Picture yourself driving down a dark road without another car or street lamp in sight. Don’t worry this is not the cliché plot of a horror flick. You are driving, headlights a faded bright yellow illuminating a small stretch of plain road in front of you. Your radio is on and the beginning, haunting arpeggio of Funkadelic’s “Maggot Brain” starts playing. It repeats without fail as your structured reminder of reality, because, just as you are starting to get lulled into a false sense of security by its comfortable sound, Eddie Hazel begins making his guitar cry. A sharp screech knocks you out of your hypnagogic state and tosses you straight into a dream.
A dream of insane sound. A wacky, at times chimerical, dream that involves such a smorgasbord of sound that your car begins to slowly veer off of its straight path, but the soft background keeps you temporarily on line. Hazel’s guitar played through a Fuzzbox and Wah pedal hits you on so many levels that the guitar solo becomes an odd amalgamation of sound; a declarative answer to an unanswerable question. It bemuses you but intrigues you. And, as the guitar fades and the arpeggio dies in sound, you find yourself on the side of the road with your car mangled in a tree, with absolutely no clue how you ended up there.
Yeah, that is what “Maggot Brain” can do to you. I stand by my opinion that “Comfortably Numb” is the greatest guitar solo of all time, but, it is simply a crime that “Maggot Brain” does not get more credit. Hazel’s playing, that legend has it was inspired by funk legend George Clinton telling Hazel to imagine he had been told his mother was dead but it wasn’t true, is a pure masterpiece. It is at times chaotic but always seems to come back together to form this wonderful piece that truly is, as one reviewer called it, “An emotional apocalypse of sound.” It is an amazing song and if you have not listened to it before, please check it out below. It would be a shame if this song continued to go unheard. Sit through the entire song and listen to Hazel’s playing penetrate you. It is certainly worth the adventure. Just don’t listen to it in the car at night.
“Maggot Brain”:
The Music Court 
woah. I am never ever putting Maggot Brain on when I drive.
Seriously. I had this little realization with Rebecca in the car on the way home. It was dark and I thought, my god you can really veer off the road if you are listening to this. Rebecca immediately changed it and the Dave Clark Five came on. About how opposite you can get.