Bootsy, and on this evidence she was right on the one.

Also at Kops: more Bootsy Collins on vinyl · browse 70s Soul On Up

Tracklist

Listen

On Warner Records / Rhino (cat# RES1 26334), a reissue of the 1976 album.