Marvin Whoremonger

Album review

Sometime during the mid-'70s, a Las Vegas hustler corralled three high-school students, all between the ages of 15 and 17, along with a singer named Marvin Neros (who couldn't have been much older), and recorded a batch of dirty funk jams in one take. He then took the sessions to Hollywood and added horns, percussion, piano, and far-out synthesizer riffs, all played by anonymous studio musicians. What could've turned out to be the funk equivalent of the Shaggs instead ends up a totally bonkers, futuristic outsider soul record, titled Marvin Whoremonger and credited to Mark III. All of the songs here are strictly about drugs, sex, and wild partying. "Street Scene" and the more paranoid "Pusher Man" are gritty tales of dope peddling, and the slow-burning "Sex in Motion" is supremely hot and bothered. Best of all is "This Party's Over," which is an absolute riot. The group sounds as if the only way to react to a party being shut down is to party as hard as possible, and the track is filled with "say what?" ad-libs, thick, rubbery basslines, and exuberant chants of "we wanna party!" The album ends with two instrumental versions, although "Funky Heaven" already seemed to be an instrumental in its original form. Marvin Whoremonger was originally issued as a double LP, presumably so the grooves would be heavier, but even with the two instrumental versions, it only clocks in at 36 minutes, so the 2016 reissue is a single disc. It's hard to tell if the young musicians who played and sang on the album had much input in the writing of these songs, or if everything was created and controlled by producer Cholly Williams (if that was his real name). The subject matter is awfully mature for such youngsters. After the album was released in 1976, it sank without a trace, despite the musicians being promised that the release would make them stars. Realistically, the music is still a bit too weird (and not in a high-concept P-Funk way) and far too amateur and unpolished to have really hit it big. While it feels like most of the individuals involved with the making of this album ended up being flimflammed in some way or another, the music itself is still pretty incredible, and it's one of the more fascinating funk oddities of the '70s.
© Paul Simpson /TiVo