Sly Stone S/D

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..."

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