George Clinton and his band of psychedelic groovers amalgamated many of the trends of '60s music into something strange and new. They took James Brown's fiery funk and the charged-up rock of Sly & The Family Stone and gave it a looser, more cosmic feel, while mixing Isaac Hayes' languid beats with the absurd weirdness of The Mothers of Invention to create outer-space bombs that still felt tuned to the rhythms of the earth.