Last year, from out of a left field so far gone that it was in the bleachers, came a twelve-inch single called "Wheel Me Out," the wildest slab of funky junk since Funkadelic's "One Nation under a Groove." The creators of "Wheel Me Out" (also available on the excellent Island/ZE compilation LP Seize the Beat) were a group named Was (Not Was). This loopy, self-contradictory moniker suits their parodic party music just fine.

Now comes an album, Was (Not Was), that welds George Clinton's medulla to Frank Zappa's oblongata, and results in an eerie, funny eclecticism. The music here sets dizzy, screechy rock and jazz riffing on top of grinding funk grooves. At any moment, a guitar or saxophone solo splinters into a thousand shrieking shards. But the organizing rhythm is relentless. It's anarchy contained.

The songwriters travel under the names of David Was and Don Was, and they make the kind of silliness ...

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