Sly Stone S/D

How about High On You from 1975? The critics seemed to like it around the time it came out. It just...tanked.

Small Talk is very good, High on You is spottier but still nice-sounding. W/r/t to the critical consensus, I think Fresh is the last great record, but the stuff that followed isn't as embarrassing as many lazy critics would have it. It's sort of a shame that the records I mention have all but been written out of history. Although the inclusion of some tracks from Small Talk and High on You (in remastered versions!) on the recent Essential Sly and the Family Stone set bodes well.

No kidding. I remember having some cassette hits compilation in college that had "Loose Booty" from Small Talk, easily one of the tightest little jams he ever did (and famously sampled on Paul's Boutique). It's almost embarrassing that the song has been available exclusively on those Rhino funk comps until this recent comp.

Maybe on the end of side A, it's track 4 on my CD. Anyway, terrific, yes! It's called Dance to the Medley and it's over twelve minutes long. A great album, Dance to the Music.

Maybe on the end of side A, it's track 4 on my CD. Anyway, terrific, yes! It's called Dance to the Medley and it's over twelve minutes long. A great album, Dance to the Music.

post-Riot Search: Fresh is fantastic, as is High On You, Small Talk, and Back on the Right Track. This stuff is *all* up there with his best work in my opinion.

Destroy: Heard You Missed ME, Well I'm Back.

why are these late-mid period Sly CDs out of print, and his last coupla albums relatively easy to track down now??

Plus, from the late records, the aforementioned "Crossword Puzzle," the title track of "Small Talk," "Same Thing (Makes You Laugh, Makes You Cry"), "Loose Booty." And from one of the early ones, "Advice."

(Plus I really want to know what the fucking chords in Family Affair are).

i rate his albums like this:
riot
stand
whole new thing
fresh
dance to the music/life

i like the others in the 70s but his songwriting was going down the pan a bit, already.

S: "Underdog," a song I love to kick a mixtape off with.

Presumably this isn't referring to the Electric Spanking of War Babies. The tracks from that album that Sly collaborated on are brilliant!

(Plus I really want to know what the fucking chords in Family Affair are).

Shakey Mo, do ya know what I own? The "Riot" SONGBOOK, with all 'em in it. I can't believe I ever found this, but I do have it, and if you want the chords to any of the songs, be glad to e-mail them to you, make copies and regular mail them, whatever. ("Family Affair" is actually quite simple!)

the lack of a closing quotation mark here had me thinking that sly had recorded a song entitled ""ha ha, hee hee, and sly's so out of tune he's nearly pushed out of that song altogether"

is out of print too, and fucking hard to track down.

yeah. no market for that.

ILM, I KISS YOU!

many others...

The series is called For the Record, not Off the Record.

< /pedant >

http://www.amazon.co.uk/exec/obidos/ASIN/1841955914/qid=1116503480/sr=1-3/ref=sr_1_8_3/026-8727259-6275608

Destroy: Dance to the Music. I agree with Shakey: aside from the singles, this album doesn't really do anything for me. I haven't heard the post-High Epic/Warner Bros LPs, so I can't comment on 'em.

WTF does this even mean? I can understand if they weren't actually that into the four-on-the-snare Motown beats because they wanted to be doing funk, but to suggest that Sly had some other, hipper style in mind that he never got around to playing is such bullshit.

The True Story Behind This Album, August 20, 2004
Reviewer: obi odobi (Washington, D.C.) - See all my reviews

Since no one has really gotten into it here, I thought I'd write and clarify the circumstances of this recording for all of the Sly freaks, funk freaks, and other potentially-interested buyers.

By 1976, Sly's career was at an extremely low point. He hadn't had a significant commercial hit in years, he had lost his management, the original Family Stone was long gone, Sly's drug problems were apparently getting the best of him, and former bassist Larry Graham was putting Sly to shame (on record and in concert) with his more funky, pop, and upbeat version of the original Family Stone formula with his band Graham Central Station. In fact, Sly was struggling so much at this time that he actually toured (in support of his attempt at Philly International soul "Heard Ya Missed Me, Now I'm Back") as an opening act for the famous P-Funk Earth Tour in late 1976. It was a sad irony to see Sly opening for two bands (P-Funk and Bootsy's Rubber Band) that had been so inspired by HIM in the first place. At the end of tour, in fact, two of Sly's backup singers (one of which was his cousin) defected and joined P-Funk where they later recorded as The Brides of Funkenstein.

Sly dropped out of visibility, surfacing two years later in 1978 when he had left Epic and signed to Warner Brothers, and began working on his latest in a series of "comeback" LPs, "Back On the Right Track." Opinions are varied on the musical quality of this album (I think there are some great songs on there, but nothing resembling a chart hit) but commercially, it fared poorly. That must have hurt Sly after all the comeback hype. I don't think he even toured in support of the album. And I remember seeing Sly on the Mike Douglas show at this time. He was dispirited and so out of it on drugs that he could barely speak. Mike and the other guests just stared at him in disbelief.

He dropped out of sight again until around 1980, when word was that Sly was now in George Clinton's camp. The plan was for Sly to guest on some P-Funk releases, and for Clinton to produce (or co-produce) Sly's next album for Warners. This made sense, since Sly and Clinton were label mates at Warners (via Funkadelic and Bootsy). Clinton was talking the Sly project up in the press, Sly made cameo appearances during P-Funk's 1981 tour, and he and original Family Stone trumpeter Cynthia Robinson are on two versions of "Funk Gets Stronger" from Funkadelic's summer 1981 LP "The Electric Spanking of War Babies." Supposedly, the original version took up an entire side of a projected double album, but was later edited down. Personally, I love these tracks but objectively, they sound as if the main priority in the studio that day was getting extremely high, there happened to be a few instruments laying about, and the tape recorder was running. The same can be said for most of the Sly/P-Funk collaborations, the most significant of which is the P-Funk All Stars' 3-part "Hydraulic Pump" 12-inch (the complete version is available on the P-Funk All-Stars CD "Hydraulic Funk"). Like a lot of Sly's material with P-Funk (which is spread out over several releases), it sounds like they were trying to take a little bit of music and make a lot of out of it.

By late 1981, Clinton had become involved in a bitter dispute with Warners, with the end result that Funkadelic left Warners (they haven't released an album under the Funkadelic name since then). That also threw a wrench into the Sly project, which hadn't yet been completed. And supposedly, Sly just vanished, leaving the album unfinished. Warners brought producer Stewart Levine in to salvage and complete the project, and the album was released two years later in the spring of 1983 with the title "Ain't But the One Way." The cover photo (with Sly jumping over a fence wearing camouflage pants) dated back 5 years to the "Back On the Right Track" photo sessions. Sly must have been long gone if they couldn't even get an up-to-date photo for the cover of his album!

If you look at the album's personnel listing, you will see the names of many original Family Stone members, and also the names of many studio session players. That suggests that the basic tracks were cut with Sly, Clinton, the Family Stone (maybe augmented by some players from P-Funk), and that the project was completed later with Levine and the studio musicians. That's probably why the album has a glossy, generic sound to it. If you listen closely, you can hear traces of the Sly/Clinton approach underneath, especially in Sly's lyrics, singing attitude, and electric piano playing. If you want to compare the two approaches, listen to the demo version of "Who In the Funk Do You Think You Are" from the first volume of George Clinton's Family Series, and compare it with the Levine-produced version on the "...One Way" album.

As far as the music, it sounds far more inventive and inspired than Sly's previous LP "Back On The Right Track." Hardcore Sly fans know that there is not a single Sly LP without at least a few moments of genius, however fragmentary. If you're sensitive to Sly's musical "codes," you can hear that they had some good ideas going, lyrically and musically. You can hear Sly's stoned wit in good effect. But you can also hear that the ideas were left in a skeletal and incomplete state, and were completed by someone else with a very different production concept. The strongest songs to me are the poignant rehab ballad "Ha Ha Hee Hee," the cover of the Kinks "You Really Got Me," the vignette "Sylvester" (another song seemingly dedicated to Sly's mother), the "I Want to Take You Higher" retread (called "High Y'all"), and a few others.

You have to give Clinton credit for inspiring Sly to break out of the playing-it-safe mold of his recent records and push the envelope here. And Stewart Levine also deserves a bit of credit for achieving a professional sound in the end with what he had to work with.

If they had completed this album with the original team, it would probably have been the strongest and most interesting Sly album in a LONG time. It might have even been a commercial success. But unfortunately, it fell victim to music business chicanery and drug excess. "Ain't But The One Way" turned out to be Sly's de-facto farewell to the music business. He hasn't relased an album since then and for the rest of the 1980s, it seemed like he was in the news for one drug-related offence after another. The funny thing about it is that on the Mike Douglas show I mentioned above, one of the few coherent things I remember Sly saying was - and this is a quote as best I can remember - "I'm gonna release one more album and if it doesn't go platinum - BYE Y'ALL..."

A Whole New Thing is worth hearing if only for "Underdog" and "Trip to Your Heart." (I didn't know until three years ago that the latter was the source material for the ahh-uhh-AHH-ahh's in LL's "Mama Said Knock You Out.")

Would love to see a transcript of the Douglas chat.

"I Cannot Make It", too...

It should be noted that there was a Funkadelic album called The Way of the Drum recorded for MCA in 1984-5 (it was rejected by the label), so Warner Bros has nothing to do with there not having been a Funkadelic album in the last 20+ years. Universal says they've lost the masters, by the way.

and of course A Whole New Thing is out of print and never issued on CD

Um, Shakey, didn't we go over this on the FMBB a few years back where you were upset that this was on CD, but the only album that didn't get a vinyl reissue?

The story in Mojo a coupla years back on the making of RIOT is a high freak point in music journalism.

This is the only issue of MOJO I've ever bought (great story on the making of Cloud Nine by the Temptations as well), which has always made me wonder why the magazine is so hated on this board.

sounds like something I would say. (I have had a vinyl copy of it for a few years now - not a reissue tho)

The reason I bought this expensive import was to have a perfect copy instead of having to painstakingly restore my vinyl copy on my computer using an audio restoration program (Sound Forge, etc.). But instead, I found out that the CD version of the album is full of hiss, and is ACTUALLY missing the funky breakbeat clips at the beginning of "Time For Livin'", which was a hip hop sample classic. I collect many classic funk pieces, and I would advise the purist to DEFINITELY get the reissue of this on vinyl, and use an audio program to get the clicks and cracks out. You will definitely get closer to the Quadrophanic quality that way.

Yes. I hate that cover with the photo looking out from the stage or whatever is, looks so cheap and corny.

The stuff you saw on VH1 was from Don Kirschner's Rock Concert in '73, where Sly has a big hat and gold Sly buckle. It's quite cool for attitude but the music is not quite up there with the Larry Graham era Family Stone.
Check out the Dick Cavett shows, where the original line up are on form, and Sly's interviews are the most wasted I have ever seen anyone on TV.
If you want this footage and loads of others, it's all out there.

there's also a dick cavett dvd boxset, rock icons, that has an early sly episode in full. sly is late, and very high, and its kind of awkward to watch him and cavett sort of grapple with each other verbally for a bit and entirely not get wahat the other is saying (in sly's defence, cavitt seems to miss or badly receive much of sly's humour). but the music is good.

I've always been curious about the albums Sly put out in his "declining" years and whether they deserve the bad press they routinely get.

Over here in the UK Small Talk and Back On The Right Track (love the cover of the latter; Sly sitting, hands clapsed and looking doe-eyed at the camera like a penitent schoolboy) are available on CD and I note the comments above but High On You, Heard Ya Missed Me Well I'm Back and Ain't But The One Way aren't. Are they worth searching out or was Greil Marcus right in saying he didn't do himself any favours with all those I'm OK, Honest album titles?

Oh yeah, and the remix album Ten Years Too Soon - was it?

I like all of his albums, so you can probably safely ignore my opinion

High on You is fantastic.

Heard Ya Missed Me is really sad, very limp, his sonic tricks are all evaporated by that point, glossed over by some weird attempt at Philly Soul that doesn't work. Never heard Ain't But the One Way.

"Heard Ya Missed Me" isn't that bad, it grows on you! Some great basslines!

High On You is not "fantastic" — it pretty clearly runs out of gas early on. But the first two cuts (title track and esp. "Crossword Puzzle") are serious highlights. Back on the Right Track sounds a little bit like Car Wash, with a few good tunes and some great organ comping. It's worth hearing if for no other reason than "It Takes All Kinds," which is so smacked out/"I've-been-up-for-six-weeks-straight" it makes There's a Riot Goin' On sound like Enya.

Cos Enya DOESN'T sound like fucking heroin-womb music???????

small talk is underrated. been playing it all week. its basically the riot/fresh sound continued, but with strange violins and strings that could be potentially over-sappy but arent. the strings seem almost put on there to sound more like other records of the time/more polished - maybe to hide some of the records flaws, not sure, but it just gives it a more sympathetic edge and makes it sound quite diff to his other records.

has anyone read the eddie santiago or jeff kaliss books?

yeah, small talk is rad. is that the album with 'crossword puzzle'?

No, that's "High On You". As for the strings, there was a violin player in the band at the time I think?

High On You is wonderful. The last great album he made

the oldies station here plays "thank you (falletinme be mice elf agin" p much everytime i listen to it. this is a dope thing imo.

hahahaha based on strength of these quotes i might just have to buy for the record

it's out of print fwiw

did they ever do "maybe your baby"?

there are plenty of used copies going around anyway.

I highly recommend it

if just for the bit where Sly's pitbull Gun tries to eat his baby, and his wife (at the time) has to wrestle the kid away from the dog and flee the house

Just pulled down Listen to the Voices: Sly Stone in the Studio 1965-1970, which collects all his production work from that time period -- and frankly, OMG. There's a pretty awesome sampling of all the work he was doing at the time -- one of the Beau Brummels tracks sounds like Sly producing the Byrds.

But the real treasure trove on this is the circa-1970 Stone Flower stuff. The sound of There's a Riot Goin' On is there--all the Maestro King drum machines, wah guitars and clavinets, etc. plugged in direct--but the vibe as a whole is not quite as despairing. It's all great -- highlights including Joe Hicks' "Life and Death in the G&A" and 6IX's "Dynamite" and "I'm Just Like You" (the latter of which has a drum machine part one review I read described as a windshield wiper).

In particular, tho, Little Sister's "You're the One (Parts 1 + 2)" is just about one of the best things Sly ever did -- the amazing ensemble vocals, an incredible groove and an outstanding tune. It's unbelievable that this stuff hasn't been reissued until now.

Here:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=B2Yp2LIAGCk&feature=related

"You're the One" is indeed awesome (I've had the original 7" for awhile) - there was a different, more disco-fied version issued in the late 70s, apparently

i so so so wish little sister had completed an album. stanga and somebody's watching you are astonishing.

Yeah, if you like Sly and you don't have that comp you are totally missing out. The Joe Hicks version of "Life and Death" is just insane. Oh and finding the "Somebody's Watching You"/"Stanga" 45 for a buck was a recent triumph.

Oh and finding the "Somebody's Watching You"/"Stanga" 45 for a buck was a recent triumph.

this is the sort of story that might inspire me to start trawling dusty record stores again...

how did i miss that 65-70 compilation?? Imma go get that now. thank you!

OMG, 20 seconds into the 65-70 comp and I'm sold. Best purchase this week!

One of my fave comps of the last few years!

How did I miss this? That does look good.

I think it's a bit more uneven than people are making it out to be, but there is some real gold on there, stuff that's been unavailable/out of print for ages

Yeah, I'm not saying every track is bee's knees -- the Stone Flower stuff pretty much lords over the rest of it. But most of it is pretty-good-to-great. I also enjoy the vampy version of "You Really Got Me."

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9ki4GUz5Qwg

lol

so sad:

http://www.nypost.com/p/news/national/the_rise_and_fall_of_sly_stone_qijyKoYzmAqer1PA0YogSJ

that is very sad.

I want to say in that MOJO piece a couple of years ago that he was living in semi-squalor even then. Anyway, the guy's nuts and an addict. But most guys don't carry around a "get out of poverty" card like he does. If he could get his act together, he could play a few shows. But even Gil-Scott was doing better than this ...

resonance had an hour or two about sly stone, sometime, um, within the last year that's really worth checking out.

cocaine is so awesome!

ugh wtf.

I'd like to see the documentary they mention, but it looks like it barely played anywhere. It's only 74 minutes long, has eight IMDB ratings, and debuted on Netherlands television.

wow, that's bad. He's basically like the homeless dude on our block, with about the same support network (ie neighbors).

If you're curious about what Sly's camper van era recordings sound like, here's a taste

Apparently there's a new album, mostly reworkings of catalogue material with special guests. Wish I could have been a fly on the wall when he crammed Ann Wilson into the van. Okay maybe not. More good news: it's on Cleopatra Records. Further good news: dubstep mix of Family Affair. That'll get Gaga's attention.

oh good autotune

Apparently there's a new album, mostly reworkings of catalogue material with special guests. Wish I could have been a fly on the wall when he crammed Ann Wilson into the van. Okay maybe not. More good news: it's on Cleopatra Records. Further good news: dubstep mix of Family Affair. That'll get Gaga's attention.

...please tell me you're kidding.

Ned, I'm so sorry, but the universe from which I am transmitting this news is not in some alternate parallel plane.

My brain. Do you have a direct link to this info anywhere? People must be warned.

It's called (wait for it...) "I'm Back: Family and Friends" and here is the amazon link: http://www.amazon.com/Back-Family-Friends-Sly-Stone/dp/B0057JWWFU

^^it got like, three stars in Rolling Stone.

so, almost as good as the SuperHeavy album then

Yeah there was a display for this at Barnes & Noble, I picked it up and gave a firm shake of my head.

Sly is not credited as having played on the remake tracks; aside from the guest cameos the instruments were all played by Jurgen Engler and Chris Lietz. Hadn't heard of them but Wikipedia tells me they're former members of the German industrial rock band Die Krupps.

It's available on spotify if you're a masochist http://open.spotify.com/album/52C9QFWsfF3Kzb8riRPJzj if you thought that 'Dance To The Music' really needed Ray Manzarek to noodle all over it then it might be for you I guess.

If you're curious about what Sly's camper van era recordings sound like, here's a taste

this is awesome?
seriously i would buy a record of this, it totally has the kinda slinky shuffly thing i love the most about sly. am really surprised + wanna hear more

it is not awesome

I hear what you're saying about it containing some of his readily identifiable stylistic tics but still

"if i didn't love you, i wouldn't like your ass at all..."

i dig it

"Family Stone" are touring here in a month or two* - anyone know who's in this apart from Vet Stone (og backing singer) and Cynthia Robinson (og horn/backing singer)?

*on a festival with Flaming Lips, Mogwai, Portishead, Death In Vegas, Holy Fuck and Mercury Rev

I hear what you're saying about it containing some of his readily identifiable stylistic tics but still

I would buy a record of songs like that. It's really not bad.

Esp if they were hazy weirdly recorded demos like that.

yeah. i don't know whether there would be an inevitable 'let's get these into a studio & do them justice!' phase, at which the guy from the behind the scenes seinfeld segments who explains the various keyboard motifs used in the show suddenly pops up. but i would buy a record of those demos, word.

Autotune or not, it's more interesting from a stylistic standpoint than I'd expect from a guy who hasn't made a record in 30 years.

yeah it is just- like i would have expected some kind of watered down 'take' on the group's bigger/more out there in your face stuff rather than something that sits comfortably in the parameters of sloochy-solo-weird-keyboard jams

yeah. i don't know whether there would be an inevitable 'let's get these into a studio & do them justice!' phase, at which the guy from the behind the scenes seinfeld segments who explains the various keyboard motifs used in the show suddenly pops up. but i would buy a record of those demos, word.

Autotune or not, it's more interesting from a stylistic standpoint than I'd expect from a guy who hasn't made a record in 30 years.

yeah it is just- like i would have expected some kind of watered down 'take' on the group's bigger/more out there in your face stuff rather than something that sits comfortably in the parameters of sloochy-solo-weird-keyboard jams

the winding, kinda bluesy vocal melody & the keyboard part that comes in half way through are both great, i really love this

& the keyboards/organs sound great, the underlying organ part is like a robert lippok record or something

jeeeezus this is grim

have not watched, but assuming that tmz just zipped over to the guy's trailer to dig some dirt, maybe the documentary guy shouldn't have written a story about how sly lives in a van, included its permanent address & sold it to the post

I don't think TMZ did the interview, it was originally posted here...?

http://www.5min.com/Video/Exclusive---Homeless-Music-Legend-Sly-Stone-Admits-To-Recent-Drug-Use-517169072

that was so sad I had to stop watching. One thing's clear, though--Sly's voice is gone...hell Sly himself seems nearly gone. I'd rather see that dude get healthy than hear any new music.

can barely bring myself to contemplate what's happened to the guy, 'riot' is sometimes my favorite album ever and 'stand' ain't far behind. just terrible to think about.

This vintage clip is wonderful. Check out the face of the girl at 0:27. As a friend on Twitter pointed out, it reminds you what it was like before everybody became conscious of being on camera. It's pure, unselfconscious joy.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tWdVClbOYwI&feature=related

It was also before they invented being jaded. Also, crossing your arms and frowning.

HE SHOULD HAVE STUCK WITH BUTTERMILK!!

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=p_Ll2AleUY0

Sly's voice is gone...hell Sly himself seems nearly gone. I'd rather see that dude get healthy than hear any new music.

^^^

decades of crack/cocaine is really hard on the vocal chords

Speaking of funk, isn't George Clinton allegedly a longtime functioning crack/cocaine addict?

yeah - GC's last arrest for cocaine/crack was in the parking lot of 7/11 in Ohio somewhere iirc...? That Clinton is even still alive and performing is a small miracle. (His voice, which was never all that melodious to begin with, is completely shot too btw). I'm not aure how Clinton has managed to keep going while someone like Sly falls by the wayside. Part of it may just be that Clinton has a much bigger support network/organization, I dunno...

What Sly needs is a Phil intervention:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OLH32F6Xvkw

Clinton kinda tight with the old purse strings... according to various ex P-Funkers

yeah there's that

Clinton also seems willing/eager to work though - tours constantly, guest appearances, albums, etc.

He's been a businessman since he ran the barbershop back in Plainfield

Parliafunkadelicment never had the massive hits that Sly did, so their commercial troughs wouldn't have been very deep (and therefore, disillusioning/disheartening/demoralizing), compared to Sly's. But yeah, Clinton never stopped touring (and he generally tended to show up to his shows).

Mind you, think he's been bankrupt at least once

huh had no idea clinton was still a drug abuser -- he just played in my neck of the woods. interviews i've read with him actually seem pretty together. guess he's figured out how to function for the most part.

Sly Stone's problem is not lack of money. It's lack of touring to make money, like GC does. But again, if Gil-Scott wasn't living in a van. there's no reason Sly should be.

I mean, how much did Sly make off Janet Jackson?

Thinking that, whatever his ups and downs, Clinton's a much less troubled individual than Sly (or Gil Scott-Heron)

I guess? Implication is that Sly would be a mess even without drugs, which I guess is possible.

Anyway, someone get this guy an ambulance chaser so that he can get paid!

http://www.whosampled.com/producer-sampled/Sly%20Stone/?sp=4

Sly was very together in the early days, but I think the success got to him (just) before the drugs

Clinton's last arrest in 2003

dude in P-Funk's road crew told me Clinton tours with a defibrillator.

it sounds more like Sly just manages his money badly/gives shit away/loses track of it etc

surely the dude should be living off of royalties alone

Yes, he must earn enough money a year not to have to live in van

Clinton must have made a load of dough from licensing his work for samples. I'm sure Sly must have been sampled extensively but nowhere near as much or as lucratively as GC.

Nonetheless he shouldn't be in the state he's in.

I have a source inside the P-Funk camp that says GC finally got off drugs earlier this year after a health scare. If so, good for him. Unfortunately, Sly's never had that kinda willpower when it comes to cleaning up, and those years of isolation must've done some damage. I mean, with or without drugs, Clinton's been more "together" than Sly since about 1973. That's more than half both their lives.

^^^wouldn't be so sure about that re: GC and sampling royalties - Clinton gave away a lot of stuff, and ownership of his publishing rights went back and forth a lot (so many lawsuits, I can't keep track)

IIRC, Clinton has been/is being royally screwed by Westbound Records, and not in the normal ways labels screw artists: his signature was forged on a re-up of a contract.

Actually, he's devoted a whole blog to that subject: http://www.funkprobosci.com/

wow

'Coming to you from George Clinton better known as lethal lip the linguistic full metal jacket of vernacular ballistic shooting off at the mouth without chapped lips, hairs on my funk while others flunk diaper rash.’

love

the article above suggested sly had been screwed over by the label, etc, and that his publishing had been sold off back in the 80s, so that, combined w/his legendary untogetherness, means this sad situ shouldn't be too much of a surprise.

seriously, after reading that 'in their own words' book a few years back, i'm amazed sly made it to the 80s.

that book is so good

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=o5vu9eNMKgQ

I think Sly played on that Material/Maceo EP back in ... 1990? With Bootsy, Bobby Byrd and Bernie Worrell, among the Laswell ringers.

i've always wondered if george and sly had any memory of making this. i just imagine everyone waking up on the floor of the studio at 4 in the afternoon trying to remember what happened the night before.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Kef7gR6bhUA

Sly shows up on the Axiom Funk comp with that crew...on the worst track of the bunch unfortunately. xp

^^^^

Xpost- the audio on that YouTube clip ain't the 12 inch version of "Hydraulic Pump," which has verses and is 12 minutes long. It beats the shit out of the version above, which was on the otherwise excellent Urban Dancefloor Guerillas. And yeah, they musta been high as kites.

long version is on Spotify btw

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KkPci47b2EQ

missing a minute and a half tho

You pump up and down, you pump up and down, you pump up and down and then you break it down!

I mean, how much did Sly make off Janet Jackson?

probably fuck all since Michael Jackson owned Sly's publishing by then

yep. sold 'em to MJ some time in the early 80s iirc

Sly shows up on the Axiom Funk comp with that crew...on the worst track of the bunch unfortunately. xp

exactly!!!

I know!!! ARRRGHHHHH SLY

wtf is Sly doin on this 1974 Elvin Bishop album...?

All of the box set was good wasn't it? The early lesser known psychedelic funk stuff included. Pretty weird in places.
Was surprised to find out that the last lp in there was still pretty good, just maybe not in comparison to other stuff by the same band. I think that's Small talk

hadn't realised that box 'a Collection' was a limited edition though. Or maybe had forgotten

Small Talk is totally a good album. dunno what else is in the box

small talk is great!!

there's a couple half-assed tracks on it imho but all the weird string stuff makes it stand out in his catalog and is really quite lovely

a Collection was all the lps up to Small Talk remastered and expanded. So all the discs that appeared separately in around 2009.

that they left the singles out of that Collection box set is so irritating

well I didn't buy it I guess I'm not irritated but it is sort of stupid

I thought most of the singles were present as the bonus tracks on the relevant lps

referring to Everybody is a Star, Hot Fun in the Summertime, and Thank You (Falettinme Be Mice Elf Agin) - all of which are key, peak-period works, especially the latter

Right, odd exclusions. Were they on the Greatest Hits set that came out in the band's lifetime? In which case it might be a bit odd that that wasn't included in the set since it has been thought of as a classic lp inits own right, obviously there would be at least some amount of duplication but it might at least mean everything was included.
Not sure why they weren't stuck on as bonus tracks. Looks like what was in terms of singles was different edits of lp tracks that had come out as singles.

Sly on the radio in '67: http://airchexx.com/2012/05/17/archives-sly-stone-on-ksol-san-francisco-1967-828-scoped/

Those singles are on the greatest hits set from 69/70, whic got remastered and released after the other albums.

You know what's a good single? "Time For Livin'."

that air check of Sly on the radio is awesome, thanks for posting.

I finally got around to watching the Sly episode of Unsung on my DVR and I had no idea they'd interviewed on camera for it! Took me a minute to accept that was actually happening.

interviewed him on camera for it, I mean. Played little bits of new music on his laptop, too. Dude has discovered autotune.

Happy bday Sly (70 yrs old today)

http://ww2.hdnux.com/photos/20/31/26/4298133/0/940x583.jpg

Big boxed set coming out this year, supposedly.

His birthday is a week today, the 15th. I just happen to know that because, in advance of said birthday (happening over our March break), I played "Everyday People" for the class today. And then, subbing for a health lesson on substance abuse that we skipped to watch a movie, played a clip of him interviewed a couple of years ago.

lol so do those come out every few years now or what

I stumbled across some alternate versions+outtakes from Back on the Right Track awhile ago that were pretty interesting. I think they came off some Japanese expanded reissue or something.

His birthday is a week today, the 15th

fuckin Chronicle lying to me again eh

also lol @ Sly as cautionary drug tale

Yeah, what I read about the box was "nearly 25% unreleased material!"

Now, if they'd actually release the live album that was supposed to come out about 10 years ago...

also lol @ Sly as cautionary drug tale

If that means I have the mohawk and the hunchback is my sidekick, then yes.

That was the exact question I posed to the class, and surprisingly a third raised their hands "Yes."

He's gonna do 3 shows with Rufus on the US east Coast

sure he is

i was thinking about it, but having lucked out with a previous sly gig at bb kings (i.e. he seemed actually engaged for a portion of the short set, so it wasn't a total wipeout), did not want to press my luck for what could turn out to be a one or two song guest appearance by sly. if i hear later that chaka dropped in, i will regret my decision terribly.

sure he is

― Hip Hop Hamlet (Shakey Mo Collier)

haha.

my thoughts exactly ..

The Howard Theatre publicist asked me if I'd like to do an interview! I said sure and then of course it got cancelled.

That was your interview.

It's the interview equivalent of "There's A Riot Goin' On" (the song).

He did a NY show with Rufus. It did not go well. DC show was postponed.

http://ginzburgsgab.blogspot.com/2013/10/rufus-with-sly-stone-bb-kings-supper.html

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zosHA330xyg

Sly comes on about a minute in, wearing a curly blond-haired wig and headband

:(((((((((

Had no idea this happened a few years back:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=A8pO7s7PQXk

All I know is, if you're struggling with crippling drug addiction and mental problems, hanging with George Clinton and P-Funk is probably not the surest way to sobriety.

Tony Maiden like a motherfucker up there though. Dude soars out of the gate.

Yep, makes me want to go see Rufus. Saw some mentions that they had played with Sly in Japan some time recently. I guess that's noble of them.

I saw Sly onstage with P-Funk for a song or so circa 81 I think. He didn't do much musically back then either.

dude needs to get a neck surgeon or something. such a bummer to see him like that

he apparently refused to go to a doc after the accident where he first hurt his neck, so he's like a hunchback now

:(((((((((

^^^ that Sly/Rufus footage is really really sad.

Whats up w this new 7"? What period/year is it from?

Every time I see this revive I expect it to be an RIP thread

Sly is on a new pfunk single apparently

wait what

Yup. Covering Lord Buckley.

Great news:

http://www.factmag.com/2015/01/28/sly-stone-awarded-millions-in-unpaid-royalties-after-court-ruling/

awesome

hope he doesn't spend it all on crack

^^^

I got that Stone Flower comp over the holidays, so great. Inner sleeve is just a giant photo of his Rhythm Ace.

wish he'd managed a whole album with little sister

stanga is my jam, and i would always play it when i dj'd regularly, back in the 00s

Just thinking about Sly's utterly wasted genius makes me sad. I'm glad he got the $$$, maybe he can use some of it to get healthy.

eh he had a pretty amazing run. I am sad his last few decades have been such a mess, seems like a lot of unhealthiness/unhappiness but what do I know

Well, George Clinton finally got off crack at 70, hopefully Sly can too.

George's matter-of-fact discussion of his love affair w crack in his autobio is p eye-opening

Don't know if anyone read Duff McKagan's bio, but he talks about Sly living in a pretty awful apartment close to the whole GN'R crew before they made it big. How this guy is still alive is beyond me.

I'd be surprised if Sly ever collects on this, but who knows. I'm also surprised that anybody ever tried to be his 'manager' post-1969. As for being homeless... that's been debunked. He just moves "when things get weird." Apparently.

he wasn't living out of his car?

homeless implies being so poor you can't afford a place to live, which was not really ever the case with Sly afaik

The Funkadelic 3cd set with Sly's track just came out, Christmas just gone.

link?

http://georgeclinton.com/first-ya-gotta-shake-the-gate/

I haven't heard it

this is the sly track (or at least one of them?) which is also upthread iirc:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QbPLMpgRc-o

It's awful, unworthy of the Funkadelic name IMO.

I didn't like it much at first either. But the song does grow on you. Likewise, the new Funkadelic record is as much of an unfocused hodgepodge as GC and the P-Funk All Stars' How Late Do U Have 2BB4 UR Absent?, but even at 3 discs it's marginally more consistent, and Sly provides some of the most interesting moments. It really is Funkadelic in name only, though.

the last Clinton album that I enjoyed was Dope Dogs, each album since has been a p random smorgasbord of stuff. which, to be fair, can also be said of a fair amount of his peak period output, just with better players/ideas. Is Sly on more than one track...?

I feel like George is only as good as his collaborators and he didn't get anybody good here. Way too much autotune (especially on Sly) and songs that give you a verse and not much more for about twice or three times as long as they need to be. It gets a little better on the 3rd disc but overall I don't expect to listen to it again.

the first disc on the 'funkadelic' is truly awful.

oh, it's a /new/ funkadelic album? no thanks. :(

SLY & THE FAMILY STONE—LIVE AT THE FILLMORE EAST OCTOBER 4th & 5th 1968 4CD BOX!

http://www.complex.com/music/2015/04/sly-and-the-family-stone-premiere

radical

Just hope it turns up as affordable this side of the Atlantic.
Not sure what the $60 I've heard it is likely to be is going to translate to when it appears. I think that price may be an early Amazon pre-order thing so not sure how accurate that is anyway.

I had a few live sets by them a couple of years ago but not sure if I still have any since they may have been on a crashed harddrive.

There is a Woodstock set in the Anniversary series for the festival isn't there but the band is seriously under represented in official live sets.

There used to be a couple of multi volume dvd sets doing the bootleg rounds from what I remember too. They had some really good stuff on too

jsut saw this one for the 1st time a little while ago. so great
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2mH7194qDqI

that's a great set

I'm not super-excited about this tho tbh, not my favorite live period of theirs

I am curious to hear them do St. James Infirmary tho. that's an odd song for them to do.

mentioned in passing above, but say it again yall: I'm Just Like You: Sly's Stone Flower1969-70
---not perfect but so damn good.
Here's the trailer (too brief)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1oCyHAhJgFA
and LITA link for samples of all tracks and more info
http://lightintheattic.net/releases/1451-i-m-just-like-you-sly-s-stone-flower-1969-70

More backstory: for the Higher! box. Pre-release sampler's gone, but it was afuckingmazing. I gotta get the box, although may have a little overlap with I'm Just Like You and other collections.

Damn, missed the link, sorry:
http://www.npr.org/2013/08/18/212367961/first-listen-sly-and-the-family-stone-highlights-from-higher

jsut saw this one for the 1st time a little while ago. so great

Thanks for posting -- I always wondered where this footage was from. It was used in Montgomery Burns' Jazz series on PBS to illustrate why Miles went electric. Wynton Marsalis and George Wein talked about how Miles saw Sly at the Newport Festival in 1969, saw the effect Sly had on the audience, and realized, in Wynton's words, "that he was an old man playing trumpet in a jazz band" and thus decided to go electric.

Except, when Miles played Newport in 1969 he's already recorded In A Silent Way; the band at Newport included Chick Corea and Dave Holland; and his set at Newport included material that would later turn up on Bitches Brew. But back to Sly, I always assumed this footage was from Newport, and wondered if the other Newport sets that year -- Miles, Zeppelin, Jeff Beck, James Brown, Sun Ra -- were filmed.

ha, i just watched part of that episode last night. yeah, needed some factchecking. miles was definitely influenced by sly, but as is the norm for the burns doc, it is more complex than all that.
don't think i've ever seen footage from newport 69, though that would be great. jazz (and other things) on a summer's day part II.

Yeah, I mean, the lineup...
http://41.media.tumblr.com/tumblr_lmumkogZn41qh7tzmo1_1280.jpg

all of those festivals, it seems like it'd be a no-brainer to have a film crew on hand, but obviously that did not always happen.

Totally. Or sometimes, when there was a film crew, it took decades for the film to get finished/released (Message To Love, Soul Power).

the amougies film still hasn't seen official release.

holy shit @ that festival lineup

http://www.discogs.com/Various-Recorded-Live-At-Newport-In-New-York/release/1182883

On a related note I picked this ^^^^ up the other week and it is great and oh my god why has no one released the full length live sets from Stevie and Donny et al

Like, I learned a while back that all four nights at the Bitter End Curtis Mayfield played for Curtis Live were recorded, and I'm like, I want to hear all of that.

wait so miles was second on the bill at newport??

not sure if the poster is in order of importance... maybe though. did gary burton have some huge summer of 69 hit?
and yeah, good lord, why haven't they put out a complete curtis live box set, give me a break.

Burton was definitely big-time then, and Miles was still playing clubs in the US (he didn't hit the rock halls until months later), so it's not inconceivable that Burton would headline over Miles.

But I dunno how accurate those running orders are...if I was George Wein, I'd have Zeppelin close, rather than open, the final night.

I wonder if "Jeff Beck" means the classic Rod, Dunbar, Ron Wood lineup or something different?

at least rod was there:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3lNIWaei3RI

eesh ^^ this smokes

Indeed it does!

There used to be a stream of a 1968 Detroit Jeff Beck show (with Mickey Waller and Nicky Hopkins!) on Wolfgang's Vault, but apparently it's gone. Supposedly, the Jeff Beck Group and the Who were the only two touring acts not to be blown off the Grande stage by the MC5.

Thanks to that amazing Newport Jazz Fest poster for my new display name

the bonkers incredible jazz lineup is insane on its own

then you have 69 zeppelin, mothers of invention, jeff beck group, and sly & the family stone...jimminy christmas talk about some live bands

AND an afternoon with James Brown

lol at schlitz mixed bag. might need to start some kind of noize band w/ that name.

i know there some audio boots from the festival. i have the savage rose set kicking around somewhere. (yes, of all the bands on that poster the one that most excites me is savage rose.)

Savage Rose were pretty cool. "A Trial In Our Native Town" is one of the secret roots of doom metal; if someone put that out now and people would lose their shit.

wtf that tune is nuts! never heard that before

holy shit! thanks for the tip.. amazing that's 1968

Savage Rose is also def rec to those who like or would like to like spooky folk metal---but they had several stages etc., and since we're talking jazz now, don't forget Babylon their album feat. Ben Webster
(second row of pix, far right)
http://www.soundstation.dk/images/products/large/57/133257-b.jpg

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AB7zzpNV8y4

Epic/Legacy is excited to announce the debut release of SLY & THE FAMILY STONE-LIVE AT THE FILLMORE EAST OCTOBER 4th& 5th 1968, a four-disc set of previously unreleased live shows recorded during the band's rise at New York City's legendary venue. The set is out today, Friday, July 17

got the promo -- very fun stuff, though it might've been better served chopped down to two discs of highlights.

R.I.P. Cynthia Robinson:

Friends, Famliy and Fans through out the world, Cynthia Robinson, Trumpeter and Co- Founder of Sly and The Family Stone has passed.
Our condolences go out to the Robinson Family and her bandmates and all family & friends ! You are in our thoughts and prayers and we are here for you. Please continue to support the Cynthia Robinson Cancer Care Fund due to the rising medical costs ( anything helps ). This site will stay up in her memory. God bless you Cynthia ! https://www.facebook.com/permalink.php?story_fbid=1612767712320749&id=1422867367977452

man, i rarely get "gutted" by internet death news, but this makes me so sad. such a big part of my life. where would i be without that group and her in it? they taught me to love so much of what i love.

Aw man RIP

:(((( RIP Cynthia

:( RIP

Finally listening to Heard Ya Missed Me for the first time on Spotify. On first listen, this is a *far* better record than its reputation. The arrangements are generally excellent, there is no shortage of oddball melodies and the title track is a Latin number. “Mother Is a Hippie” is great and “What Was I Thinkin’” is this record’s “Crossword Puzzle”-esque killer groove.

I have to think this record’s terrible rap has more to do with its title and his own rep in the industry at that point than the music. This is better than High On You.

I haven't listened to either of these in so long, I should just put em on blind and see how they hold.

Also I remember paying $26 for a Japanese import cd of Heard Ya Missed me at Tower Records in 1997 because apparently that's what I was willing to do for more Sly at that point.

Hate the philly soul sorta arrangements on Heard Ya Missed Me. It's his worst record.

No way it's better than "High On You" but I'm still fond of it.

It's not even better than Back on the Right Track

I used to really like Back on the Right Track -- or at least, spent a lot of time with it when I got that Charley reissue in the 90s. But I think this one is sneaky -- those "philly soul sorta arrangements" are more clever than they seem. There's a lot of Sly syncopation going on -- but also some welcome diversity in the styles: Latin, doo-wop, pop. Maybe give it another shot?

I'd have to listen to a youtube rip or something - sold back my copy years ago lol

Runs out of steam on Side 2, songwriting is far from top notch Sly but, yes, some neat arrangements, basslines etc.

I don't mind side one of Heard Ya Missed Me! Sly and Cynthia are in fine voice! The first 2 tracks are fire emoji.

Loved this passage in this review I found online of High On You:

Sly frittered away the last ten years of his career doing his best to convince the world that, as his drug habits and isolationist tendencies worsened and the Family Stone fell to pieces in a morass of guns, bulldogs, and PCP, everything was fine! Better than ever, in fact! You don’t believe me? Check out my album titles! “Heard Ya Missed Me, Well I’m Back!” “Back on The Right Track!” I wouldn’t be surprised if there was an unreleased album from that era called “I Don’t Do Drugs Anymore, So Trust Me When I Say That Everything’s Cool!”

To my ears, this very hot Coffey set, ' bout to be served up by Omnivore, has Sly-type appeal:

Dennis Coffey
One Night At Morey’s: 1968
Release date: June 1, 2018

From his early work with ’50s/’60s hit makers The Royaltones (who also backed other artists like Del Shannon)—to his run through the Motor City’s independent labels as a session ace—to his pioneering and legendary work with The Funk Brothers, backing band to massive Motown hits like “Just My Imagination,” “Ball Of Confusion (That’s What The World Is Today),” “War,” “Cloud Nine,” “Someday We’ll Be Together” and “Band Of Gold” among many others—Dennis Coffey is a guitar legend.

The ’70s didn’t slow him down for one second as he struck out on his own and had a million selling hit with “Scorpio,” in 1971. He continued his studio session work (notably appearing on “Boogie Fever” by The Sylvers), scored films and produced other artists’ albums like Gallery’s Nice To Be With You and Rodriguez’ Cold Fact.

The 2000s have found Dennis appearing on the big screen including the 2002 film Standing In The Shadows Of Motown and the 2012’s Searching For Sugarman. And to this very day you can find him playing every Tuesday night in Detroit.

One Night At Morey’s: 1968 is drawn from the residency at Morey Baker’s Showplace Lounge in Detroit by the Lyman Woodard Trio. The trio consisted of Coffey on guitar, brilliant organist, Lyman Woodard, and drummer Melvin Davis, and could be found at Morey’s once a week. They played to a dedicated, often repeat, audience so the band kept the repertoire fresh and changing. One Night At Morey’s: 1968 follows last year’s Hot Coffey In The D: Burnin’ At Morey Baker’s Showplace Lounge released by Resonance Records, also drawn from the Morey’s residency, but with an entirely different track list.

All tracks on One Night At Morey’s: 1968 are previously unissued and come directly from the vaults of Dennis Coffey and producer partner, Mike Theodore. Tracks include original compositions, “Big City Lights,” “Mindbender,” and “Union Station,” as well as surprising and funky covers of “Billie’s Bounce” by Charlie Parker, “Burning Spear” by The Soul Strings, “Cissy Strut” by The Meters, “Eleanor Rigby” by The Beatles, “Groovin’” by The Young Rascals, and “I’m A Midnight Mover” by Wilson Pickett from the pen of both Pickett and Bobby Womack.

CD / DIGITAL TRACK LIST:
I’M A MIDNIGHT MOVER
ELEANOR RIGBY
CISSY STRUT
GROOVIN’
BURNING SPEAR
IT’S YOUR THING/UNION STATION
MINDBENDER
BIG CITY LIGHTS
BILLIE’S BOUNCE
All tracks previously unissued.
Cat: OV-284

“I Don’t Do Drugs Anymore, So Trust Me When I Say That Everything’s Cool!”

lmao

Love the first half of "Heard Ya Missed Me..." and that title track is fantastic.

“I Don’t Do Drugs Anymore, So Trust Me When I Say That Everything’s Cool!”

sounds like a good "clickbait that would make a good album title"

The album title is only slightly more on the nose than the song titles and lyrics (which are nowhere to be found on the internet BTW). “Everything In You Has to Come Out,” “What Was I Thinkin’ In My Head” – every lyric on this is some perversion of the optimism of his earlier records—“Everybody Is a Star,” “Life,” “Stand”—into this staring-into-the-abyss “Holy shit, I’m gonna DIE/Please give me one more chance” desperation.

It’s obviously not as successful or revolutionary as, say, There’s A Riot Goin’ On. But in a lot of ways the result is infinitely more pained.

Thanks, don. Speaking of Dennis Coffey, his book wasn’t bad either. Recommended reading about the rise and fall and return of a studio ace running the maze of interrelated Motor City music worlds.

Remembered the first two words but had to look up the full title: Guitars, Bars and Motown Superstars.

The idea that High on You is anywhere near the banality of Heard Ya Missed Me is just ludicrous.

High On You is definitely second tier Sly, but Heard Ya Missed Me is, like, fifth tier by that measuring stick.

xxp Thanks, James! Posted your tip about the book here:
Diary of a POLL Star: what are your most/least favorite books by musos?

I'm slightly annoyed that Ten Years Too Soon is so hard to find on the interwebs. The "(I Get) High on You" remix is pretty good: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lF06ACOtc1M

All about fresh

The idea that High on You is anywhere near the banality of Heard Ya Missed Me is just ludicrous.

High On You is definitely second tier Sly, but Heard Ya Missed Me is, like, fifth tier by that measuring stick.

I'm with you.

It’s possible I just wrote more words than have been written in aggregate on that record over the last forty-two years.

I think you're overstating the "interesting" aspects of Heard Ya Missed Me by quite a lot.

I don't understand how Sly mimicking the Philly Soul sound is a good thing at all. I mean, Philly Soul and McFadden and Whitehead are fine, but I find it really disappointing that someone as unique as Sly would ditch his one of a kind sound for a (sub-par) imitation of what was essentially a cookie cutter operation. To me, that just magnifies the record's shortcomings.

At least he still sounds like himself on High on You. Granted, a not as good version of his previous self, but still undeniably him.

I feel like Heard Ya Missed Me could have been made by any number of people.

I don't really think he's mimicking Philly Soul that much tbh.

Neither do I. I noted the two songs he did seem to be – one was a small flourish on Heard Ya Missed Me, the other was on High On You.

Sly documentary in 2019!

https://deadline.com/2018/12/sly-and-the-family-stone-feature-documentary-winter-state-entertainment-1202526757/

Sounds terrible tbh

horrible title.

In all honesty I am amazed that Sly still lives. If he's making the money he's due now, then bless him.

Sure, agreed. But a movie about his last 10 yrs as a crack addic trying to get paid sounds like a p grim one

Uh yeah. I don’t really have a lot of desire to gawk at Sly in his present state.

Posting this interview as a tribute to Dr. Morbius since the portrait picture you usually see of him was taken by the interviewee:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1gbUGS8sots

Newmark kills it on “in time.” What a groove

I'd say Fresh is his second-best record.

It appears that the documentary mentioned two and a half years ago is still unreleased. It's amazing that George Clinton seems to have been the only person in the last 40 years to bring anything to completion with Sly, who is also just about the only person in Clinton's memoirs who receives a vivid portrait. Clinton spends a lot more time in his book talking about ideas than other people.

I'd say Fresh is his second-best record.

not trying to be aggressive or argumentative here, but i thought that was the generally accepted consensus? riot and fresh the firm 1 + 2, with the #3 spot *usually* going to stand, but even that was never as firm a lock as the top two.

"skin i'm in" popped up yesterday while shuffling my ipod and, MAN YES, calstars! newmark just owns the whole album and rusty allen is right there with him. just some super fat, warm grooves all over that album. very dope.

Yeah. I don’t want to disparage Ericco though, he is fantastic on the earlier stuff, full of groove and space. I guess Sly could pick ‘em

I guess I'm remembering the Rolling Stone Top 100 1967 to 1987 list, which contained BOTH Stand and Greatest Hits, despite the latter record containing about 90% of what people want to hear on the former.

that line about the midget does not fly in 2021. #slyiscancelledparty

Fresh > Riot > [if we can't choose the classic pre-Riot Greatest Hits] Dance To The Music (the medley is just sublime, some of the most exciting music comitted to tape, and as great as Stand! is, Sex Machine and the long, turgid Don't Call Me ****** are hard skips for me)

And I really love large chunks of Small Talk, High On You and Back On The Right Track

Relistening to Sex Machine now and hush my mouth, it is a jam. Stll think Dance To The Music is the stronger album, though.

Fresh > Riot

correct

Fresh is great, but Riot is the greatest album of all time

I was at a yard party last weekend where the hosts were spinning Greatest Hits and I told my friend it seemed at the time, on that sultry summer day, to be the best record ever.

https://i.imgur.com/eGm2Pqo.png

Cynthia ❤️

Timing.

Fantastic news: @NovenaCarmel just revealed that #SummerofSoul director @questlove will be making a documentary about her dad, Sly Stone. pic.twitter.com/CSANjx8WL9

— Яandall 🎧 Яoberts (@LilEdit) July 12, 2021

Fantastic news... Summer Of Soul is just brilliant, one of the best music documentaries I've ever seen.

OMG

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2sgxbpFfk0M

Whenever they knew Sly was gonna miss a gig they should have sent that dude out there and let the chips fall...

That would be almost as hilarious as this:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=l5C2woQLgto

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VMQhO-ee-Cw

eat your heart out mike flowers pops

at least the Dick Jensen video had a recommend for this (although, bass player absolutely ruled):
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bJ_QaEir7FU

Someone undoubtedly posted about it somewhere, but I had no idea Sly put out a memoir last year. Just ordered a discounted hardcover from Book Outlet. I would much prefer a biography, but you never know.

This new doc on Hulu is great.

Is it just a lot of talking heads about how great he was?

Basically, but a lot of great footage. It focuses a lot on his drug-fueled collapse. I would have rather seen more about his genius, frankly. I'd still recommend it.

Yes, it's worth if for the performances for sure. It does turn a bit Behind the Music in the final quarter.

one thing that's distinct re: Questlove relative to, say, Todd Haynes or Edgar Wright is that he's a musician and is thus interested in musicianly shit, an approach among several that interview subjects who happen to be musicians appreciate (my background as such helped me out immeasurably in interviews). If Sparks or Maureen tucker had views about aspect ratios, wright and Haynes would not be able to restrain themselves from including relevant interview segments. but in this film, we see that Questlove is interested in, for instance, the Rhythm King drum machine and how an eccentric setting creates the percolating rhythm that makes "family affair" so striking, and so he gets greg Errico (goddamn, what a drummer) to talk about his counterintuitive admiration for the machine's application.

that's a every good thing in the doc. What's particularly bizarre is the contention that a black man —perhaps we should say black genius here, as that's the doc's preferred appellation— had never been a rock star/icon on the level of John Lennon and Elvis Presley before Sly Stone, and that the pressures as such explain his flameout. I don't remember who makes this claim (D'angelo?) but it stands unrefuted. Jimi Hendrix. Marvin Gaye. Stevie Wonder. Little Richard. Chuck Berry. You can name some more just as easily as me!

there's also a very very funny anecdote related at the end by one of his kids, his daughter with Cynthia Robinson.

Yeah I didnt think Questlove really stuck the landing with his "burden of black genius" thesis, not that I disagree but he just didnt explore it in a way that came up with anything too interesting imo. But I do appreciate his attempt to bring in a thesis at all and try to add a framing that makes it more than just a good Behind the Music. That impulse is what made Summer of Soul work so well beyond being just a really good concert doc.

I also loved the rhythm king bit, it was surprisingly touching to hear Errico praise the machine, that a was a great moment.

Terry Lewis talking about Stand was cool too

When you’re explicitly asking people about the “burden of black genius,” leaving the actual questions themselves in the doc to make it abundantly clear that the topic didn’t arise naturally, and even then they still can’t collectively come up with enough material to clarify your hypothesis then you’re clearly going about it wrong, i.e. coming up with the idea and looking for evidence to support it rather than hearing what people have to say and putting together the storyline/thesis out of that. That and the fact that it’s all talking heads style really left a bad taste in my mouth about the doc…consider it pretty garbage for the most part.

Sly rules though and some of the footage alone was worth the price of admission (two hours of time).

What's particularly bizarre is the contention that a black man —perhaps we should say black genius here, as that's the doc's preferred appellation— had never been a rock star/icon on the level of John Lennon and Elvis Presley before Sly Stone, and that the pressures as such explain his flameout. I don't remember who makes this claim (D'angelo?) but it stands unrefuted. Jimi Hendrix. Marvin Gaye. Stevie Wonder. Little Richard. Chuck Berry.

If we're talking purely in terms of fame and record sales, I don't think any of those you listed really hit an Elvis/Beatles level of fame except maybe Stevie Wonder during the 70's - but then I also don't think Sly Stone did! The first person to really get there is Michael Jackson I think, which obv says more about the society these artists came from than any talent involved.

Michael Jackson not rock music though. Debatable if Sly and Stevie were, though rock fans certainly liked them.

I mean Nat King Cole beat all of them to it, in terms of fame and record sales, but he certainly wasn't rock music!

it's not even worth pointing out notable predecessors to sly when the central contention, that he reached Beatles/Elvis levels of fame and success, just isn't true. but even then it seems to me that james brown would be the obvious choice for an antecedent.

i think probably these docs are always susceptible to this kind of vacuous hyperbole, it's like they think nobody would care unless dave grohl is going to make some dumbass comment. and music critics will kind of just say anything to be in a movie as far as i can tell. but i will still watch because footage

When you’re explicitly asking people about the “burden of black genius,” leaving the actual questions themselves in the doc to make it abundantly clear that the topic didn’t arise naturally, and even then they still can’t collectively come up with enough material to clarify your hypothesis then you’re clearly going about it wrong, i.e. coming up with the idea and looking for evidence to support it rather than hearing what people have to say and putting together the storyline/thesis out of that.

It's been coming up for years as a theme on his podcast, particularly around people he's actually known/worked with like D'Angelo, Lauryn Hill, Mos Def, Chappelle, etc. Haven't seen this doc but I'm assuming D'Angelo isn't in it, that would have been something though.

he is!!

D'Angelo is in it! One of the talking heads.

Oh sick. Looking forward to rotating back to Hulu in the future then.

the D’Angelo stuff in the Sly doc makes me want a D’Angelo-centric doc! he’s really thoughtful & incisive

Here you go, pretty close:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3OEzt6Y2oRU

(there's also an actual D'Angelo doc made by some Europeans that I still haven't been able to see)

The majority of the talking heads in this documentary are ex-members of the Family Stone. (Cynthia Robinson died in 2015, to give you an idea of how long the project was in the works.) You also get D'Angelo, Terry Lewis, Q-Tip, George Clinton, and a few other peers/musician admirers. No critics, nobody who's just there to say "Wow, Sly, what a genius." Everyone who's included provides musical analysis, which is why the thing is so interesting. Yes, there should have been talk of James Brown; yes, there should have been talk of Chuck Berry and Bo Diddley and Little Richard... but at the same time, maybe not, because Sly coming out of California was a very specific, very different thing — not Southern, not a child of the Great Migration to the Midwest. A comparison to Arthur Lee or to Hendrix could have been made, but Sly was much, much bigger than Love.

We got to live together

Man ive had a crush on Cynthia for a minute

i can't believe that doc actually got finished. questlove used to drop his endless esoteric hints that he was contributing to something sly-related that would "set the record straight" back in the okayplayer.com message board days.

had a longpost all typed up but nah. here's the cliff notes:
.doc title is cringe
.i'm not interested in seeing it. i was in the past, but no thank you
.i am however glad that it exists and, if nothing else, hope thaf it sparks renewed interest in the mid-70s material.
.fresh/small talk/high on you trilogy is so underrated it hurts!
.anthony k!edis stealing the vocal mannerisms from the coda of "loose booty" is one of the funniest things ever.

sly=GOAT!!!!

and that has always been beautifully apparent to anyone who has seen him play or heard a few of his records

Downside of this coming out is that all the sly vinyl is gone / twice as expensive. Worth it tho

Still so damn good

https://lightintheattic.net/cdn/shop/files/tmp_2F1422994356335-obkos4j3g0221emi-9c46744479eb86bd22d46c5ce8a87495_2Fslygrammy_e6b84884-29f5-4041-b43b-aea5e735ab08_974x.gif?v=1696119833

In 1970, The Family Stone were at the peak of their popularity, but the maestro Sly Stone had already moved his head to a completely different space. The first evidence of Sly’s musical about-turn was revealed by the small catalog of his new label, Stone Flower: a pioneering, peculiar, minimal electro-funk sound that unfolded over just four seven-inch singles. Stone Flower’s releases were credited to their individual artists, but each had Sly’s design and musicianship stamped into the grooves–and the words “Written by Sylvester Stewart/Produced and arranged by Sly Stone” on the sticker.

... startling, still timely electronics x social implications: the Sly x Joe Hicks meld tells it, "If it feeeels good, it's all right," and cogently calls it "Love & Death in G & A (Parts 1 & 2)", with all points made and taken, all bases loaded and covered).

Oh shit! Need that

I wish he'd managed to complete a Little Sister LP. Stanga is such a jam.

Who’s the female voice on Family Affair?

Isn't it Rose? Or one of the Little Sister gang?

that was my assumption, yeah

really enjoyed the Sly doc. thoughtful, told the story well, the "talking heads" were insightful and did something more useful than just restated the narrative, the interviews were strong and the footage was amazing.

looking at Discogs, wow the credits on "Riot" are about as ambiguous as it gets!

Mine has copious credits for the photographers on the back-cover montage, and none whatsoever for the musicians. Maybe Sly didn't even know who played on what. I asked Bobby Womack about those sessions once, and he made it very clear his own recall of those days was markedly impressionistic.

Maybe Sly didn't even know who played on what

this seems most likely tbh

Also having played the session was no guarantee you would end up in the final mix.

I mean, given what he did to Fresh, being on the first pressing of an album was no guarantee you would remain on the album (not entirely accurate, but I will, for the nth time in this thread, remark how fantastic the ghostly remix that ended up on the initial Japanese CD pressing of Fresh sounds).

Is that this mix, or a different mix?

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hc9phzbh4Ls

That's the one. A bunch of the mixes surfacd on the deluxe CD reissues of a decade or two ago, but on the OG Japanese CD release - which I picked up by accident as a teenager from my local branch of CD Warehouse - every track is a different mix from the official one. It's the version I grew up with, and I still prefer it, and I'd love it to get pressed on vinyl for RSD some year or something.

RIP big man.

https://variety.com/2025/music/news/sly-stone-dead-funk-rock-pioneer-family-stone-1236423831/

Oh fuck.

one of the absolute all-time greats

damn, was just thinking about how he had somehow outlived so many others — RIP, what a guy.

"Outlived" in a lot of ways. RIP.

holy shit

huge bummer :(

RiP. What a once-in-a-galaxy talent.

Just watching some live clips of the Family Stone, mindblowing. RIP Mr Sylvester Stewart.

Is the Sly sample in "Rhythm Nation" the most badass sample of all time? One of them, for sure!

"Shadrach" imho

i think the drum break in "sing a simple song" was sampled like a thousand times

highly recommend their performance in the 'summer of soul' documentary.

“If you want me to stay” is better than almost everything ever created

This very morning around the breakfast table I sang-quoted "Sometimes I'm right... but I may be wrong..." to my family. :-(

Huh

https://chicagoreader.com/music/sly-family-stone-one-eyed-jacks/

Ha, upthread there's a post of Dick Jensen doing this song on the Sullivan show — but here's the band themselves. So so so good.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WG_xmmllfFw

good lord

that is utterly fantastic

A real gulf between the reactions of the old white guys in the audience to Sly & Rose joining them in that Sullivan clip.

I believe this was from Music Scene, a short-lived Music & Comedy primetime variety show on ABC

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SOhOa2wl4yc

omg that Ed Sullivan clip, Freddie and Larry tearing it up while Sly and Rose take it to the people!

Sure hope he got to see Summer of Soul!

rip - if you haven't seen it, check out their 1974 appearance on The Midnight Special. i watch that at least once a month.

Thankful n' Thoughtfull: The Sly Stone Dedicated Chronological Listening Thread

This was an all time thread to read and follow along with, big shout out to Shakey for putting it on. If you missed it, check it out. Probably the most comprehensive musical commentary I've seen of the guy, literally leading up to a few years ago.

RIP, legend.

When Prince sang about trying to imagine what silence looked like, I tend to think he had Sly in his rear view mirror: so many of those peak-era tracks use space and silence and murmurs to such compelling ends.

There wouldn’t be a “Ballad of Dorothy Parker” without Sly.

Big influence on PRINCE, and like PRINCE, his music left the world in a better place than he found it, both for its' art and its spirit. Thank You, Sly.

KSOL aircheck 1967
with DJ Sly Stone

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wT3q0-OVzbw

^^^1450 AM K-SOuL

Nobody cares, I know, but I still reflexively check Rolling Stone when someone like Sly dies. Still front and center, as it should be:

https://www.rollingstone.com/

(But the days of getting the cover are probably gone...Chuck Berry might have been the last, not sure.)

blasting the Woostock set tonight. straight fucking fire

This sucks, RIP

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=F8Udz1ZuqKQ

Titan. Rest In Peace.

:-( Really enjoying the clips

rewatched the Sly Lives doc last night
discovered Hulu has now added a full questlove commentary version in “extras” so i will def check that out!

Aargh--anyone have a workaround link for Rob Sheffield's RS obituary?

just bcz you asked nicely https://archive.fo/8auCN

No one aarghs more charmingly than me--much appreciated.

This probably won't work without a subscription, but Marcus republished his original Creem review of Riot today:

https://greilmarcus.substack.com/p/theres-a-riot-goin-on-muzak-with

Opening's great:

A lot of nonsense has been written about There’s a riot goin’ on, the first album Sly Stone has made in two years. People don’t like it because it’s not groovy. Tough shit. Tell it to Robert Johnson.

You better come on,
in my kitchen
It’s going to be
raining outdoors

“Can’t you play no boogie?”

I got to keep moving,
I got to keep moving
Blues falling down like hail,
blues falling down like hail
I can’t keep no money
There’s a hellhound
on my trail

Well, now, that was the Thirties. And what did it have to do with Fred Astaire and Ginger Rodgers? Not much, maybe. But Johnson’s sensibility, had it surfaced then, might have scarred the dominant culture of the nation like a jar of acid thrown in America’s face...

Nobody cares, I know, but I still reflexively check Rolling Stone when someone like Sly dies. Still front and center, as it should be:

https://www.rollingstone.com/

clicked 'cause Sly but instantly closed the tab when I saw “Rob Sheffield"

Honestly the only person I really would have liked to read a Sly obit from would have been Greg Tate. Oh well.

i really am digging that first album A Whole New Thing

feels kinda pure somehow

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oPEIFMSAkcQ

The official upload on Letterman's YouTube channel has better sound than what was circulating before. Sly looks genuinely happy to perform and completely on it - it makes it all the more frustrating that he did so few later on.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Z_uX8NA7u0w

*so few shows

I watched Sly Lives. Great doc. But if you listened to Questlove's podcast over.. oh the past ten years, he talks extensively about interviewing Sly. Yet the doc had no current day clips of Sly? It makes me wonder what the footage he would have got was like.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1ZBYdyLzZvs

(that shows Sly circa 2014)

actually 2013.

Ugh, there's also this:

In 2023, I spoke to him again – or rather I didn’t speak to him. In 2013, his voice had been a rasp, hollowed out by decades of fast living; now, he was 80 and too ill to do interviews at all, except by email: “I have trouble with my lungs, trouble with my voice, trouble with my hearing and trouble with the rest of my body, too,” he wrote.

geez, did you sleep tonight, bird, or are you imitating Sly?

Birds get up early in summer.

LOL, I've been traveling a lot this month for work, so my schedule's going to be screwed up for a while.

FWIW, here's an excerpt of what a producer at Ace Records just posted that gives some insight to how Sly was living in his later years:

THIS WAS THE PERIOD in which this writer got to meet and engage with Sly. As a reissue producer, I had taken great pleasure in earlier assembling “Precious Stone,” a compendium of Sly’s mid-1960s work for Autumn, issued on Ace in 1994. Fifteen years later, a sequel was on the cards, heavily inspired by my ensuing friendship with funk superfans Edwin and Arno Konings, who not only both shared my love for the Family Stone, but whose honest enthusiasm had allowed them to gain the various band members’ confidence. Having uncovered various Sly-related masters left at Bay Area studios in the mid-1960s, I needed to license them from Sly on behalf of Ace, and thanks to the Konings twins’ credibility, I had an entré.

Thus it was in May 2009 that I checked into a Travelodge near LAX and made my way up to Sly’s room with, I must confess, not a small amount of trepidation, as I had no idea what to expect. But Sly was instantly gracious and cordial, beaming his famous smile as I handed over copies of the various CDs and box sets I had worked upon that contained his music. As he needed it to pay the overdue room bill, I also gave him the cash up front for the license. He did not actually sign the agreement until three days later, when I was about to leave. Somehow, even against my better instincts, I felt no concern, for despite his current living circumstances, I was quick to note the man’s warmth and innate decency.

Instead, I ended up with an unprecedented opportunity to talk candidly to Sly Stone at length about his career, his creativity and a host of other subjects, often in a one-on-one situation where I could also play music for him to comment upon. Of course, with a parade of visitors and constant interruptions, it was never going to be a linear conversation, and I grabbed what I could at different times over the course of four days – a freewheeling and captivating mixture of arbitrary reminiscence, homespun philosophy and classic Sly aphorism (for instance, in response to a comment that his musical persona might be considered colourblind, he instantly threw back, “I can see all the colours!”) Sly was slowly and painfully extricating himself from the clutches of his former manager, but he remained in good humour, and there was a lot of laughter.

I am not by habit a journal-keeper, but so many things happened in such a short space of time that I ended up making a brief diary of events. Amongst other things, I can remind myself that I ran a few errands on his behalf, as anyone who was around Sly was wont, and willing, to do. These included, of all things, buying him a tracksuit at the local Target. Having vaguely asked me to pick up “some new sweats”, I had no idea what he might like, but luckily the fleece lined red-and-black outfit I selected – his favourite colours as it turned out – did the trick and he put it on immediately. Yes, I dressed Sly Stone. The lengthy interview notes that would result from these packed few days helped inform not just the ensuing, well-received compilation “Listen To The Voices”, but also two subsequent collections on Ace: “Yellow Moon,” which anthologizes Sly’s “baby pictures” with The Viscaynes, and this year’s “Everybody Is A Star: The Sly Stone Songbook.” Some of the audio has even ended up in the recent documentary “Sly Lives!”, as the producers adjudged it to be amongst Sly’s last cogent musings upon his art.
A few years later, there was another opportunity to spend time with Sly when I worked on a set dedicated to the Stoneflower recordings. He was still living the motel life, this time in a Ramada Inn in Hawthorne. Though there was less talk on the record on this occasion, over the course of several visits we had further meaningful conversation, and I also got the ride of a lifetime in Sly’s car when rushing across LA to get his computer out of a pawn shop ahead of a filmed interview. Still catching my breath from that one. It was 2015 that I last caught a glimpse of him, at Love City, a fan event in Oakland attended by all the Family Stone. As the day wore on, there were serious doubts that he would show up, and then all of a sudden there was Sly. To gauge the reaction of the assembled throng, you’d have thought the Messiah had arrived. True to form, he was only there briefly, so no chance for even a hello, but I did receive a wave from the departing limo. Since then, my understanding from the Konings and others is that Sly spent his last decade in seclusion in Los Angeles, in deteriorating health, thanks to issues with COPD, but comfortable and otherwise happy.

Besides Larry, did anyone else from the band do anything or much outside of the band?

Andy Newmark wasn't an original member - besides the shows he was only on Fresh - but he went on to do a lot of session work like Bowie's Young Americans and Lennon's Double Fantasy.

Looks like Cynthia joined Larry's Graham Central Station (and did some work with George Clinton and Prince).

Rose Stone pops up on Victoria Williams's Loose singing backing vocals on a couple of songs. (Also records from Phish, Robbie Williams, etc.)

Greg Errico was in high demand as a drummer, touring with Weather Report (though never drumming on their studio recordings), touring with Bowie behind Diamond Dogs, playing with Santana, the Jerry Garcia Band, etc.

Errico was their secret sauce. His performance on the summer of soul doc is so good

he had the chops for weather report?

Yup! More here: https://www.weatherreportdiscography.org/fifty-years-ago-today-greg-errico-joins-the-band/

Errico and Graham also played on Betty Davis' first album.

Greg's on fire throughout the recently unearthed pre-fame live LP that came out for RSD and is getting wider release soon

What’s the name of that

is that the Live at Winchester Cathedral thing?

the clips from that are so good

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dWzI7dCsnDY

A very good Craig Jenkins piece.

https://www.vulture.com/article/brian-wilson-sly-stone-death-racism-double-standards.html

For non-subscribers: https://web.archive.org/web/20250612192406/https://www.vulture.com/article/brian-wilson-sly-stone-death-racism-double-standards.html

That’s been my take on Wilson for a while. Like, how are Isaac Hayes, and so many other black artist from that era not considered genius

Andy Newmark wasn't an original member - besides the shows he was only on Fresh - but he went on to do a lot of session work like Bowie's Young Americans and Lennon's Double Fantasy.

Also with Roxy Music - Flesh And Blood, and (perhaps most notably) Avalon

XP

Jenkins touches on this in the article, but so much of it is down to how a lot of early, foundational Rock critics either almost completely ignored Black R&B (Paul Williams, who at least would defer to others about it in Crawdaddy!), frequently wrote poorly about it when they were starting out before getting better in the '70s (Jon Landau, Xgau), or just straight-up sucked at it any time they pulled the assignment (loads of Rolling Stone hacks).

Dave Marsh had the Detroit thing going, so he <got> Motown way the hell before his peers did. Greil Marcus did okay, but as always with his annoying habit of having to place everything in a prescribed context to trace back from.

(I don't know if any of this makes sense--I've again been mainlining vintage Funk & Soul and have been trying on my own to square the discrepancy between current canonization & scholarship vs. then-contemporary reporting.)

not entirely sure i grasp what the craig jenkins piece was trying to get at. feel like it would have been better if he had just come out and said something, rather than making a bunch of florid insinuations?

what are those insinuations?

not entirely sure i grasp what the craig jenkins piece was trying to get at. feel like it would have been better if he had just come out and said something, rather than making a bunch of florid insinuations?

Circumlocution is Jenkins' whole thing. Any solid idea is wrapped in a cloud of foggy prose. He really needs an editor to strip his prose down to the Terminator skeleton within.

All this comparison of the two, but no mention of their 1974 duo album as Sly 'n' Bri, The Family Wil-Stone?!?

xp he seems to be saying that the "industry," or sly's peers, or music critics, or the public, or some combination of these entities resisted sly's incursion into "rock" music, which is supposed to have be the domain of white musicians. and that when sly "fell short" (he doesn't specify what this means), sly got flack "for having too much proverbial dip on his chip" (he doesn't explain what this means either). so the piece is ostensibly about a racist double standard, but i would've appreciated some specificity. he does mention the appearance on dick clark, which suggests popular success, and the only critic he quotes is greil marcus's fawning praise of sly's untouchability in '71.

elsewhere he claims that brian wilson's mental health struggles were viewed with more empathy (by ... somebody, he doesn't say) and that people were harsher about sly (again ... some citations would be nice). speaking from personal experience, brian wilson has always been the target of cruel jokes my whole life, even from people who love and respect his work. sly on the other hand i only ever hear about in reverential tones, usually tinged in sadness about the tragedy of his inability to get out from the grip of drug abuse. so personally i had a hard time understanding this framing where brian is this untouchable genius but sly doesn't get the respect he deserves. but maybe i am not understanding him correctly -- the piece, as i said, isn't written in a very clear way

Their respective issues with drugs aren't really similar enough to draw useful conclusions.

Put a glide in your stride and a dip on your chip
And come on up to the Mothership

Hard to draw a conclusion as they had different baggage to deal with. Wilson’s abusive father, his brothers, Mike fucking Love, weight issues. Sly, racism, the band and him falling apart with drugs, pressure from Black Panthers to be more militant.

Either way, I only saw sadness at what happened to them both and a hope that both would get help and support and come good. That it happened to Wilson with the ‘Smile’ release and concerts but not Sly is a tragedy.

agreed on both accounts

feel like it would have been better if he had just come out and said something, rather than making a bunch of florid insinuations?

Or he could have just, like, not written the article.

Flattening to the point of misrepresentation the lives and art of 2 artists who need no introduction and in service of an idea that eluded him anyway? ugh
Is he even a fan of either?

Most of the time i was reading that i was thinking “yes, i know who Sly Stone/Brian Wilson is tyvm” and the small remainder of the time “wait, that’s it?? Where’s the rest of the article?”

He really needs an editor to strip his prose down to the Terminator skeleton within.

So not worth it, just hire rushomancy to write it instead

One thing the two deaths got me thinking about was what reference points anyone under, say, 40 has for either of them. I'm sure the Beach Boys are more culturally present than Sly and the Family Stone, though I'm not sure what the vectors of that have been. (Supposedly a Fox News anchor said "Kokomo" is the song she'll remember the Beach Boys by lol.) For Sly, I don't even know. As relatively big as they were at the time, I don't feel like they've ever been much of a presence on, like, oldies radio. Maybe younger folks have some reason to know "Everyday People"? I just don't know where or how anyone is encountering Sly these days.

through samples, I assume

"Everyday People" has been in a ton of commercials. (IIRC, after a point wasn't Sly's publishing controlled by Michael Jackson?)

They always loom large in the Woodstock mythos as well.

They always loom large in the Woodstock mythos as well.

He said under 40. Nobody under 40 gives a fuck about Woodstock. Hell, I'm 53 and I don't give a fuck about Woodstock.

Hippie kids are eternal, bruv.

snoopy is big with gen z, bound to be some residual woodstock love

dance to the music was in shrek. it always comes back to shrek.

If anything, I'd say that in a strange way Sly gets more "credit" from critics for his downfall than Brian? Almost as if it were an orchestrated crash, or a reasonable reaction to an unreasonable culture? I could be drawing a lot from the portrayal in Mystery Train, which mentions Stagger Lee repeatedly but avoids the topic of drugs.

So not worth it, just hire rushomancy to write it instead

― doe on a hill (Deflatormouse)

lol i'd love to get paid for something, that's mostly on me tho

here's what i wrote in the brian wilson thread, re: the idea of brian wilson having a third act "redemption" and sly stone not:

the idea of "redemption" is a difficult one for me. a lot of it is privilege. this doesn't invalidate what brian wilson did or make it any less... i mean i did tear up hearing elton john say "you gotta be tough to survive what he's been through", on the page that looks trite, but the way he said it, it meant something. it's really good to see that he's recognized and valued for the work he's put in.

the tragedy, for me, of sly stone is that he wrote "you can make it if you try", and he meant it, and he did try, and did he make it? i don't know. the world isn't fair or just. and yes, he did also run away. our lives aren't one or the other. i don't place any blame or value judgement on either of them, sly for not getting a "redemption arc" or brian for having the privilege he did.

to expand a little:

i don't think either of them needed to be "redeemed", for what it's worth. i think they both had hard times, and they both deserved to be cared for more than they often were. with melinda, i feel like brian got that. i don't get the sense that sly ever really got that. was sly being black, a member of a marginalized, comparatively underresourced group part of that? of course it fucking was! all you have to do is look at the history of Black Americans in popular music. look at Arthur Lee. (how many lives were ruined by that fucking three strikes law?) Look at Marvin Gaye. American Black musicians, just like _all_ Black Americans, go through shit that white people like Brian Wilson just _didn't_. At the same time, that's not ABOUT Brian Wilson, and it doesn't help to MAKE it about Brian Wilson. I _do_ think it's super fucked up, and it's at least important to me to point out that there _is_ a double standard, that Black Americans have to deal with a _lot_ of fucked up shit that doesn't necessarily get seen or acknowledged.

my take on "privilege", speaking as a white cis-passing woman who has absolute _loads_ of privilege, is this: it's not that people like brian wilson deserved _less_. it's that people like sly stone deserved _more_.

Hendrix performance of the SSB at Woodstock is kinda the thing that will be around 100 years from now. Not sure anything else really matters or will last from the event

Arlo Guthrie rappin' to the fuzz?!?

xp i think the "redemption" arc stuff is partly about our sick (lol not really) need for narrative, to encapsulate our own lives and others, especially famous ppl like artists and musicians. i think most lives are too messy to be collapsed into the kind of narratives we're used to hearing, like in the Brian Wilson mould, even from sometimes extraordinarily sensitive writers or even posters. the other side of it is the weird entitlement that comes out of rock crit and fandom, this feeling that it must be a tragedy if somebody walks away from it all, we are owed a reunion tour, we are owed a farewell album and a farewell concert, that kind of thing. i'm not saying that with sly it was all his volition, but i think there's a tendency to invest our own disappointment into the arc of the story instead of just admitting that there's a lot we don't know and maybe might never know

what i'm saying is, we must imagine Sly happy

(no, not really)

the Vulture is what tis, copy for the day. you would never compare them otherwise

Arthur Lee maybe

(p.s. i should buy and fly the Riot and One Nation flags)

The redemption arc just comes from watching too many vh1 specials when you were younger

yeah

like point is not lost on me, but i never (at least in my adulthood) got the sense that Sly was looked on as anything BUT a genius
and all of his false-start comebacks were pretty emotional for critical onlookers, at least to me

and maybe i am straying from the point mightily but critics discount familial/personal redemption for these artists but i mean jesus Sly connected w his kids and grandkids in his 70’s in a way he ~never~ got to be in what, 30 years

like that shit counts too

and the Landy of it all (re:Wilson) muddies the waters in terms of the way Wilson retreated and for how long and how Wilson was re-received back into performing, like there’s a whole completely different layer of stuff going on there that is just not at all 1:1

when I’m in the car with the fam and any of the GH comes on

i think the "redemption" arc stuff is partly about our sick (lol not really) need for narrative, to encapsulate our own lives and others, especially famous ppl like artists and musicians

This reminds me of an odd novel I read last year, Glimpses by Lewis Shiner, where in the late 80s a guy manifests the ability to "fix" unsatisfactory 60s rock records, eventually time travelling to help complete Smile and Celebration of the Lizard, but failing to save Jimi Hendrix; all tied, of course, to his feelings about his own life and family.

the weird entitlement that comes out of rock crit and fandom, this feeling that it must be a tragedy if somebody walks away from it all, we are owed a reunion tour, we are owed a farewell album and a farewell concert, that kind of thing

I don't know that people would feel badly if Sly had ended up painting for the last 35 years like Grace Slick did; it's the weird pathos of his not-quite comebacks, the feeling that he was (or maybe people around him were) actually trying to achieve something...or he wanted to appear to be trying for a moment, only to disappoint?

Digging thru the “Higher!” deluxe set

loving these:
Whats That Got To Do With me
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1QGUWCOYGZc

and this version of Fortune & Fame
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UK_f8qBe_Bw

these are great

Live Rockpalast Episode from 1970

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7c2EbTSqtGg

Only sly could pull off that white crochet hat

Wish they could remix the sound, the balance is all over the place - I can barely hear Cynthia on "Everyday People." A shame because aside from Woodstock, I rarely see any film footage of entire performances from this era, everything else tends to be standard def broadcast recordings.

Only sly could pull off that white crochet hat