The P-Funk Earth Tour was a concert tour by Parliament-Funkadelic in 1976–1977, featuring absurd costumes, lavish staging and special effects, and music from both the Parliament and Funkadelic repertoires.
The P-Funk Earth Tour was ambitious from the start. Casablanca Records executive Neil Bogart gave George Clinton a $275,000 budget for production, the largest amount ever allocated for a Black music act to tour.[1] Clinton hired Jules Fischer as set designer, who had previously worked on tours for The Rolling Stones, KISS, and other rock bands.[1] [2] Both the show's music and production elements were extensively rehearsed at an aircraft hangar in Newburgh, New York.[1] [2] The show required seven trucks to transport its equipment and scenery.[2] With a broad range of themes embodied in the show's production, culminating in the Afrofuturist landing of the P-Funk Mothership, author Rickey Vincent states that the P-Funk Earth Tour "drew from the ribald, uncensored entirety of the Black tradition in mind-blowing ways no one had yet even attempted."[1] Rolling Stone viewed the tour as embracing Clinton's "semiserious funk mythology" with "[a] mixture of tribal funk, elaborate stage props and the relentless assault on personal inhibition [that] resembled nothing so much as a Space Age Mardi Gras."[3] The New York Times described the tour as featuring "superbly silly, lavish costumes" and an "opulent Baroque ... stage show".[4]
The tour began in April 1976 in Nashville.[1] The 1977 live album was recorded at two early 1977 concerts, January 19 at the Los Angeles Forum and January 21 at the Oakland Coliseum.[1] The tour drew to a close in mid-1977; its expenses were as high as its innovation level and it was losing money steadily;[5] indeed one tour assistant's job was "to tell the musicians why they weren't getting paid."[5] Nevertheless, the tour served as valuable publicity and marketing for "the P-Funk brand",[5] making reference to the greater Parliament-Funkadelic-Clinton enterprise of acts, records, side projects, spin-offs, andso forth.
In 1986, Capitol issued a recording of a late 1976 concert as Mothership Connection: Live From Houston, attributed to George Clinton and Parliament-Funkadelic.
| April 16, 1976 | Nashville | United States | Nashville Municipal Auditorium |
| April 18, 1976 | Cleveland | Allen Theatre | |
| April 24, 1976 | Richmond | Richmond Coliseum | |
| May 14, 1976 | Cincinnati | Riverfront Coliseum | |
| May 15, 1976 | Pittsburgh | Civic Arena | |
| May 29, 1976 | Philadelphia | Spectrum | |
| June 11, 1976 | Tulsa | Tulsa Assembly Center | |
| June 20, 1976 | Detroit | Masonic Temple | |
| July 13, 1976 | Orlando | Orlando Sports Stadium | |
| July 18, 1976 | Nashville | Nashville Municipal Auditorium | |
| August 12, 1976 | Seattle | Paramount Theatre | |
| August 14, 1976 | Los Angeles | Shrine Auditorium | |
| September 26, 1976 | |||
| October 2, 1976 | Providence | Providence Civic Center | |
| October 27, 1976 | New Orleans | Municipal Auditorium | |
| October 28, 1976 | Baton Rouge | LSU Assembly Center | |
| October 29, 1976 | Mississippi Coliseum | ||
| October 30, 1976 | Lake Charles | Lake Charles Civic Center | |
| October 31, 1976 | Houston | The Summit | |
| November 3, 1976 | San Antonio | HemisFair Arena | |
| November 5, 1976 | Dallas | Dallas Convention Center | |
| November 6, 1976 | Lloyd Noble Center | ||
| November 7, 1976 | Tulsa | Tulsa Assembly Center |