14 tracks by Jimi Macon, Black Maffia, Blacklites and more, many reissued for the first time. Includes a 16 page booklet with extensive notes on an overlooked and important portion of rock n’ roll’s history & a Download card to WAV files of the full album. This anthology presents earnest questions as to why we know so little about these bands and the movement of which they were a part. While we don’t anticipate that we’ll ever find a definitive answer as to what these ensembles’ true goals were, then, we do know that they took their charges seriously. And they knew they were onto something different, something that, though only they and their immediate kin might recognize it, was more interesting than the status quo. Function Underground shines light on an important and overlooked part of rock n’ roll’s history and talented ensembles that toiled in the shadows, derided by their peers. ‘Do you realize that Hendrix was dead before most black people in America knew he was a black man?” Ebony Rhythm Band drummer Matthew Watson questions rhetorically. “We was scorned. In that era, everybody else in the black community was wearing three-piece suits, processes and Afro wigs and that shit. We was the first guys to wear bell bottoms. The first guys to wear big hats. We were off into a whole other thing.”
