This Boot Was Made for Fonk-n Jam Fan, 1979

This promotional item was distributed at concerts and other appearances in support of the 1979 Bootsy’s Rubber Band album, This Boot Was Made for Fonk-n. A hand fan made from a plastic knife handle and a small card with album cover art by P-Funk illustrator Overton Loyd, the premise was inspired by the album’s lead single “Jam Fan (Hot),” which contained the lyrics: “Blow dry me, baby/You want me to be cool/But I'm not/You need a fan…”

As Bootsy tells it, the idea to produce the Jam Fan came from a fan of the human kind, who tossed their own homemade version of the cooling device onstage at a show. “I was like ‘Man, check this out,” Bootsy recalls. “And it went right with the record. It was all about: Let’s mass produce this for the audience. And that’s what we did. We’d throw ‘em out [into the crowd.]”

Bootsy places the Jam Fan firmly within the legacy of the outside-the-box promotional items which helped build the P-Funk mythology, from the cartoons which aired before concerts in the late 1970s to the comic books that came as inserts in Parliament’s Funkentelechy vs. the Placebo Syndrome and This Boot Was Made for Fonk-N albums. All of the above coming from the pen of Overton Loyd, with assists from George, Bootsy, and original P-Funk illustrator Pedro Bell.

“We had to think of stupid ways to promote,” Bootsy says. “George and I was definitely into self promoting. If we hadn’t have been, mugs would have known nothing about us. All that stuff was like gold to us. That was just like the music, but a whole ‘nother avenue. And we loved to do it.”