Sly & Family Stone - Essential Sly & Family Stone
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Music CD Cover
Artist: Sly & Family StoneEdition: Music CD
Format: Limited Edition, Original recording remastered
CD Release Date: 2003-03-11
Music Label: Sony
Soundtracks:
Music CD 1
- Underdog
- I Cannot Make It
- Dance to the Music
- Are You Ready?
- Fun
- M'Lady
- Life
- Love City
- Stand!
- Don't Call Me Nigger, Whitey
- I Want to Take You Higher
- Somebody's Watching You
- Sing a Simple Song
- Everyday People
- You Can Make It If You Try
- Hot Fun in the Summertime
- Everybody Is a Star
- Thank You (Falettinme Be Mice Elf Agin)
- Family Affair
- Luv N' Haight
- Poet
- (You Caught Me) Smilin'
- Runnin' Away
- Brave and Strong
- Just Like a Baby
- Thank You for Talkin' to Me, Africa
- In Time
- If You Want Me to Stay
- Frisky
- Skin I'm In
- Babies Makin' Babies
- If It Were Left Up to Me
- Time for Livin'
- Loose Booty
- I Get High on You
Free Music Notes for Essential Sly & Family Stone
Free Music Review: The Two Sides of Sly Stone
Hit: 5 Stars
When I saw that the library had just received this double disc set, I held my hands together and whispered a Burnsesque "Excellent". I could already envision the sunny days in my car, jamming out to some of the happiest and empowering funk ever made, songs such as "Dance to the Music", "I Want to Take You Higher", "Stand!" and "Hot Fun in the Summertime".
Those were the types of songs that I had on my worn out and now scratched copy of Sly and the Family Stone's Greatest Hits. But I found that The Essential Sly and the Family Stone is more complete, and with that, a collection of songs that tells a story that is at times sublime and tragic. Especially if you read Sly Stone's descent into drug addiction and isolation into the songs.
One surprise on this collection is the first song, "Underdog". I hear a young and scrappy Sly, taking on racism in the lyrics, but still learning the ropes as far as arranging the horn parts and producing. The chorus sounds like it's in a minor key, not fully resolved. Comparing it to the later songs, it seems to lack that classic Sly perfection. But it's still catchy and I love it.
Soon enough the hits start to roll across the speakers. The classic Sly sound develops right before your ears. Multiple voices carry the verses. Driving drums and bass carry a big time horn section. Once in a while there might be some nonsense vocal harmonies; my favorite part is the chicken clucking on "Everybody is a Star". The lyrics feature some wonderful word play. And of course, there's a lot of hope and togetherness. After all, the Family Stone was one of the first intergrated groups, with both black and white musicians. Most people describe this era as Sly's Happy Music Era.
Not that there aren't any hints of a darker side. "Don't Call Me Nigger, Whitey" foretells a different and darker sound, with more confrontational themes and an electronic talk box.
I also have to wonder if Sly could prophesize his own decline when you hear lines like the one in "Everybody is a Star" which goes: Did you catch a falling star? /It won't stop until it hits the ground.
The second disc is like the night to the first disc's day. It starts off with "Family Affair", which frankly isn't the most uplifting song. The driving drums of the first side are replaced with plodding electronic drums. And there's only one backup singer. Sly's vocals sound like they've been sung on a beautifully over-driven microphone, as if he's whispering into a megaphone right behing the speaker. It's a creepy sound, but very cool. Every time I hear this song, I envision Sly sitting in the studio with all the curtains drawn, binging on whatever he's been binging on. Nobody can be around him. But he still has it together enough to come up with a cool groove. He lays down all the tracks by himself and calls in the backup to record the refrain in a one hour session. I also like to imagine that Sly is referring to himself in the lyrics when he sings about the two children: the one child who loves to learn, and the other you would just love to burn--like the two sides of Sly Stone himself.
The rest of the disc is more confrontational, and the sound starts to get a little off kilter, more processed and electronic, like a bad trip...like Funkadelic. That's not to say that it's a bad thing, in fact it's kind of cool sometimes.
To me, "If You Want Me Stay" has a bass line that is just like musical crack. I cannot get enough of it, and there's no chorus or changes...just the bass, some horns, organ, and the lyrics straight through. And then the lyrics seem to be written by someone who's locked themselves in their hidey-hole.
If you want me to stay
I'll be around today
To be available for you to see
I'm about to go there
Then you'll know
For me to stay here
I've got to be me
You'll never be in doubt
That's what it's all about
You can't take me for granted and smile
Count the days I'm gone
Forget reachin' me by phone
Cause I promise
I'll be gone for a while...
I start to feel bad for the guy; it's like he's saying goodbye. And then, of course, Sly dropped off the face of the planet, to join the mythic American music acropolis of rock and roll burn-outs.
Essential Sly & Family Stone Poster
Long before Michael Jackson and Prince became superstars by fusing rhythmic soul with rock's sense of scale and ambition, a former Northern California deejay and producer named Sylvester Stewart took the vaunted musical utopianism of the '60s and forged it into the cross-cultural, ass-shaking, genre-bending groove monster that was Sly and the Family Stone. James Brown may have invented funk, but S&TFS masterfully tooled and supercharged it into mass-acceptance. No mere greatest hits collection--though they're all here in digitally remastered glory--this 35-track, double-disc anthology delves deeper into the handful of seminal albums the band produced before its leaders' long, troubling slide into drug abuse and oblivion. Given the chronological development, there's a sense here that Stewart/Stone's problems paralleled the increasingly militant and hard-edged stance his band took on albums like the uncompromising classics There's a Riot Going On and Family Affair. Propelled by Larry Graham's locomotive bass lines and accented by rousing horns, Sly and company swooped from the heights of 1969's hit-laden "Stand" towards a darker and more unsettling decade ahead. Few bands have soared higher--or fallen as far. --Jerry McCulleyBlues Music CDs
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