Eugene McDaniels: Headless Heroes Of The Apocalypse

If the story is true, none other than soon-to-be-disgraced Vice President Spiro Agnew is to blame for Headless Heroes Of The Apocalypse's failure to find its way into more record collections. Apparently alarmed by its political content, Agnew placed a call to Atlantic that effectively ended the label's promotion of the album. True or not, it's hard to imagine many Nixon officials grooving to creator Eugene McDaniels' unique blend of spaced-out, leftist, Christian funk, but it's a shame that so many missed out on it the first time around. Also known as The Left Rev. McD, McDaniels later made his name by penning the 1974 Roberta Flack hit "Feel Like Making Love," but his own albums followed a muse that kept him away from the Top 40 charts. Heroes was originally released in 1971, but its fusion-inflected, politically committed funk still sounds radical today. Sounding like a smoked-out Curtis Mayfield clutching a copy of Bitches Brew, McDaniels offers a portrait of a world in which social injustices, from wars to racism to Native American genocide, act as harbingers of Armageddon. "The Lord is mad," McDaniels sings on "The Lord Is Back," but his fire-and-brimstone vision falls well outside the norm. "Jagger The Dagger" pays an almost fearful tribute to the Rolling Stones frontman's macabre pansexual appeal, while "Supermarket Blues" finds McDaniels wishing he could have "stayed home and gotten high" to avoid a racial confrontation. Sample fodder for A Tribe Called Quest, The Beastie Boys, and others, Heroes' loose, infectious grooves make an immediate impression, but their combination with McDaniels' unique vision is what gives Heroes its enduring allure.