Pitchfork

Indianapolis (also derisively known as Naptown) isn't known for much. Sure, the place has a couple of perennially mediocre sports franchises and a yearly drunken redneck gathering disguised as an auto race, but that's about it. It's a place people pass through to get to someplace else. It's also a pretty weak place musically, save for a few stalwart soldiers fighting the good fight.

But it wasn't always that way, as this comp attests. No longer should Indy cling to such weak sources of musical renown as "home of hardcore legends the Zero Boys"-- not when they can lay claim to the Highlighters Band. In fact, the city's visitors bureau and chamber of commerce would play Highlighters' singles in their lobbies if the knew what was up, and they'd have plaques on their walls reading, "Indianapolis, the city that inspired Bay Area DJ par excellence Peanut Butter Wolf to put together one of the greatest funk comps ever."

The story goes like this: while on a cross-country bowling excursion (that's right) and record search, Wolf stopped in Naptown and was introduced to Highlighters sax player Clifford Palmer. Palmer played Wolf some of his band's old 45s and Wolf was so taken by them that he decided his next project for Stones Throw (his label, which put out Madlib's Quasimoto and Yesterday's New Quintet projects, among others) would be a massive old school funk comp.

And it's damn good, compiled with a curator's eye for detail, from the pacing of the tracks to the meticulous liner notes. And what incredible range of styles: hard funk, smooth soul funk, jazz funk, instrumentals, shout-outs, anti-drug anthems, positive ghetto jams, and every kind of post-JB funk you can imagine-- seventy-plus minutes, all recorded between 1968 and 1974 (though most of it's from between '70-'72).

To be fair, not all the bands here are from Indianapolis, just the best of the batch. The aforementioned Highlighters give the comp its title with their titular contribution, which tries to out-James Brown James Brown and comes as close as humanly possible. Then there's Billy Ball and the Upsetters featuring Roosevelt Matthews with "Tighten Up Tighter" and its supercharged Booker T. groove; the Ebony Rhythm Band, who provide the comp with excellent intro and outro excerpts; and radio DJ-gone-funk-band-leader Spider Harrison with the lurching syncopation of "Beautiful Day."

Of the non-Indy bands, there are several standouts, but the most surprising is Bad Medicine, made up of a bunch of white guys from upstate New York. Their "Trespasser" is what you might call canonical funk: after hearing it, when you hear the word "funk," this will be the sound you imagine. It's pristine and by the books, but dead-on perfect. There are two Texas Bands with killer cuts, too: Dallas' Soul Seven, whose conservatory skills present maybe the hardest, rawest funk of the lot, and Houston's Kashmere Stage Band, who take the big band approach to funk.

If there's a problem with The Funky 16 Corners, it's that it's exhausting to listen to all the way through. The energy is kept at such a level that it's best to break it down into two or three sessions-- don't try and take it in all at once. You'll collapse.