We Want the Funk

My favorite earworm these past few months has been Uptown Funk by Mark Ronson featuring Bruno Mars. It's just infectious, upbeat, rump-shaking good fun all around. You know it. You love it. Like me, you’ve heard it a million times. But I want an excuse to play it again so let me pretend to do a public service for the few folks out there who might not have yet been tickled by this particular funky finger of fate.

The video – and the throwback classic it always brings to my mind – appear after the jump. 

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When I was a young pup in theater school one of the acting teachers had a unique way of getting the class to loosen up physically and release our inhibitions before each session. We stood together in a circle clapping our hands stretched out in front, then in back, then front again, over and over. It was a steady pace, not too fast. Then we’d start shout-singing this Parliament Funkadelic classic:

Make my funk the P-Funk (clap); I want my funk uncut (clap)
Whoa-oh, make my funk the P-Funk (clap); I wants to get funked up. (clap)
I want the bomb (clap); I want the P-Funk  (clap)
I want my funk uncut. (clap); Make my funk the P-Funk (clap)
I wants to get funked up. (you guessed it, clap)

After a few verses of that we were limber and silly and ready to act our fool heads off, emoting like crazy.

So each time Bruno Mars sings “Uptown Funk you up, Uptown Funk you up (say whaa?!)” I have a happy flashback to college days and the goofy good fun we had in Jim Spruill’s class.

Maybe this tasty track will take you to your happy place too. You dig?