We continue our look back at the music of 50 years ago…..
He spent much of 1970 and 71 in a paranoid, drug induced haze and the only musical product his record company could release was a really good greatest hits package. So when Sly Stone delivered his latest record to CBS, Clive Davis and others were relieved, even if the album was much different than the stuff that had made Sly & The Family Stone one of the biggest bands of the late 60’s.
Stone had recorded a dark, murky work for a time that he viewed as much darker than the Woodstock years. Social disillusionment won the day.
That being said, the album does have it’s merits. The grooves are edgy and funky as hell…live drumming teams with primitive drum machines….overdubs render some of the stuff unhearable and the vocals could use an interpreter at times but its rawness, even with all the overdubbing comes through.
Sly is pissed at the world and did most of the recording alone as the band was pretty much splintering. Songs like Luv & Haight, Thank You For Talking To Me Africa( a slow re-working of his uptempo last hit), and Africa Talks To You ‘The Asphalt Jungle” get hypnotic in their funkiness.
This isn’t the band of Dance To The Music…although Family Affair was released as a single and made it to #1.
The weirdest song on the album is “Spaced Cowboy” where a coked out Sly yodels out the vocals in what he thinks a country-funk song would sound like.
Sly actually changed the title of the album before it was released. It was originally called “Africa Talks To You” but was changed to answer the Marvin Gaye LP “Whats Goin On” that came out a few months earlier.
Critics were mixed on what is now seen as a ground-breaking record. Vince Alleti wrote in Rolling Stone, “At first I hated it for its weakness and its lack of energy and I still dislike these qualities. But then I began to respect the album’s honesty.” He called it “the new urban music…not about dancing…about disintegration, getting f**ked up and maybe dying.” Robert Christgau called it “bitter ghetto pessimism” but did say that “its a rare album whose whole actually does exceed the sum of its parts”. Greil Marcus called the record “Muzak with its finger on the trigger”. Well, I’ve never heard “muzak” like this….but then I haven’t lived Sly Stone’s reality.
In a pithy review, Zeth Lundy calls it “rambling, incoherent, dissonant and just plain uncomfortable, with some moments of pop greatness”. Said it was “blunt and unflinching in a manner unbecoming pop records at the time” He also called it a “soul nightmare”.
I think Sly probably smiled at that last one.
It’s not a record that you will necessarily enjoy listening to…but it will capture you nevertheless.
Comments