[Today: Sly Stone can't get no satisfaction...]
In the early 70′s, Sly Stone looked around with heavy-lidded eyes, and didn’t like what he saw. So he did what any reasonably wealthy young musician at that time might do to dull the pain: he sequestered himself away from the world, snorted mountains of cocaine, and created a deeply funky and intensely paranoid album that reflected the state of the world around him.
In the year of production leading up to the November 1971 release of this album, newspaper headlines were littered with references to Charles Manson, Richard Nixon, Idi Amin, My Lai and Attica. From the bullet-hole riddled flag on the cover to the intoxicating, stoned grooves of the music inside, There’s A Riot Goin’ On is the product of a man futilely attempting to distract himself from the realities of a world gone mad. Few recordings have so successfully captured the trouble of their times.
The bulk of the album was created in the home studio in the attic of Sly’s Bel Air mansion. Its warped, fuzzy sound was allegedly achieved through repeated overdubbing – and later erasing – of various groupies who were allowed to ‘perform’ on the album. Sly uses a drum machine instead of Family Stone drummer Greg Errico, and it’s the only stable thing to be found here. Sly intentionally garbles ambivalent lyrics throughout, lays one impressive, slurred Hammond B3 run on top of another, and uses the wah wah pedal like that sad sound that signifies dejection in TV comedy. Sly gets it: the joke’s on him, the joke’s on you, the joke’s on all of us. But instead of a punch line, we get a state of the union address.
Listen: Thank You For Talkin’ To Me Africa
30 January 2008 at 9:01 am |
He’s AWESOME in the new Rambo movie, too.
30 January 2008 at 9:08 am |
Sly Stone’s actually looking more like Clubber Lang than Rocky lately…
3 April 2011 at 7:37 am |
[...] for blacks was about the same as it ever was. This understanding was reflected in the music of Sly Stone, Marvin Gaye, Curtis Mayfield and George Clinton’s band Funkadelic. Like Funkadelic, Black [...]