i’m curious about what you guys consider lost media within the P-Funk community. it could range from live shows, albums, lost videos, interviews and etc.
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I’m not exactly sure about the definition of lost media. But the first thing I came to think of was the CD-releases from the early 2000s. Like Garry Shider’s two albums, Diaperman Goes Starchild and Diaperman, The Second Coming. And also Kash’s Kash Up Front.
Another one could be GC’s If Anybody Gets Funked Up single that had some interactive stuff. You could see the video and I remember that you could click around and GC would say stuff. It’s not really lost since you can get it from discogs, but you would need a CD-ROM player.. Maybe more the case of a lost media player. 
And yeah, this guy’s recording. That’s definitely “lost media”.
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For me, it would be video of Michael “Clip” Payne wearing the diaper and emerging from a giant egg during the “Egg tour”.
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that early lost recording of the band is very interesting as we’ve barely had any leaks from that time period as a whole and only majority has only been photos. it would be real interesting to watch live performances from them during this time period.
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definitely one of (if not) the most sought out grails of the P-Funk community. i feel like this is another period that we’ve barely had leaks from with only like one or two shows having been leaked.
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another interesting topic are master copies to all leaked shows from 70’s - 90’s. most leaked shows are very low quality because of the generation of the VHS they were ripped off.
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Great thread. I was just thinking about this same thing again today.
Not actually “lost” but I have been dying for the shows from January 1977 that were partially released on the 4CD live sets from 1993 to be released as complete shows. Hopefully the full shows are intact and will be released one day.
2026 is the 50th anniversary of the Mothership so massive live boxset would have been nice.
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Clinton is sitting on this stuff. He was talking about it in a video the other day. How he had been going back listening to live stuff from that time.
If there was only some way to convince him to give it to us!!
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those early CDs are wild because theyre scattered all over the place instead of having one central archive. but im curious if theres stuff in the vaults that never even made it to official releases—like studio demos or alternate versions. given how prolific the whole collective was, theres gotta be tape reels somewhere with material that just never got pressed or released in any form
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the unedited/complete version of the 1981 Landover/DC show (including the Bootsy, Sly and mothership landing segments). Somebody has it and isn’t sharing for some reason. I was thinking of writing to Bobby J. Brown since his documentary includes some of that footage.
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If you write him and he responds please be advised. He’s dead!!!
But seriously, when I saw those snippets in that doc, I stopped in my tracks. Where oh where is the rest of it.
And I know for a fact there is video of Gloryhallastoopid. I saw it. Well snippets of some of the Brides set and Mike doing Maggot Brain. Never saw it again or heard if the source was ready to unearth it.
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Lol! Damn, my bad. I’d forgotten Mr. Brown had passed. RIP
Nevertheless, somebody’s got this footage. It’s probably not essential for the most part, but I need to see the rest of that Bootsy footage!
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Man Bootsy is popping that Space Bass like there’s no tomorrow isn’t he?!?
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Man, you know it! We haven’t even seen it, and it’s already legendary.
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IDK if this qualifies, but I attended those 3 amazing shows at Paris’ Hot Brass in 1995 (we got 12 hours of concert in the course of 3 nights!!), and some years back I realized that a local French TV channel had aired a small doc about it that was on YT, with interviews and concert snippets. I tracked down the director and asked him if the whole shows had been filmed and if he still had those rushes, and he basically said that yeah, most of it was filmed, but for him it was just a job, so the tapes had remained in the hands of the long disolved production company, on some outdated format, and had probably been lost or destroyed long ago—either way, he had no idea and couldn’t help track them down.
So there’s at least that one P-Funk “lost film”, and it breaks my heart to think one would have had such a gem in their possession (possibly the best concert experience of my whole life, too!), but wouldn’t care at all about preserving it.
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Three nights of P in 1995 sounds amazing. I’m so jealous! I think I’ve seen that French TV doc on yt.
A lot of these type of recordings are probably gone. Pretty sad.
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Yeah. They played for 4 hrs the first night, 5 hrs the second and 3 hrs the third. It was all the more amazing that it was a small club, like maybe about 500 people, so you could just come and go from front row to elsewhere and back without problems, everyone was relaxed about it.
Hot Brass was an amazing venue for funk fans, at the time I also saw Bernie Worrell there, as well as Roger and Zapp, Larry Graham and GCS, Morris Day and The Time… Sadly, the place closed long ago…
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Back in 1993 they played the same club in Charlotte, NC for three straight Saturdays and sold out each night. Each show was 5 hours long. There was even an article in the newspaper where they interviewed a person who worked at the club. She was amazed and told the newspaper she’d never seen a group play for 5 hours before. Unfortunately I couldn’t make it to any of those shows, but I did make it to one a few weeks later at the 13-13 Club in Charlotte. That show lasted 4.5 hours, non-stop. After the show, I got to meet George, Garry and Mike Hampton. It was great. Probably the best show I’ve ever been to.
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I saw them in 2010. They played for close to four hours. I remember the place turned the lights on to get them to stop.
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I guess the closest thing we have to those shows are the two 1994 and 1995 shows at Tramps that were once sold (and can still be streamed, I guess) on ConcertVault (formerly Wolfgang’s Vault). The one from 1994 is 3 hrs long, the one from 1995 is over 4:30 hrs, and the setlists and line-up are pretty similar to what I saw.
Fun story: my first P-Funk concert was the 1994 one at the Zenith and it lasted about 3 hours. I was only 16, so my grandma (I stayed at her place when I was in Paris) insisted that my uncle go get me by car after the show, so I wouldn’t take the tube by myself at 11 PM. I had no idea those shows were so long, so we anticipated a 90 minutes or so show, and I knew my uncle was waiting for me, but the thing wouldn’t stop and I couldn’t resist staying (even less so that there were rumors that Prince might show-up on stage—as it turns out, he was backstage indeed, but for some reason didn’t go on stage and sent Mayte to dance a little instead).
Anyway, here I am coming out when it’s finally over, knowing my uncle would be pretty pissed that he’d been waiting for me for one hour and a half, and indeed he wasn’t very happy, but I apologized thoroughly and everything was kinda fine… until we get to the car. The damn thing was gone, stolen! So there we are, at midnight or so, having to call my grandma from a phonebooth to tell her not to worry, then to the police station to report the theft, which took quite a while, and as you can imagine my uncle was really upset at this stage. He was a gentleman and didn’t really scold me, but damn, was that whole affair embarrassing for me 
It was worth it, though, that show rocked 
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