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

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).

Great writeups

Re: Jane Is A Groupee, the same year we had "Star Collector" by the Monkees, so the groupie phenomenon seem to have been on the radar at the time.

Written by Carole King and Gerry Goffin no less!

84. Sly & the Family Stone - Stand! (Stand!, 1969)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Q49vjFN6Fsw
Preceded by the release of their first no. 1 single "Everyday People" (b/w "Sing a Simple Song") in November 1968, their fourth album "Stand!" followed in May 1969 and was a commercial and artistic inflection point for Sly and the band. After three relatively unsuccessful LPs, there is a clear refinement of their approach on the LP, and some subtle but significant changes creep into the songwriting and performances.

At first blush, the song contains a lot of familiar elements. It opens with yet another circus/fairground musical figure, this time a drumroll from Errico that makes it sound like the band is about to take a swan dive off a trapeze, and then abruptly cuts to the verse, powered by Errico's four-on-the-floor rhythm and Freddy and Larry anchoring the chords on the up-beats. Sly takes the lead vocal for himself for once, with the others chiming in to provide harmonies, delivering another of Sly's hectoring sermons about bucking social constrictions. Larry does his fuzz bass accents, the horns play a drifting counter-melody, Freddy gets in a couple wah wah licks in between comping chords, and the choruses are lifted up by soul claps and the climbing vocal line.

The mix is ferocious, but it bears pointing out that the chord structure is also ingenious: the verses start with a simple three-chord pattern but then the whole pattern modulates down half-a-step, creating a tension that's released when the melody swoops up to the chorus, which goes up a full step higher, ultimately resolving on the same chord the verses do. There's a circular motion to the structure that's oddly satisfying, like it could just go on forever.

But that's not what happens. Instead there's an audacious edit at the end that patches on an entirely different coda, which switches to C minor for a one chord vamp. By all accounts this was added after the rest of the track had already been completed and an early mix had received a poor public reception. Sly took Errico, Martini, Robinson and some unidentified session musicians (most likely Little Sister for the backing vocals, more on them later) back to the studio and cut this incredible 49-second section, featuring a highly syncopated bass riff doubled by a guitar and offset by Sly's organ, a furious drum pattern (just listen to those 16ths on the hi-hat), a two-note horn blast that Martini and Robinson had been using for years, and an insanely catchy vocal hook (can never go wrong with "na-na-na"s). This tag pushes the song into groundbreaking, audacious territory and there's no doubt it contributed to the song's overall success (#22 on the Hot 100, #14 on the soul chart). Hard to imagine that Graham and Freddy didn't regret their absence or feel burned by their exclusion.

I never knew that about the session musicians for the coda! I still remember the first time I heard this song -- the main tune itself struck me as *very* 60s hippie on first blush but I was immediately blown the fuck away when the coda edit came in. This wasn't long after I'd discovered late-60s/early-70s James Brown and this felt such a piece with that, but, as you note, with a fury and aggression I had never heard before. At that point, the contrast with the more utopian verse became much more powerful (and desperate). Another great writeup.

the verses start with a simple three-chord pattern but then the whole pattern modulates down half-a-step

Actually three semitones; and the coda sounds in C# to me. One of the neat details of that verse is that sometimes the subdominant chord is minor ("...end you'll still be...") and sometimes major ("...done all the...").

Actually you're right: the coda's in C, and I've been starting the song in A instead of A♭!

85. Sly & the Family Stone - Don't Call Me N***** Whitey (Stand!, 1969)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9G-2U-qPsZU
(Title g00gleproofed because racists). Putting this as track two is a pretty ballsy move. The N-word had essentially vanished from popular mass media by the 60s - apart from relatively underground comedy records, it was verboten to either utter or spell out the word on a record. There's no doubt that Sly was aware of this, and opted to break ground by defying convention and putting out a song that highlighted America's racial divide in the most confrontational way possible. The use of the term on record skyrocketed after this (Last Poets debut would come out less than a year later, for example). A generous reading would assume there's no false equivalence intended between the terms used in the song; what Sly is really doing is conveying stasis, paralysis, a seemingly never-ending manichaean conflict between two sides that can't figure out how to move forward, as Rose sings on the song's lone verse: "Well, I went down across the country / And I heard two voices ring / They were talkin' funky to each other / And neither other could change a thing". This is not a song of hope, or even a plea for understanding or unity.

The title and lyric are not the only provocative element, the song bears almost no resemblance to anything else in Sly's discography to-date. It's built out of two distinct sections: one a see-sawing two-note pattern underpinned by a slower-than-usual marching cadence from Errico, and the other a half-time section built around the titular refrain, punctuated by long horn blasts. As the band alternates back and forth between the two sections, Sly leans hard into a heavily processed scat-sung lead vocal (which sounds like it's primarily being fed through a heavily distorted wah-wah pedal), with occasional interjections from Graham. Sly doubles the refrain with his organ, as does Freddie with his wah-wah guitar. And it's long, much longer than anything they'd put out so far (with the exception of "Dance to the Medley") The song only seems to become more and more tense as it rumbles on, never really resolving or reaching a climax, eventually just cutting short altogether."

86. Sly & the Family Stone - I Want to Take You Higher (Stand!, 1969)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BqWQzOzK3kw
On the LP, the band followed its most in-your-face moment yet with another that was begging to court controversy, cheekily basing an entire song around a double entendre meant to highlight the parallels between the effects of drugs and music. While perhaps novel or shocking to some, that was only because people hadn't been paying attention: the song is built primarily out of motifs Sly had been playing around with for years. These include the central refrain, which had previously appeared in "Higher" (off of "Dance to the Music"), and before that in Billy Preston's "Advice (off of "The Wildest Organ in Town"); the "hey hey hey" from "I'm an Animal" (off of "Life"); and the one-chord vamp + riff structure they'd explored on several previous tracks ("Into My Own Thing", etc.) They also make the obvious Doors quote because hey, why not.

Clocking in at over 5 minutes, this is another instance where the band stretches out into longer, slightly jammier material than they had previously ("beat is getting stronger/music gettin longer too"). Freddie, Larry, Rose and Sly all trade lines as they have many times before, but the feel of this song is overall sweatier and more distorted, the result of several different production and arrangement choices. For once, Larry lays on the fuzz bass for more than just a bar or two, leaning on it for entire verses. It also sounds like there's actually *two* bass tracks (one clean and one distorted) at certain points. The vocals, horns, and organ also intermittently stack on top of each other, playing the same riff in unison. There's a cumulative weight to all this that lends the track its extra punch and crackle, which is evident right from the opening bars where Sly's wailing harmonica overlaps with the horns' introductory crescendo and Larry doubling Freddie's guitar line with the fuzz bass. While overall the track sounds very live, there were definite overdubs and edits. Sly's harmonica, the horns, and several bass and vocal bits are clearly punched in. The organ is dropped out for the "boom shaka laka" sections and it also sounds like initially live horn takes are bleeding through to other tracks at various points. In some ways this track is the band in its archetypal/ideal state. Everyone is energized, united, euphoric. Any cracks are papered over with a cooperative enthusiasm, and the playing and singing on everyone's part is muscular and aggressive. Sly (on harmonica), Freddie, and Robinson all take solos, and towards the end Martini impressively sustains a single high note for about half a minute. Who knows how long the master take of this went on for, as with "Don't Call Me N*****, Whitey" it sounds like it was designed to be potentially infinite.

Released as the b-side to "Stand!", the second single off the LP. Subsequently reached #38 on the Billboard Chart on its own in 1970, following their performance at Woodstock. Their officially released live performance of this track at Woodstock will be covered in a separate post.

glad you're gonna cover the woodstock version, best performance of the entire festival imo

What I notice most in this recording is the many different levels of the voices - different placement in the stereo field, different volumes and levels of reverb, compared to the insistent and constant instrumental track. It's very subtle and measured compared to what e.g. George Clinton would do with similar tracks in the next couple of years.

87. Sly & the Family Stone - Somebody's Watching You (Stand!, 1969)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eyCuIBDjehg
Fantastic deep cut from start to finish. Classically-trained studio engineer Richard Tilles has noted that "the Family Stone up to 'Stand!' was a symphony orchestra, whereas the stuff after that is more like chamber music". "Somebody's Watching You" is where that transition starts to happen. This is where the recording strategy starts to migrate from capturing the in-studio performances of an ebullient live band to something more hermetic, sculpted, pieced together. In parallel (or perhaps even ahead of) similar engineering techniques being refined in UK studios at the time, instruments and voices are close-mic'd so that the sound is dead and dry, with no natural reverberation. Overdubs and punch-ins come to the fore. Effects like reverb are applied at the mixing stage not to evoke an actual physical space, but to disassociate the various instruments from each other. At no point in this song does it sound like everyone is playing in the same room together: various elements (including the reverb that pops in on the instrumental choruses) are hard panned in one channel or the other; the horns are heavily compressed and off in a closet somewhere; Sly's wandering organ solo is clearly overdubbed and at one point is punched out so abruptly it creates a weird drop-of-water sound effect; the EQ on the vocals in the third verse are crushed in the upper frequencies, like they're coming out of a transistor radio.

This song is also emblematic of how dense and tangled the band's music was becoming. Stephen Paley, Sly's A&R from the label: "He had a music theory book by Walter Piston, about orchestration, and he would always refer to it." This song doesn't have a particularly complicated structure - it's just a descending four chord pattern interspersed with a two-chord chorus and some grace transitional chords between - but the chord voicings and inversions and overall melodic inventiveness are beguiling. As soon as you zero in on a particular detail like the horn line or the intertwined vocal harmonies they zip off in some unexpected direction. The organ chords are voiced in a way that tricks the ear as to whether they are going up or down the scale. Errico's drumming is both minimal and tense, as if he can feel the Rhythm Ace that would soon replace him lurking in the background. Freddie comps chords in a pattern that's not tied to either Graham or Errico at all, occasionally bursting into fuzz licks on the instrumental breaks. Graham still drives the rhythm with his familiar patterns, but even he seems more restrained than usual. The vocals periodically break apart, fluttering into different spaces in the stereo field during the choruses, then dovetailing back together for tight harmonies on the verses. The horns play a countermelody that meanders into its own little pocket universe almost entirely distinct from the vocal melody.

The coy, epigrammatic lyrics outshine every other song on the record. Many of the lines can be read as intensely personal references. For example: in a veiled but unfortunately homophobic touch, Sly calls out Dave Kapralik, his gay manager, as "shady as a lady with a mustache"; also hard not to read the "Sunday school don't make you cool forever" as a jab at his parents, or "Secrets have a special way about them / Moving to and fro among your friends" as being about the band (not sure if Sly's affair with Robinson was already underway). But lines like these are also not unnecessarily specific, they are broadly observational, universal; they're a unique mixture of the deadly serious and the comic, delivered with a sad, knowing wink. And some are just blankly grim: "Jealous people like to see you bleed" or "Ever stop to think about a downfall? / Happens at the end of every line" (coke reference?)

Sly would shortly cut an entirely different version of this song with Little Sister (comprised of his younger sister Vette and two of her friends), who had been singing backup for the Family Stone since the beginning, and release it on his Stone Flower label.

A fascinating overlooked track (considering that almost every other song on here wound up on Greatest Hits); my favourite detail is how he holds back the ♭VII chord (E♭) until the very last bar of the chorus. The heightened suspicions of the lyric seem to be a result of increasing cocaine paranoia.

I almost completely missed this until I heard the Little Sister version.

Me too! Love the LS version so this one is a bit of a late revelation.

Same – the writeup does a great job of giving me a ton to chew on and sort through.

I see Sly is working on a memoir. Is the Jeff Kaliss book any good? I read the oral history some years back but would absolutely dig into a really good biography.

There's quite a lot of Sly anecdotes in the George Clinton book Brothas Be, Yo Like George, Ain't That Funkin' Kinda Hard On You?: A Memoir. In fact, Sly is the only character who comes across warmly and vividly; Clinton doesn't really delve into the personalities of his band members, and is particularly dismissive of Bootsy Collins.

It struck me as weird, when Sly was doing his quasi-comeback about 15 years ago, that either he or his handlers seemed to be avoiding discussing the issue of drugs. Rather than playing up the "recovery" aspect, as you would with most stars who had been largely absent from the public for more than two decades, there seemed to be a desire just to turn the clock back to 1968 and play the material for its most obvious "party up" aspects. That's why I wonder what sorts of revelations could be expected from a Sly memoir.

Now hold on a minute there, George Clinton dismissive of Bootsy? Say it ain't so.

88. Sly & the Family Stone - Sing a Simple Song (Stand!, 1969)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=42YGprrAOj0
Closing out side one of the LP with the b-side to "Everyday People", which was initially released ahead of the album in November 1968. The song begins by abruptly cutting into a gradually swelling organ chord, Freddie's guitar wailing over the top as the vocals gradually join in. Errico dials up the tension with a drumroll before dropping a truly monstrous beat that has reverberated for decades. Sure this song (like all the others) is credited solely to Sly but the recording is completely dominated by the rhythm section. Errico's groundbreaking and hugely influential beat is unlike anything else he's played up to this point, both taut and slippery, a combination of hammered hi-hat quarter notes, nimble footwork, and hard-hitting fills, and Graham matches him pound for pound with an octave-jumping bass riff (doubled by Freddie's guitar). Sly's overdriven organ lurks in the background, punctuating the end of each bar, and the horns alternate between crescendos and staccato accents. Throughout the verses the horns and organ and horns duck in and out to emphasize different bits of the central lick.

As with much of the rest of the album, the recording is fairly hot and live, with hard stereo panning to give everything space, anchored by the organ and bass in the center (iIsolating the drums in the right channel would subsequently make it easier for hip hop producers to chop a clean sample). Sly's shouted vocal careens back and forth across the stereo field, the other voices all given their own individual sonic space. The song ducks back and forth between the mammoth hook and an ascending four-chord break that ramps up the tension each time around, with Errico pounding out uniform quarter notes as the vocals slide up the do-re-mi scale. Midway through, however, there is an honest-to-god drumbreak/middle eight where Graham and the vocals drop out, ceding the spotlight to Errico and a growling, bent-note riff from horns and Freddie (with Sly's organ also peeking through), putting the song on a whole other plane. As with the coda on "Stand!", the break feels like it was specifically designed to leave the audience wanting more, a peak that appears only once in the song yet begs to be repeated endlessly.

The lyrics are Sly at his most wide-eyed and uplifting, an ode to joy and perserverance in the face of trouble, frowns, and and ups and downs, delivered again by the whole band, with even Cynthia joining in this time around. The lines have an appealing, repetitive nursery rhyme quality and the lines are pitched back and forth by the singers like a game of hot potato. The song ends on an unusual note, an isolated and deliberately placed studio artifact of the overdubbed vocals, as if Sly meant to pull back the curtain and flip the song inside-out to expose the seams holding it together.

Didn't really like this one until I heard the single version, which fades out a minute earlier - it just seemed a more focussed performance.

89. Sly & the Family Stone - Everyday People (Stand!, 1969)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YUUhDoCx8zc
The band's first bona fide pop crossover hit went to number one on the Soul Singles chart and Billboard Hot 100. As one of their signature songs it encapsulates the sentiments the band leaned into so heavily on their first four albums, distilling their mult-cultural ""can't we all just get along"" philosophy into a simple series of melodies that play out over what is essentially a one chord vamp (ok, two if you count the subdominant chord in the piano part). Graham doesn't have much to do with his atypically one-note bassline, so he leans into the his slapping technique to accentuate the off-beats of Errico's mid-tempo rhythm. Freddie's guitar is entirely absent (unless that's him on those punched in fuzz accents). The horn lines essentially echo the vocal melodies. And really it's the vocals that make this song work and cemented it as a hit, the way they're arranged is almost a textbook exercise in how to wring out harmonic and melodic variations from a single chord. For a band as exuberant and technically skilled as they were, this song is weirdly restrained and minimalist in its construction, there's no solos, no flashy demonstrations of technique, no trading off in the spotlight - it's all about the voices.

And yet, while the overall message comes through, the lyrics seem kind of sloppy and muddled. They incorporate a nonsensical "and so on and so on and scooby dooby doo" to the "nanny nanny boo boo" melody (Songs that incorporate the "nan nanny boo boo" melody). And the "there is a blue one who can't accept the green one" and "There is a yellow one that won't accept the black one / that won't accept the red one / that won't accept the white one" are possibly the archetypal "i don't care if you're black, white, purple" lyrics (i don't care if you're black, white, purple). These nursery-rhyme type of lines get the point over and are definitely part of the song's broad appeal but they also are a little cheap, even hacky. On the other hand, coining "Different strokes / for different folks" goes a long way towards redeeming the lazier lines.

Sly has often cited Solano Community College music professor David Froelich with instilling in him an appreciation for paring a song's musical elements down to the bare minimum; for a song to work, it has to function at the level of its most basic components, otherwise piling additional elements on top achieves nothing. "Everyday People" seems emblematic of this approach, which Sly would increasingly focus on over the next couple of years.

These nursery-rhyme type of lines get the point over and are definitely part of the song's broad appeal but they also are a little cheap, even hacky. On the other hand, coining "Different strokes / for different folks" goes a long way towards redeeming the lazier lines.

I've always felt a little indifferent toward this song. In addition to the reasons you cite, OC, the Arrested Development "People Everyday" interpolation of this left such a bad taste in my mouth that by the time I spent time with the real thing I was kind of predisposed to dislike it. But I would agree that out of all of Sly's big hits, this one has always seemed a little facile.

Just want to say this thread has totally revived my love of Sly's discography and I cannot believe I am reading it for free, cos I would pay cash money for this book; a million thanks One Child <3

Ditto. I’m finding myself disappointed if a new entry isn’t posted when I open Zing.

Are you planning on going all the way through to Ain’t But the One Way?

90. Sly & the Family Stone - Sex Machine (Stand!, 1969)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ex3NJqRgNho
Predates James Brown's earth-shaking song by over a year, but sadly doesn't match that song's intensity in any way, and feels more like filler for much of its length. Given that the band was back in San Francisco for the first time in years (the album was cut in Pacific High Recording Studios in SF whereas their previous albums had been recorded primarily in New York) and the band was regularly filling places like the Fillmore on bills with white hippies playing 20-minute "psychedelic blues" freakouts, it's easy to place this song in the context of the local contemporary scene. But if they were trying to compete/keep up with other SF groups, it's a little baffling as to why they opted to include something this rote when they had much more interesting songs like "We Love All (Freedom)" (which went unreleased at the time) to stretch out on. Sonically it's of a piece with "Don't Call Me N*****, Whitey". Otherwise it's unlike anything else the band released before or after. This band didn't really do blues jams.

Maybe after all the compact, tightly arranged tunes aimed at the radio the rhythm section just wanted to break loose and ramble for 10+ minutes, which they do with abandon here. Building from a standard blues pattern and shuffle rhythm, Errico, Sly, and especially Graham and Freddie indulge in all sorts of distorted shenanigans - wah wah guitar squals, heavily distorted and wah wah processed vocals, an extended fuzz bass solo (again we are treated to two bass parts at once at one point) - while Sly leans on droning chords on the hammond. Martini and Robinson barely appear, getting in comparatively brief solos. The song ebbs and flows as the players transition, eventually capping off with an actual drum solo from Errico that, sadly, doesn't really highlight his strengths and eventually just crawls to a halt. Was this fun to play? Probably. Nonetheless it feels like an odd misstep in the middle of the album. At the end you can hear the rest of the band laughing behind Errico's back as he completes the take.

Is there a studio version of "We Love All (Freedom)"? All I’m able to find online is the Fillmore version which is very … late-sixties Fillmore-sounding.

Yes, the studio version of "We Love All (Freedom)" was released in 2007 as a bonus track on the CD reissue of "Dance to the Music."

It's right there on all the services.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AnfOEHe2FSA

(Naive: Was talking about this song recently on twitter and my substack, nice to see people getting interested in it!)

Doh! I saw that but glazed over it because of the (very slightly) altered title.

91. Sly & the Family Stone - You Can Make It If You Try (Stand!, 1969)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=v-5F8-rm8cY
This tune feels of a piece with "Sing a Simple Song", both in its optimistic exhortations and upbeat energy and in its construction as a carefully sculpted funk pop track. It was apparently slated as a follow-up single to "Stand!" in mid-1969, but eventually dropped in favor of the non-album "Hot Fun in the Summertime". While the song isn't really based around a central lick the same way ""Sing a Simple Song"" is, it has a similar arrangement that foregrounds the rhythm section (even the horns play a primarily rhythmic role), the singers darting around the vocal melodies. While Graham's voice is clearly audible on the track, Sly has been cited as playing the bass part, and it seems likely the organ is an overdub from Sly. It also sounds like Little Sister provides the backing vocals, with Rose shouting out that "all together now!"

Opening as they have many times before with a horn-led fanfare, bass, guitar and drums all joining in in unison. Errico, Sly and Freddie lock into a driving funk rhythm. Freddie's crunchy chicken-scratch pattern bears a passing resemblance to some of James Brown's contemporaneous singles, and Sly's wild bassline definitely presages Bootsy's antic fingerpopping. No idea why Graham didn't play it, but Sly's bass part is very in-your-face, practically the lead melodic instrument. The way all the parts intermittently dovetail together at the end of each segment is ingenious; for the verses and choruses, everything orbits around a G7 chord, but then various instruments come back together to play little licks in unison. Errico is the most restrained of the rhythm section (at least at first), laying back for much of the track before unleashing his second canonical drumbreak of the record after the first couple of verses, this time embroidered by a gritty organ lick.

How this was tracked is not entirely obvious; while most of the band is present on the recording, there's a lot of stereo separation and several audible punch-ins (and punch-outs). With the horns and drums in one channel, the guitar and group vocals in the opposite, the lead vocals panned across the field, and the organ and bass in the middle, everything sounds artificially and meticulously isolated. While the instruments all generally sound walled off from each other, there is a fair amount of distortion on the tracks; you can hear it in particular with the vocals, and with Freddie when he pivots from his already hot scratch pattern to overdriven riffs - just listen to those runs underneath the "yeah, yeah yeah yeah" vocal breaks at the end of each verse. Also interesting is that almost all the tracks are recorded dry; the only things with any reverb on them are the horns and, most prominently, Sly's vocal.

Midway through the band hits an actual bridge, the bass and horns doing a call and response with the organ, interspersed with a couple blues licks from Freddie. As they round out the fourth chorus, the players dial back, the voices quiet down and Errico's drumming becomes more intricate and detailed. And then the mix ventures into unusual, truly innovative territory. Sly punches out everything but Errico's drums (this is clearly done in the mix, as you can still hear Freddie's guitar and Sly's bass bleeding into the drum track). Sly then adds back one element at a time: first Freddie's guitar, then Sly's bass (playing a variation of the "Shortenin' Bread" melody), then the organ, then the horns (echoing Freddie's scratch pattern), then the vocals. The pattering drum rhythm and the accumulation of sonic detail make it feel like the song is slowly reaching a rolling boil. All of this points the way towards the Stone Flower singles and "There's a Riot Goin' On".

I cannot believe I am reading it for free, cos I would pay cash money for this book; a million thanks One Child <3

― glumdalclitch, Tuesday, May 9, 2023

Yes. But also I'm worried that no one else will ever do another listening thread because the bar is now too high.

haha don't worry, I'm sure I won't be able to stay away from the Sun Ra or Jandek listening threads for long, and my bar is not as high as this (largely b/c I lack music theory background)

EDIT - a couple sentences got chopped there:

1) the lyrics are straightforward and not particularly nuanced, but it's possible to read them as a desperate mantra repeated to onself in times of stress (I think I can, I think I can) instead of just simple cheerleading.
2) the distinguishing feature of the buildup at the end of the song is that it is done at the mixing stage by Sly, and not by the performers themselves. While the band could absolutely have pulled this off live (standard technique for instruments to drop out and come back in one at a time), Sly instead makes it happen artificially, it's a production choice.

I'm so so happy this was revived. What a joy to catch up to this

Holy shit, I completely did not realize that this thread started three years ago.

92. Sly & the Family Stone - Hot Fun in the Summertime (non-album single, 1969)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Bg0tFRea0wA
Released July 21, 1969 with "Fun" as the b-side, just ahead of the band's appearance at Woodstock, and at the apex of the band's commercial appeal. The song peaked at number 2 on the U.S. Billboard Hot 100 pop singles chart, kept out of the number 1 spot (ironically) by the Temptations, who were now blatantly aping Sly's hits under the direction of Norman Whitfield.

For an artist so restless and wide-ranging, there are still a few things Sly generally avoids in his music. He doesn't display anger (can't have that from a black man in America), and his songs almost always take place in an ever-present "now". His lyrics rarely look in the rearview mirror. Which is partly what make this song such an outlier in the catalog. While the Family Stone had notched a couple of ballads on earlier records, this is the first time they revisit the swaying 6/8 doo-wop rhythm of Sly's youth, and the first time Sly indulges in any kind of nostalgia. His approach to this song is similar to a certain other California band with a visionary drug-addled leader and a penchant for combining R&B, complex harmonies, and wistful melancholy, an obvious difference being that Beach Boys tracks like "I Went to Sleep" weren't exactly burning up the charts in '69. Incidentally, Phil Collins also made this connection when he mashed up this song with the Beach Boys "Sail on Sailor" to produce the execrable "Misunderstanding".

Another Brian Wilson parallel is that this track was developed purely as a studio concoction; this is not a live take of the full band in the studio. Freddie's guitar isn't even on it, and the song is built around two parallel piano tracks, one in each stereo channel, which overlap, swap parts, wander away from each other, and periodically peter out altogether throughout the song. It's hard not to wonder if the real reason there's two piano tracks in the first place is because pounding out those 8th notes must have been exhausting, and you can hear the parts slip out of time in certain spots, there's even a couple of flubbed notes left in in the verses. That being said the layered minor chords on the piano play a huge role in the song's lazy, hazy mood. The other major factor is the addition (again, a first for the band) of an overdubbed pair of violins, which play stately, high-pitched counter melodies. These misty-eyed elements are countered by a typically muscular rhythmic underpinning - Graham and Errico don't know the meaning of the words "laid back", and give the song an extra bounce, particularly when the piano and bass join up for the ascending line (a minor chord progression that runs through both a 7th and a 6th chord) in the choruses. The vocals, as usual, are traded off between members, with some fairly tricky four-part harmonies on various lines. All of these elements are spun together like cotton candy, the end result a strangely gentle and affecting snapshot of a summer idyll.

I was actually shocked when I discovered this came out in 1969. It feels of such a piece with their earlier work lyrically and musically, as if acid rock hadn’t yet pushed harmony groups aside. But in retrospect, it also feels a little bit like the last gasp of Sly’s youthful optimism, before the demons completely took him over.

Regardless, I completely love it, my favorite Fourth of July barbecue soundtrack.

I always used to put this on on the jukebox in a pub I frequent, in the middle of winter or when the weather was particularly shitty.

I wish it was at least twice as long. I could listen to it on a loop for 30-40 minutes and not get tired of it.

Wmc OTM!

Isn’t it commonly understood that the “hot fun” of the title is a sardonic reference to race riots?