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

"I Cannot Make It" is a definite high spot on this album. Disco hi-hats around 0:51! "Advice" is a good one too.

59. Sly & the Family Stone - Trip To Your Heart (A Whole New Thing, 1967)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XgmvPNef4Lk
Opens with perhaps one of the most abrasive moments in Sly's catalog, a cacophony of shrieks, drum rolls and guitar slides, before abruptly launching into a double-tracked, deeply funky drum break, a rising-and-falling vocal melody and a contrapuntal horn line. Sly's lead vocal rides over the top, featuring the first (?) of many thinly- and not-so-thinly veiled drug references. With the chorus the mix gets overtly "freaky" - you can hear the two drum parts split as one keeps the rhythm and the other highlights the ride cymbal following the lead vocal and skipping over the beat in triplets, while heavily reverb-ed organ swells, slide guitar and what sounds like a wavering theremin make it feel like the song is falling down the proverbial rabbit hole. The structure repeats and then the song ends as it begans, with cacophonous wailing. Four track psychedelia at its most tightly arranged, intentionally disorienting and disconcerting.

The Inspector Gadget horn riff on this one is p damn catchy.

60. Sly & the Family Stone - I Hate to Love Her (A Whole New Thing, 1967)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mp2k-6lgMN4
The band dials back the manic energy for a bit, shifting gears for a mid-tempo tune with a drifting horn line over suspended organ chords. They still throw in some aural left-turns (is that a melodica played through a wah-wah? Plus a rhythmic change-up in the refrain).Freddy's guitar seems mostly absent; the song is anchored primarily by the organ and the complex group vocal arrangement. The melodramatic bass vocal (Larry?) is a bit much, and the standard lovesick lyrics are not particularly notable.

Vocals might be Freddie? Not much of a song, to be honest. "Trip to Your Heart" is entertaining in a Haunted House kind of way. I still think the songwriting on this album isn't that strong.

I'm wondering if I'd be enjoying "Trip To Your Heart" this much if LL never sampled it. Definite synergy there.

How in the world does “Mama Said Knock You Out” not give a writing credit to Sly?

61. Sly & the Family Stone - Bad Risk (A Whole New Thing, 1967)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LFXzWj_GbQ8
The band rolls out another groove with a combo horn and tremolo guitar line over a thumping rhythm section. Larry takes the lead on the vocal arrangement, backed by the others' occasional "oohs". The chord changes follow a fairly standard blues pattern (as do the slut-shaming lyrics) but the rhythmic change-ups and inventive arrangement constantly keep the song off-center, with tambourine accents, cold stops, a shifting horn line, and electric guitar licks constantly popping in and out. Sly in particular seems to take something of a back seat with the organ, generally staying out of the way.

62. Sly & the Family Stone - That Kind of Person (A Whole New Thing, 1967)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ws5Uj0ihNGA
Their version of a slow-burning R&B ballad. The arrangement and performance are solid if not particularly inventive - the organ swells, the horns stab, the guitar is fluid, Sly's vocal swoops and glides - but it doesn't reach the heights of similar fare from the likes of Otis Redding or Solomon Burke.

63. Sly & the Family Stone - Dog (A Whole New Thing, 1968)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=haDoWNvozYg
Starting and ending the album with dogs, for some reason (this band loved dogs according to numerous anecdotes, both positive and negative). Opens with another brief horn fanfare, then rolls into a funky uptempo rhythm that proceeds to twist and turn and start and stop numerous times before we even get to the first chorus and its a capella breakdown. Again, the arrangement is tightly packed with details, phrases and rhythms popping in for a couple of bars before swerving off on a different tangent (check out that brief fuzz guitar in the second verse), but all within a recognizable pop structure. Sly leads the vocals, with the others interjecting at key points, the lyrics a jumble of mixed metaphors and shopworn woman-done-me-wrong sentiments.

64. Sly & the Family Stone - Dance to the Music (Dance to the Music, 1968)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Jn2PNlhvy8E
After building a rep in the Bay Area and recording the first album in LA, the band decamped to New York. Manager Dave Kapralik: The group was on the road playing toilets and Sly came into my office, truculent. The album had died and he wanted out of his contract, wanted out of Epic... I remember saying to Sly that the response was great from other musicians, but it is not in the pop idiom. I said that he should do a record that pop ears can relate to and in between stick in your innovative schtick. He continued to be surly and said that he was going back to San Francisco.

Jerry Martini: I remember Sly going over to CBS Records and the executives saying to us, "This is what you should listen to." They gave us some shit and Sly threw it down and looked at me and said "Okay, I'll give them something." And that is when he took off with his formula style. he hated it. He just did it to sell records... it was so unhip to us. The beats were glorified Motown beats.

It is perhaps also worth noting that by this point, Sly had already begun to surround himself and the band with thugs (Hamp ""Bubba"" Banks, in particular) and everybody involved is generally awash in cocaine and heavy-duty pharmaceuticals.

Released as a single at the tail end of 1967 (with "Let Me Hear It From You" from the previous album as the b-side), this gave the band their first hit and opened the door for things to come. The second album was subsequently rush recorded and released in April 1968 to capitalize on the single's momentum. What's inarguable is that the formula worked, and soon tons of people were applying it and profiting from it. Structurally, the formula works like this: lay out a simple dance beat, introduce a group refrain, then have each vocalist take a turn highlighting themselves and their instrument, in turn spotlighting the bass, the horns, the fuzz guitar, the organ, etc. one at a time. Thematically, the lyrics are an unabashed mix of partying exhortations and hippie sloganeering. The complex changes and arrangements of the previous album have been excised. It's not difficult to detect the cynicism in this approach but it's also hard to resist the actual end product - especially the ridiculous group scat vocal breakdowns that they were refining to perfection. The song became something of an anthem/calling card for the band, and soon they were opening shows with it and performing it on TV (there are some absolutely nuts clips out there).

One particular stylistc facet that was perhaps perfected for this single (but which first appears on "I Cannot Make It" from the previous album) is a certain bass figure - while the drums play a stiff, four-on-the-floor beat, evenly emphasizing each beat of the bar, the bass moves around in a peculiar way, emphasizing and drawing out the "and" beats (one-AND-two-AND etc.), creating a certain amount of tension in the rhythm. Not sure if Larry invented this, but once you notice it you can hear it carried through their entire catalog, and this rhythm subsequently pops up all over the place (funk, reggae, disco). The band was at the forefront of developing an entirely new rhythmic vocabulary that incorporated this push-and-pull dynamic between the bassline and the drums.

Maybe that's why he looks so miserable on the cover.

great song, great thread - turns out the narrative I had in my head about the band and why their music changed was far too simplistic, it's wonderful seeing their music come together even though red flags are showing up much earlier than I was ready for

did the entire band consider their popular material to be commercial hackwork or is that just martini's (and maybe sly's) opinion? it's a shame if that was the case

That's a good question, I don't know. Larry always seemed like he'd be more into the fun side of things, in a lot of ways Graham Central Station were like the Family Stone with all the darkness removed.

If I were One Child, it would be a great April Fools' joke to stop the thread here after so many years of waiting: "we've dealt with the highlights, nobody cares about all the rest".

65. Sly & the Family Stone - Higher (Dance to the Music, 1968)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VLWireCuqoo
Huge, formulaic hit aside, this is still a band of hyperactive weirdos on a mission to aggressively synthesize musical styles, and their chops and instincts could not be fully suppressed. This song could easily have been on "A Whole New Thing" the way it whipsaws between its stiff, staccato, oom-pah-band-at-the-county-fair opening, the swirling organ-led verses, and then the overdriven shoutalong choruses with its ascending chord pattern (and then, because of course, a harmonica solo). It's something of a jerry-rigged monster that doesn't quite work, Sly still working out what to do with this refrain that he was obviously fond of and knew was special. As with most of "A Whole New Thing" it sounds very much like it was recorded live with minimal overdubs/edits - they left in the "You" vocal flub at 1:45.

Can you be formulaic when you've only just invented the formula? "Higher" does sound like two songs squashed together.

66. Sly & the Family Stone - I Ain't Go Nobody (For Real) (Dance to the Music, 1968)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=X7h_mjRfhQ8
Maintaining the same tempo and feel of "Dance to the Music" but deviating from the structure to make room for more adventurous interplay, including opening with another carnival organ riff that gradually snowballs into the verse's two-chord vamp. The creatively voiced chord progression in the intro is structured such that it seems to be both ascending and descending as it builds in intensity, and is repeated throughout the song to break up the verses, which are comparatively basic and taken as an opportunity to throw off various licks. The band seems energized throughout (apart from an organ line that seems to falter a couple of times), but going on for 4-and-a-half minutes seems a bit unnecesary. Sly's vocal and lyrics are unremarkable, apart from the lines equating loneliness with freedom.

Can you be formulaic when you've only just invented the formula? "Higher" does sound like two songs squashed together.

67. Sly & the Family Stone - Dance to the Medley (Dance to the Music, 1968)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GNwS82EtDcE
In which the band invents(?) the "extended remix". It sounds like it's patched together from various takes of the title track, you can practically hear the engineer's razor splicing the tape. Along with Freddie's heavily distorted guitar, Larry's fuzz bass is prominently featured. Not sure if this is the first recording to really spotlight such an effect but it was definitely unusual. The structure of the track itself, however, ultimately feels almost random. Various parts are extended, there's a lot more vocal lines (including quotes of other songs), the drums drop in and out, there's small variations in the horn lines, but there's no cohesive structure. Things do not build up or gather momentum as modern ears might expect. At certain points the tempo starts to drag, the rhythm track drops out entirely, and elements get repeated in a seemingly haphazard fashion. By the end the drums disappear and there's just a squall of hard panned guitar fuzz and wandering farfisa lines before it peters out entirely. Is this a genius dancefloor filling moment compiled from studio scraps or is it just ... filler? No doubt sticking this kind of track in the middle of the album seemed (to some listeners at least, and ostensibly the band as well) as cheap and lazy.

It's not something I listen to very often but, nonetheless, this track is amazing and, to use the old cliche, years ahead of its time.

"I Ain't Got Nobody" - I love the way the guitar, organ and piano do little filigrees around each other in the interludes between verses, it really elevates a pretty good song into something special.

68. Sly & the Family Stone - Ride the Rhythm (Dance to the Music, 1968)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TDLiUjQju6g
A brief tattoo on the snare and the band gallops off at full clip with the horns blasting away, but just as quickly everything drops away leaving just Sly's bubbling organ and Freddie (?) kicking off a series of traded lead vocals between himself, Sly and Larry that harken back to both Bobby Freeman's dance hits and Sly's radio DJ patter. The band vamps on the titular refrain for a bit but it isn't long before Errico runs into trouble keeping up the pace as it hurtles forward. Freddie gets off a bunch of wild wah-wah guitar theatrics in the background. Really it's Larry and Freddie that drive the song, especially towards the end when Errico drops out entirely and the band (again) launches into some a capella scatting. While the tune is distinct from "Dance to the Music" (it's more frantic, for one thing) it does feel like it's assembled from previously developed bits: calling out the drummer for a spotlight, the two-note horn figure, the scatting, the dance-oriented lyrics.

Catchy enough chorus but the song as a whole doesn't particularly go anywhere.

It's said that Sly was overdubbing a lot of the instruments himself by the time of Riot, but do we know that, say, the guitars on the earlier records are Freddie and not him?

I don't know why they wouldn't be Freddie, he was a pretty good guitarist. It's been mentioned itt but a lot of these early tracks were likely recorded live.

69. Sly & the Family Stone - Color Me True (Dance to the Music, 1968)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=C_SwgcmO5O0
A quality deep cut, albeit one that similarly relies on familiar bits that are interspersed throughout the album. Errico, Robinson and Martini kick it off with a complex little drums-and-horns fanfare that again seems designed to trick the listener as to where the downbeat is, before Larry and Freddie come into to establish a mid-tempo groove over Sly's minor key organ drone (Larry again doing his pumping-and-breathing bass pattern). There's minimal chord changes here, not even from the verses to the choruses; the band instead leaning on creatively arranging their various riffs to drive things along.

Sly, Freddie, Larry and Rose trade off the lead vocal lines, and while at first blush the lyrics echo some of the familiar hippies-vs-the-squares rhetoric there's more going on here. More ambiguity, more irony, more reflectiveness, more bitterness, more paranoia. It can be read as self-righteous criticism directed at a listener, or as a weirdly paranoid internal dialogue, or even an intra-band argument.

Do you know how to treat your brother?
Do y’all know how to get along with one another?
When you retire, do you go right to sleep?
Do toss and turn when fear starts to creep?
Color me true

Freddie doesn't usually get much credit as a flashy player, but his ability to navigate a variety of styles (wah wah solos, folk fingerpicking, fuzz leads etc) is underrated and he gets off some nice parts throughout, switching between Pops Staples-ish blues licks and chicken scratches. The breakdown at the end with just Errico and Freddie is super tight, just before Sly leads in the rest of the band with another scat-sung coda.

I'm loving these breakdowns... it's fascinating the things that a musician keys in on, that I wouldn't have noticed.
Based on the trajectories at play here, it shouldn't be long until the first instance where One Child's write-up is more interesting than the song of the day

70. Sly & the Family Stone - Are You Ready (Dance to the Music, 1968)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=y3tA75qmCxs
Another real gem tucked away in the back half, possibly the best song on the album. A lone snare crack kicks off a melodic line from the horns and organ, one of the best hooks on the album, followed by a fantastic bassline from Larry, bobbing and climbing his way up until he and Errico snap into a skintight, one-note groove for the verse and the titular vocal refrain from Rose and Sly. The interlocking parts here are ingeniously arranged, every instrument has its own little bit that's distinct from the others and emphasizes a different beat in the bar, but it all fits together. Then it's back to the hook and a verse with one of Sly's sharpest and sunnily sloganeering lines yet ("Don't hate the black / Don't hate the white / If you get bit / Just hate the bite / Make sure your heart is beatin' right"). The rest of the song employs the "Dance to the Music" approach of stripping everything down to just a drum break before reintroducing each instrument one at a time, building things up to the climactic horn-and-organ hook. Larry, Freddie and Greg especially do a killer job here as the rhythm section, listen to that wah wah fuzz squeal underneath the hook, just before Errico gets off a series of drum fills. Sly's organ also notable, you can hear him feeling around the edges of a funkier style than he's employed before, inserting staccato fills between the sustained chords.

Yes yes yes to all of that. Track could easily be twice as long though.

71. Sly & the Family Stone - Don't Burn Baby (Dance to the Music, 1968)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cUHdRAjpZA4
One of those tracks that seems like maybe cocaine was involved, the pace is ridiculous. Opening with a horn figure was standard for them by this point, although this time it's initially juxtaposed against ticking clock percussion from Errico and Sly's suspended organ chord. The energy ramps up as Errico establishes the manic tempo on the kick drum and the other instruments roll up (the bass, guitar, and horns all fire off quick ascending runs ahead of the vocal coming in). Errico's hand percussion (bongos) adds an extra layer of frantic rhythm accents. Larry's bassline alternates between staccato 8th notes (matching the drums) and quarter notes matching the horn accents, by the time they reach the first chorus everything feels way too fast, and the structure repeats. Freddie's guitar fills in the breaks switch between folk-raga-rock phrases and speedfreak riffing; both he and Larry are really ripping through almost every bar. Lyrically it's more generally upbeat, positivist lyrics in the face of the riots and uprisings that were tearing through the country in the summer of 1968, with a sing-songy DJ patter delivery (note the callback to "Underdog"), by the end devolving into just shouts and grunts.

72. Sly & the Family Stone - I'll Never Fall in Love Again (Dance to the Music, 1968)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pdqoeQfUclM
Larry takes another lead turn at the mic, ending the album with a song that bears little to no resemblance to anything else on it. Every other song on the album is built around either a simple set of riffs with minimal chord changes or a fairly basic verse-chorus-verse structure, but this one has both an unusual amount of chords and a much more complex pop song structure. It also lacks Sly's more distinctive lyrical tics, instead relying on shopworn lovelorn sentiments. Sly took full writing credit for every track on the album, which was perhaps not entirely justified given everyone else's obvious contributions, but this one in particular feels like Larry likely had a direct hand in writing it. In some ways it sounds like a leftover from the previous record.

Larry alternates between playing melodic leads, the horns, guitar and organ scattering around him, employing double-stops just before the vocals come in, and playing an ascending bassline under the vocals (Sly and Freddie leading in with "never never never" on the refrains is a nice touch). There are a bunch of weird chord inversions and unexpected turnarounds, as well as an actual middle eight where the rhythm section reverts to staccato quarter notes while the horns pop off countermelodies. Midway through the song they hit on an extended one-chord vamp, Larry doing a call-and-response with the group vocals, before the horns come back in and cue the switch back to the choruses, Freddie again filling in with a bunch of fluid guitar runs.

73. Sly & the Family Stone - Dynamite! (Life, 1968)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gxfRj2TO0O4
At the core of why Sly is such a frustrating and fascinating figure is that while he is a genius (innovative, charismatic, funny, progressive, prodigiously multi-talented), he has a flipside that runs counter to all that: lazy, repetitive, petty, selfish, greedy, destructive, violent. And this isn't entirely a personal judgment, a lot of this is evident in the discography, in the music itself. When he hits on something new and exciting and successful, he goes back to it over and over and over again, he doesn't know when to stop. With the original band this manifested as a reliance on formulas and musical tropes that congealed into a singular style - the a capella scat breakdowns, the horn stabs, the bass patterns, the self-referential lyrics. Which has a lot to do with why the second album can sometimes sound like a handful of ideas stretched over too long a running time, as opposed to the debut where there's a bit more variety and freshness to everything.

Recorded in May 1968, just a few months after "Dance to the Music", and then released in September 1968, the third album represents something of a retrenchment. At this point, they're making industry waves as the new hot-shit crossover R&B act that no one quite knows how to handle, which is clearly a position that Sly and the band relished. They have some very famous peers taking notes - Miles Davis, Motown, Mose Allison, Tony Bennett - and they have a mass audience. They have more freedom and clout now, as well as a proven pop formula. The band is touring large ballrooms in the US (Fillmore East, Electric Ballroom, Aragon Ballroom, Electric Circus, etc.) On the non-musical front, Sly is carrying around a violin-case full of pharmaceutical grade cocaine and prescription pills from a NY doctor, and the band has already had multiple run-ins with the law (including the National Guard during the Detroit riots) and various people (both black and white) who are enraged by their interracial entourage and relationships. Following the release of ""Life"", Larry being busted in London for weed torpedoes the band's UK tour.

As a high energy opening track, "Dynamite" is awash in the psychedelic rock trappings of the day, right from its keening distorted guitar riff, which is almost immediately blasted into overdrive with the addition of Larry's fuzz bass. The song has a dynamic structure, gradually building to a climax before looping back to the intro multiple times. The band digs into their bag of tricks - traded vocals, soul claps, burbling organ and popping basslines, galloping drums - for this ode to a hippie wild child, before dissolving into a morass of stereo panned psychedelic effects (as well as a quote of their big hit for good measure). While this still retains the live-in-the-studio approach there's clearly a bit more engineering chicanery going on here than before; you can hear punch-ins and cuts, and there's hard stereo separation of several of the parts.

Interestingly, and going back to Sly's penchant for constantly recycling and reimagining material, he later recorded an entirely different take on this song a couple years later with 6ix for his Stone Flower label. (We'll get to it).

very much appreciating your continued work itt, sir

Prefer the second album to the first album and the third album to both. I don't really mind acts who have a formula if the formula is good (Fela Kuti? Ramones? Numerous others). Having said that, these albums tend to be on the lightweight side, with ideas that aren't always fully developed - the songs are often too short, for instance.

74. Sly & the Family Stone - Chicken (Life, 1968)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Gb-8-2D8kdw
A brief but ingeniously and humorously constructed mini-drama. The lyrics feature a dialogue between a would-be seducer and an unimpressed object of affection, again sung by aternating vocalists, interspersed with a chicken squawk refrain that is mirrored by the guitar, organ, and horn lines. On one level this is a silly dance track, but on another it reflects a duality Sly loved to explore - the cocksure exhibitionist who is also wracked with doubt. Several lines reference fear/being scared, with Freddie delivering perhaps the most inscrutable, admonitory verse ("Don't let a stranger sell you stories / Buyin' is cheap and so is lyin' / I've got a place already for you / The space between livin' and dyin'")

Musically while the chord and verse-chorus-verse structure are rudimentary, the instrumental interplay is bonkers. Errico takes a bit more of a pounding approach to his and Larry's trademark rhythm four-on-the-floor rhythm, and Sly and Freddie in particular throw in all kinds of back-and-forth curlicues and embellishments in an almost conversational manner. The horns generally stay out of the way, dropping one-note blasts one the downbeat and doubling the vocal bok-bkok phrase. The stereo-panned production is also sharper and more nuanced than on the previous two albums, every instrument is given its own space in the stereo field but the overall effect is of a cohesive, live performance (mostly, there's definitely some punched-in backing vocals that have their EQ squeezed into the high end).

The contemporary Rolling Stone review called Life "the most radical soul album ever issued"; would there be any other likely candidates by 1968?

75. Sly & the Family Stone - Plastic Jim (Life, 1968)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mFr8w8QPI9E
This band loved to winkingly quote other songs (Sly devotee and occasional partner-in-crime George Clinton's penchant for quoting nursery rhymes seems like an extension of this) and they open this track with a bizarre juxtaposition: the horns deliver a tweaked line that borrows its phrasing from "Mary Had a LIttle Lamb", while Sly and Freddie sing a modified version of "Eleanor Rigby's" most famous lyric. Errico plays long drum rolls under the intro before picking up the tempo for a series of three-chord verses, interspersed with choruses that repeat the intro melodies. Interestingly, the whole structure bears more than a little resemblance to "Underdog" from the debut. Once again there is a lot of space in the stereo mix, and it sounds like a few things (horns and vocals) have been double-tracked. Lyrically in the vein of Bob Dylan's "finger-pointing songs" (albeit not as verbose), the band again draws a line in the sand between the hippies and the squares, before winding up the song by downshifting back to the intro, minus the vocals.

Freddie again knocks out sharp fills and runs throughout; its notable how rarely he sticks to a rhythm guitar role, and how much this is a function of the ensemble being composed almost entirely of lead players, no one really takes a backseat to the others (with the notable exception of Rose). Graham is similarly kind of unhinged as a player, his background as a dynamic lead guitar player is always very much in evidence. This ensemble approach is really one of the band's distinguishing features - Sly is ostensibly the lead, but everyone else is equally flashy in a way that was not common with other R&B (or even rock) bands. Everybody is a star. This is not to say that James Brown or Otis Redding's backing bands weren't full of fantastic players, but they didn't sound like they were all trying to steal the spotlight from one another from one bar to the next. With the original lineup of the Family Stone it feels like there's a constant jockeying for position that gets funneled into really creative arrangements.

76. Sly & the Family Stone - Fun (Life, 1968)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yLBZBv-J8w0
A classic. Neither a single nor a hit, this song still feels like it could have been both, and was later included on their stopgap "Greatest Hits" album in 1970. For such an exuberant sound and subject, the arrangement is compact, streamlined, restrained. There's no intro horn fanfare, no lead guitar lines, no breakdowns for the players to show off. The verses follow a repeated 4-chord pattern (with a 5th thrown in for a turnaround). Errico's introductory snare snap launches right into the verse's vocal line, Freddie and Sly (or Rose? not sure) playing alternating rhythm parts on the electric guitar and organ respectively, and Graham popping staccato 8th notes over Errico's straight-ahead snare hits on the 2, 3 and 4. This sets up a chugging rhythmic backdrop for the vocal, with Martini and Robinson playing a countermelody in unison. Where the fun comes in is in the vocal delivery and the lyrics, the band is clearly enjoying themselves as they trade lines, throwing in a comical "Sock it to me" (this phrase was everywhere for some reason in '67-'68, cf. Aretha's "Respect", Mitch Ryder, Laugh-in) and a significant amount of giggling and studio chatter in the second half of the song. Not for the first (or last) time there's also explicit references to family throughout - sisters, brothers, father, mother - which function as both generic archetypes as well as literal references to the band itself (Sly's father K.C. was still their road manager at this point, by all accounts a devout Christian who nonetheless managed to turn a blind eye to the band's interpersonal sex and drugs shenanigans).

Bass playing on this album is stellar.

Re: "Sock it to me", Andrew Hickey covered this in his episode on Aretha Franklin's "Respect":

Another bit of slang was that backing vocal phrase, “sock it to me”, which Aretha’s sister Carolyn had heard someone say and had decided would make a good background line. “Respect” popularised the phrase, and it soon became a national catchphrase, becoming a running gag on the comedy show Rowan & Martin’s Laugh-In, to the extent that even Richard Nixon joined in with it in a desperate attempt to seem down with the kids prior to his election as President

77. Sly & the Family Stone - Into My Own Thing (Life, 1968)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9-gt5fRWH6c
Mixing the rhythmic template of the previous LP's "Color Me True" (albeit slowed down a bit) with the "Dance to the Music" player-callout structure. The famously sampled opening phrase, with the guitar, organ and horns playing in unison, segues immediately into a one chord vamp underpinned by a martial cadence from Errico and the titular chanted refrain. That's pretty much the entire song, which is otherwise interspersed with a fuzz guitar lead, trilling piano, and a brief snatch of fuzz bass. It all sounds fine but it doesn't develop in any way, and the lyrics can most charitably be described as "functional".

78. Sly & the Family Stone - Harmony (Life, 1968)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SwoSHG4tnlk
Sly's presentation of the band as a model or a template on multiple levels (musical, familial, political) was self-conscious and deliberate. It was as if the overarching guiding principle was to performatively demonstrate all the levels on which an archetypal multiracial unit could function, right down to the construction of the music itself. ""You can be you / let me be me / that's harmony"". There's some other more muddled lines in the lyrics, maybe the most notable of which is the "easy as a-b-c / 1-2-3" rhyme (Sly is often- sometimes sloppily - cited as a precursor to Prince, the Temptations psychedelic period, Miles Davis going electric, etc. but his impact on the Jackson 5/Michael Jackson seems to be a less common topic).

Oddly, for a song about harmony this tune is based much more around some pretty complex melodic interplay than it is around harmony. Apart from the way the vocals split into three on the word "harmony" in the choruses, there aren't many harmonies at all, most of the horn and vocal lines are in unison. There is a lot of remarkable playing right out of the gate though, and apart from some overall improvements in fidelity and mixing it wouldn't have been out of place on the debut LP. From the very first bar there's three different countermelodies going on - Sly playing one melody on the organ, Rose (playing a similar line to the next tune, "Life") on the piano, and Martini and Robinson playing their lead line, which is joined by the lead vocals entering with the aforementioned refrain for the first chorus. Freddie joins in at that point as well, throwing in a flurry of fills and runs, and Graham lays in one of his trademark huffing-and-puffing staccato 8th note basslines. Remarkably everyone finds a lane and stays in it, each part is clear and distinct from the others, but also contributing something essential to the machinery of the song. The band rolls through a couple of verses and choruses before abruptly slowing to a waltz time breakdown and then drawing out the last two chords for a melodramatic ending. A solid deep cut; if it has any drawbacks it's that it feels like a dry run for the next (even better) song.

Interesting, that opening horn part on "Harmony" recycles the lead vocal melody from a radio promo spot Sly did for his own radio show (no idea of when). The lyrics go

S-T-O-N-E yeah
S-T-O-N-E
(can't remember this line)
Soulful as you can see

Sly Stone is my name
Playing records is my game
A little bit different every night
Always outta sight

...and then he vamps and laughs a lot while the track plays on for another ~10 seconds. I just spent about an hour looking for confirmation of this spot anywhere online, esp on youtube, but can't find it. It pops up pretty often on WFMU's Rock and Soul Radio stream, but the promos and ads used as interstitial bits between tracks don't show up in archived playlists. The main R&SRadio automated stream isn't archived (anymore) but the Night Owl show still is; if I ever hear the Sly promo on an archived show again I'll note it here.

79. Sly & the Family Stone - Life (Life, 1968)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=D71VV30MYog
Evidence of the fundamental injustice of the universe, this lead single from the LP was not a hit. Backed with "M'Lady" it debuted and peaked at No. 93 on the Billboard Hot 100 dated August 27, 1968, and lasted only three weeks on the chart. As with "Fun", "M'Lady" and a few of the other tracks on the album, the tune is economical and precise in its construction, the band's outlandish and exuberant tendencies harnessed into a tight pop structure. The carnival barker opening - a classic psych pop move (cf. Sgt. Pepper's etc.) - is accompanied by a calliope-like organ riff and the horns introducing the chorus melody as an oom-pah band delivery (not sure who that is on the tuba, presumably Robinson). Errico and Graham enter with their signature 4/4 rhythm - note how Larry picks up the tuba line - and the rest of the band launches into a couple of choruses with group vocals, Freddie playing rhythm guitar accents throughout. Larry sings the first verse over staccato accents from the horns, organ and guitar, and Sly takes the revealing second verse: "You might be scared of somethin', look at Mr. Stewart / He's the only person he has to fear / He'd only let himself get near / He don't trust nobody / If he stopped bein' so shady / He could have a nice young lady". Again with Sly's trademark juxtaposition of pep talk and paranoia. Freddie gets in the last verse (which contains yet another dog reference, perhaps appropriately as Freddie was the perpetually abused puppy of the group) and then the song wraps up with a sharp 1-2 hit. It's the little details that make this song work, the verses and choruses are both structured around the same four chord pattern (with some alternate 7ths thrown in). Just listen to that horn line in the verses as it skitters around the rhythm, or Larry's bassline bopping up and down between octaves.

80. Sly & the Family Stone - Love City (Life, 1968)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TvaICINNHkY
This one feels like filler, based around a simple concept (hippie utopianism) and a handful of their standard riffs, the exception being Errico's drumbeat, hard-panned in the right channel and tailor-made to be endlessly looped. The horns play a line that echoes the vocal melody of "Harmony" at one point, and in the background you can periodically hear Martini play a figure with similar phrasing to his line in "Dance to the Music" and "M'Lady". As on several of the other songs, Graham uses his fuzz pedal to signal his entrance and kick the energy up a notch, although it's interesting he never seems to use this sound for more than a bar or two. Freddie, Rose and Sly generally don't offer much beyond handling the group vocals. There is a little bit of studio experimentation going on in the track - aggressive stereo panning, reversed, overdubbed cymbal splashes and some occasional washes of reverb. Second-tier.

81. Sly & the Family Stone - I'm an Animal (Life, 1968)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iCDc711Wd7k
This track sounds like it's punched in in the middle of a take, starting right in with the "hey hey hey" (subsequently repurposed for "I Want to Take You Higher") and the titular refrain. Freddie's fuzz lead doubled by Graham's bass, which keeps up the pulse throughout. Errico plays with a bit less energy and inventiveness than usual, sticking to a minimal beat. Otherwise the song's bones are it's ascending chord line and the one-note "I'm an animal" vocal line. Sly seems to be attempting to take a playful spin on a trope with obvious racist undertones, but it doesn't quite land, the lyrics are overly goofy. Things get a little more interesting with the dreamy, suspended chords in the bridges, although those sections are marred alternately by some of the sillier lines ("Let me be your bear friend / And I wanna monkey around with you") and all the over-the-top growling and animal noises (again: dogs). Sly had a real penchant for mouth music, scatting, non-verbal vocalizations, beatboxing, whatever you want to call it: it shows up early on with the group vocals, his frequent interjections "boom shaka laka"/"buh-boom boom boom" etc), this song, "Don't Call Me N***** Whitey", a bunch of other tracks. It's a distinctive, perhaps overlooked but significant aspect of his style.

This will interest you.

found this for 50p - promo of sly and the family stone’s “dance to the music” with press release! I’m so happy! pic.twitter.com/A6KXHeOeHQ

— huw (@huwareyou) April 22, 2023

"82. Sly & the Family Stone - M'Lady (Life, 1968)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=z7kyNlb1PJQ
Formulas aren't bad in and of themselves, the good ones provide creative artists a playground to mess around in. "M'Lady" repurposes many of the band's formula components in a way that's obvious to anyone paying attention: the group vocal scatting, Errico's pounding martial dance beat, Graham's fuzz bass punch-ins, Martini's clarinet lick, the way instruments drop in and out. But this is not just an uninspired retread of "Dance to the Music", the band sounds energized, and each little phrase and part has been tweaked or refined in an interesting way. Odd details pop in right from the start. The group vocals pan across the stereo field, Sly's vocal mimics Freddie's guitar part, Sly throwing in triplet organ fills that build into an actual descending chord change midway through the song before abruptly reversing and climbing back up the scale. By the time the band lands back on the chorus they're firing on all cylinders, the sound is thick and rich, Errico and Freddie slamming the downbeat while the horns, organ, guitars and vocals swirl around. Then it's a jump-cut back to the a capella breakdown and another chorus to the fade-out. It's more compact than "Dance to the Music", more focused. A few audible edits with overdubbed vocals aside, the band's mostly live-in-the-studio performance has a palpable joy. The placeholder lyrics can be forgiven. Released as the b-side to "Life".

83. Sly & the Family Stone - Jane is a Groupee (Life, 1968)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ee2Nj5YRlOE
These lyrics are harder to forgive. The overt slut shaming comes across as cruel and hypocritical. Which is too bad because there's some really interesting things going on musically in this song that deviate from the band's usual bag of tricks. For one thing, Errico develops a variation of one of his standard grooves, throwing in a little triplet figure between each beat that gives some extra propulsion to his normal marching-band funk rhythm. Sly would return to this pattern consistently for years to come, cf. the opening of "In Time" and many others. The other players also get creative: Freddie trades fuzz licks with Larry but also indulges in some of his most outwardly acid-rock moves throughout. The horns play long, langurous phrases as the energy of the song ebbs and flows every few bars. In between his usual fleet-fingered basslines, Larry drops out for entire measures, adding to the stop-and-start feel of this dreamy, minor key song.

It's worth noting that the third album is really the last time the original ensemble functions as a discrete, cohesive unit. Through this point there really is a sense that the band functions as a democracy with Sly as more or less a figurehead. Everybody plays on every track, everybody gets a turn in the spotlight, everybody is throwing in ideas. And while the next album and its subsequent singles represent the commercial peak, it's also at this point that that approach breaks down. Sly begins to acquire even more of a central/dominating role: changing up the instrumentation of various songs, bringing in outside players, playing things himself, sidelining first Freddie and then Larry (culminating in death threats and actual violence between competing factions in the band).