one of the greatest geniuses of the 20th century. i remember a d’angelo interview from 2014 where he talks about visiting sly stone and listening to the private recordings he was making and he says “he’s fucking with the autotune!” i hope we get to hear that someday.
Remember listening to “In Time” for the first time only a few years back and thinking “man… I gotta listen to more sly and the family stone…”
“Family Affair” was always in heavy rotation by my partner’s late father as well. Really loved the strangeness of how it was mixed and Sly’s bleary vocal delivery…
A bit of a bittersweet pattern developing here of me only properly getting into artists after they’ve passed away…
never got too deep into his actual music but sly is indirectly responsible for one of the most profound musical experiences i’ve ever had, hearing “revolutionary,” the echo dek remix of the primal scream song ‘star’ that interpolates the melody/lyrics of the sly & the family stone song ‘everybody is a star’ on shrooms in the back seat of a car coming down from the angeles crest mountains at sunset
all 3 versions of the song are basically perfect
literally divine
When I was in high school for some reason I decided to buy Greatest Hits (1970), on cassette actually, even though I never heard the music before. (Related–It’s kind of weird how little Sly gets exposure like in grocery stores and commercials and FM radio and stuff.) What a great & useful album, since their albums up to that time aren’t really worth hearing (except Stand, from which it takes more than half of), it also contains 3 non album songs which are some of their best, and doesn’t touch the 2 masterpiece albums that came out right after which deserve to be heard in full.
I later picked up There’s a Riot Goin’ On, it was on vinyl and I thought something was indeed wrong with it when I heard the production. It’s now one of my favorite albums of course. It’s weird, again, I feel like I don’t hear people talk about how great it is. I guess its legacy is how much of an impact it clearly had on D’angelo.
Fresh is probably just as good. I have (pirated) the Japanese CD release, when they accidentally released an entire alternate version of the album. I’ve heard it described as a different mix but a lot of parts sound completely rerecorded, and I heard that Sly kept working on the album even after it was released, so I wonder if that has something to do with it? It’s not necessarily better either. Some of them ended up as bonus tracks on later CD releases, but not all of them.
Questlove talks about Small Talk in one of his books, but I’m pretty sure he’s biased and that album is not very good. I haven’t really heard it much though. His documentary he directed that came out a little while ago, Sly Lives! is worth seeing. One of the most memorable parts was the interviewees breaking down the song Stand which might have convinced me it’s his best song, there’s so much going on crammed into 3 minutes.
been listening to “fresh” all week, RIP legend…
Can’t believe it’s taken me until now to listen to the rest of “There’s a Riot Goin’ On”… Feel like a bloody fool for putting it off for so long! Absolutely adore the density of its production and how frayed it all sounds in keeping with some of the lyrical content…
In Time is next on the list and then maybe I’ll check out Stand, all thanks to your post @alfred!
Watched that Sly Lives Questlove doc that @alfred mentioned and while it was a useful primer on the highs and lows of his career for someone relatively new to the guys music, I did kinda get a bit sick of all the mythologising going on (the word genius gets thrown around like crazy) and all the celebrity talking heads lamenting how hard it is at the top. At some point I wanted to hear from the guy himself and not just from old archival footage of TV interviews decades ago…
Found this interview from 2012 with him and his daughter that served as a good chaser:
Nice to see someone like him brush off all the praise and start the interview clipping his fingernails — just a lil fella like the rest of us!
i listened to “a family affair” again recently and. yeah. there’s little to say. it’s perfect beyond description. it is bliss, it is agony, is it everything simultaneously.
the entire “there’s a riot going on” record is so sublime. lord.
Having been the first thing I’d heard from that album, it was a really wonderful surprise to then discover that it was only just the tip of the iceberg!
Just Like a Baby has slowly crawled up to replace it as my current favourite:
Whole album’s great though! Fresh is also a fabulous follow-up, the Yang to Riot’s Yin…