119. Sly and the Family Stone, "Stand!"

 


Lots of musicians get called "genius," but Sly Stone is an actual musical genius.  As this album amply demonstrates, he fused funk, blues, rock, and psychedelia in hippie-era San Francisco and left an indelible mark on all of those genres.  This album, clocking in at an economical 41-plus minutes (13 of which are a single song, "Sex Machine," more on which later), contains Sly's best ideas in a package that is an absolute joy to listen to.

Let's start with track one, the title song, an absolute blast of funk-rock goodness that then moves to a gospel-funk breakdown in the last 40 or so seconds.  I don't even want to type out the name of the second song but it's an exhortation to white people not to call the singer by a racial slur that has become even more incendiary over time.  The overtle racial subject matter is even more fascinating because Sly and the Family Stone were a famously multi-racial, mixed gender band, with a white drummer and a woman trumpet player, stuff that was unheard of at the time for a black-fronted band.

This inclusivity was the subject of "Everyday People," one of the best-known and best songs on the album, a song with a playground chant of "There is a blue one who can't accept/The green one for living with/A fat one tryin' to be a skinny one/Different strokes for different folks/And so on and so on and scooby-dooby-dooby" masks a real plea for harmony and acceptance.  It doesn't hurt that the song is a total jam and a vicious earworm to boot.

The aforementioned "Sex Machine" takes up most of side two.  It's mainly a lengthy jam with what sounds like heavily distorted vocals through what sounds like a Talk Box (but which was in fact an earlier version, called The Bag).  The album closes with "You Can Make It If You Try," a joyous inspiration, based largely on a Gene Allison song but greatly reshaped by Sly to fit perfectly in their sound.

Sly is having a bit of a moment again thanks to Questlove's documentary Summer of Soul, a documentary about the 1969 Harlem Cultural Festival that has been widely lauded (including winning Best Documentary Oscar) and in which Sly and the Family Stone play a major role.  (I must shamefully confess I have not seen it yet.)  Here's a great shot of Sly at the festival:


Sly himself descended into a spiral of drug addiction and pretty much lost everything.  In 2011 it was reported that he was living in a van in LA.  I haven't been able to find out any more info about him since.  I hope he's ok.

Is this album in my personal Top 500? Totally.

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