Bootsy's Rubber Band Bootsy? Player of the Year

Personnel: Bootsy Collins; Gary "Mudd-Bone" Johnson (vocals, drums); Robert "P-Nut" Johnson (vocals); Casper (guitar, drums); Phelps "Catfish" Collins (guitar); Fred Wesley, Maceo Parker, Rick Gardner, Richard Griffith (horns); Frankie "Kash" Waddy (drums); Joel "Razor Sharp" Johnson.Bootsy Collins's 1978 solo album, BOOTSY? PLAYER OF THE YEAR, has a title that shows, without bragging, just how essential the bassist/songwriter/producer/all-around creative sparkplug was to George Clinton and the P-Funk empire. For the first time since starting his own project in the P-Funk extended family, Collins seems to have focused intently on his own material, which means that these seven songs lack the occasionally meandering jams that weighed down earlier Bootsy's Rubber Band albums. The grooves here are sharper, but the tempos are also slower, with over half of the record perfecting the deep-groove ballad style that Collins had first experimented with on 1977's "Munchies for Your Love." In parti