Eddie Hazel Game, Dames And Guitar Thangs (CD)

(Real Gone) 7 tracks

If there are guitarists in your circle of friends, do this little test. Ask them if they are familiar with Eddie Hazel's Game, Dames and Guitar Thangs. The chances that their eyes will widen, followed by an exclamation of "I thought I was the only one who knew that record!" are quite high.

In fact, knowledge of this relatively obscure album is something of a secret handshake among experts, because the guitar work on this opus is simply incredible. But you had to be a badass to play in a band with George Clinton, Bootsy Collins, Bernie Worrell and the rest of the Parliament/Funkadelic mothership - and that's exactly where 17-year-old Eddie Hazel found himself in 1967, as the new guitarist in the Parliaments.

Over the next decade, Hazel was to become an instrumental pillar of PFunk, most notably on Fender Strat spectaculars like Maggot Brain and Dollar Bil, which he co-wrote. By the time he recorded this album in 1977, however, Hazel was no longer in the band, plagued by personal problems that led to his untimely demise in 1992 and which also explain, at least in part, why this album never made the commercial breakthrough it did.

All the aforementioned PFunk personalities are represented here, along with the Brides of Funkenstein on vocals, but this is Eddie's show, where he unleashes one psychedelic funk lead after another over a mix of George Clinton originals and covers of California Dreamin' and I Want You (She's So Heavy).