Westbound Records – WBCD 772001 281.36MB FLAC
This copy of Free Your Mind...And Your Ass Will Follow has lived at least two completely different lives. It began as Westbound Records' 2005 CD edition of Funkadelic's second album. At some point it entered the Oakland Public Library system, where it acquired a barcode, classification labels, an RFID tag and the other machinery required to make a public object circulate. Now it has been removed from that system, ripped to FLAC and released again.
The library additions are impossible to separate from the artwork. A white OAKLAND PUBLIC LIBRARY, CAEIF / MAIN LIBRARY sticker crosses the upper part of the front image. Another label identifies it as MAIN / CD / RB / FUNKADELI, with the final letters sacrificed to the available space. A large Bibliotheca RFID tag covers the lower right. Beneath all that institutional equipment is the 2005 package design: a woman in a black Funkadelic shirt stretched horizontally across a worn blue field, her arms opened so widely that the body becomes almost architectural. The title is pushed around the edges instead of being allowed a clean central position.
This is a funny object to find inside a library. Free your mind, says the record. Here is your barcode, says the library.
That is not really a contradiction. A library exists by attaching control systems to things so those things can move among people. The barcode does not imprison the disc. It records circulation. The RFID tag permits the object to leave the building and return. Even the clipped category, RB, is an attempt to give a place to music that has always made categories feel inadequate.
The open case makes the original visual joke clearer. The woman's body continues across the left panel while the disc turns bodies into a wheel. Repeated female figures radiate from the center in black, green, purple, red and blue, their extended limbs becoming spokes. The Oakland Public Library has placed another circular MAIN LIBRARY label around the hub, accidentally completing the composition. A rectangular number sticker cuts across the upper portion of the disc. Funkadelic's psychedelic multiplication and the library's inventory system occupy the same circle.
The package has been used. The clear jewel case is scratched and cracked, especially near the upper left of the rear panel, and the plastic catches light along its edges. These marks belong in the photograph. A library copy is not supposed to remain untouched. Every abrasion is evidence that somebody checked it out, carried it away, played it and brought it back. The condition is part of the edition's history rather than damage that photography needs to hide.
The rear insert calls this "the mindblowing second album from George Clinton's warped band of brothers, plus four bonus tracks." Underneath the sales language sits the original six-song program: the ten-minute title track, "Friday Night, August 14th," "Funky Dollar Bill," "I Wanna Know If It's Good to You?," "Some More" and "Eulogy and Light." Four additions follow: "Fish, Chips and Sweat," a 2005 radio advert, the 1970 single version of "I Wanna Know If It's Good to You" and its instrumental version. The package credits George Clinton as producer, Dean Rudland for compilation, notes and research, Duncan Cowell at Sound Mastering Ltd, and a new 2005 package and CD design by quazee.com.
George Clinton described the sessions as an attempt to find out whether Funkadelic could make an entire album while everybody was tripping on acid. The result does not behave like a sequence of neatly separated studio constructions. The title track lasts more than ten minutes and feels built from occupation rather than progression. Voices, guitar, rhythm and studio effects crowd the same mental space until repetition stops measuring time. The music does not patiently persuade the listener to loosen up. It establishes the altered condition first and leaves the listener to catch up.
"Friday Night, August 14th" pulls that condition into a heavier song form, while "Funky Dollar Bill" makes the album's distrust of money physically danceable. Funkadelic could place suspicion, pleasure and ugliness inside the same groove without asking one of them to win. "I Wanna Know If It's Good to You?" turns desire into an extended question. "Some More" is exactly the sort of title this album would give a piece that refuses elaborate explanation. Then "Eulogy and Light" closes the original LP by allowing speech, ritual and distortion to replace any conventional resolution. The album does not come down. It changes the language of the trip.
The downloaded archive contains ten stereo FLAC files at 16-bit / 44.1 kHz and runs 41:49.52. Every track carries an AccurateRip result marked accurate at confidence 18, so this is a verified CD extraction rather than an uncertain analog transfer. The files were encoded with dBpoweramp and FLAC 1.5.0. Their tags identify the source as "CD (Lossless)," although the embedded catalog number is 212 while the photographed package is WBCD 772001. That small disagreement is worth preserving. Metadata describes a recording according to one system; the physical object supplies another identifier.
The mastering is loud. Across the six album tracks, measured integrated loudness ranges from approximately -6.6 to -10.0 LUFS, and several reconstructed true peaks cross 0 dBFS. "Funky Dollar Bill" reaches about +0.5 dBTP; "Fish, Chips and Sweat" reaches about +0.6; the two final bonus cuts reach about +1.1. This is not a timid digital presentation. The 2005 mastering pushes the music toward the front of the available space.
It does not flatten every piece into the same shape. "Eulogy and Light" is the quietest and most dynamically variable album track at roughly -10.0 LUFS with a loudness range near 7.9 LU. "Some More" also moves considerably more than the title track, whose ten minutes measure around -8.6 LUFS with a relatively tight 3.2 LU range. The title piece therefore sustains its pressure over a long span, while the end of the original album opens and contracts more dramatically.
Stereo space changes across the edition too. The first six tracks contain substantial left-right difference information, particularly the title track and "I Wanna Know If It's Good to You?" The extras become progressively narrower. "Fish, Chips and Sweat" is strongly centered. The radio advertisement is effectively dual mono, exactly as the rear insert's "Stereo except * Mono" notice promises. The single and instrumental versions of "I Wanna Know" are also nearly mono. The bonus section therefore moves backward toward the compact spatial image of a 1970 single even while the 2005 CD adds it to a modern digital program.
There is one useful correction hidden in the physical package. The final FLAC is named "Unknown Track," but its duration is 3:12, exactly matching the rear insert's listed instrumental version of "I Wanna Know If It's Good to You." The object solves the file's uncertainty. This is why photographs belong beside audio. A rip preserves sound and carries metadata, but it does not automatically understand everything it contains.
The printed track times and measured files differ by a few seconds on almost every selection, probably because the files retain boundaries, fades or gaps not counted the same way on the package. Again, neither version needs to be treated as a mistake. One is printed catalog information. The other is the actual duration of this extraction.
A 1970 album became a 2005 remaster, then an Oakland library object, then ten verified FLAC files, then a Private Release post. Each stage added something: bonus material, louder mastering, labels, scratches, circulation history, metadata and finally another route outward. The most appropriate thing about this copy may be that it was never private for very long. It was built to move from one mind to another.
Free your mind.
