PICK OF THE WEEK

Tales From the Tour Bus SoHo, 10:30pm Monday

'Print the legend" may not always be the best advice, but in the case of Mike Judge’s animated music history series Tales From the Tour Bus, it seems to work pretty well.

The episodes, which Judge narrates in a voice familiar as that of Hank from King of the Hill, present musical histories the way they’re always best told: with the emphasis on hilarious and outrageous anecdotes, the ones that may not be 100 per cent true.

The first series was a wild, funny, and at times surprisingly moving, introduction to some of the larger-than-life cult figures from the golden age of American country music. With series two, Judge has assembled some of the world’s funk greats to hazily recall their glory years, starting with Godfather of Funk George Clinton.

The half-hour episode provides a decent overview of Clinton’s complicated musical career, from his doo wop group, The Parliaments, turned down by Motown for being “too ugly”, to the acid-soaked heights of Parliament and Funkadelic, even touching on his legacy and influence on hip-hop as one of the genre’s most sampled artists.

But it’s the stories that set the series apart, told entertainingly through a combination of interviews, animated re-enactments and archival footage. How about the time the band, driving through the night to their next show, out of their heads on LSD, were scared half to death by a horde of zombies? It turned out they had accidentally driven on to the set of Night

of the Living Dead. Or how the song was, allegedly, responsible for the trend of crowds holding their lighters in the air at concerts?

Mostly unprintable, often completely unverifiable, very vague on dates and facts — and one of the best music documentaries of this or any other year.