Strange things happened to Sly and his Family Stone between the wild celebratory party and tour that followed the release of Stand! and the beginning of the trip into the studio that yielded There's a Riot Goin' On. Stand! was released in 1969 to critical and public acclaim and became a hit financially. It was followed by a long, fruitful tour that included a triumphant appearance at the Woodstock festival. The band recorded two singles in between albums. The first was "Hot Fun in the Summertime," issued in August 1969. It ...
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Strange things happened to Sly and his Family Stone between the wild celebratory party and tour that followed the release of Stand! and the beginning of the trip into the studio that yielded There's a Riot Goin' On. Stand! was released in 1969 to critical and public acclaim and became a hit financially. It was followed by a long, fruitful tour that included a triumphant appearance at the Woodstock festival. The band recorded two singles in between albums. The first was "Hot Fun in the Summertime," issued in August 1969. It hit the number two spot on the Billboard chart. Its follow-up was the funk monolith "Thank You (Falettinme Be Mice Elf Agin)," which went to the top of the Billboard chart. It's important to note that neither of these cuts are available on the 2007 Legacy reissues of Sly's Epic catalog even as bonus cuts, since they were recorded without a specific album in mind, but rather as tracks to keep the band on the radio and in the public consciousness. This was a period when the band, once a communal troupe through and through, began to live in different places. Sly was living in a rented mansion once owned by John and Michelle Phillips, getting loaded all the time and missing concert dates on tour. According to Joel Selvin's excellent liners, Sly canceled 26 out of 80 dates. During the two-year break between records, Sly wasn't exactly laying in bed. He was recorded all the time, even if what he was recording, and with whom, produced nothing substantive. He bought a primitive drum machine and began experimenting with it. Different bandmembers, most notably bassist Larry Graham, would show up at different times to add parts to songs and find themselves mixed out of the proceedings. Through the madness that went on in the mansion and at Record Plant, where Sly would park a Winnebago and party and record at the same time, a recording began to come together. Before a three-night stand at Madison Square Garden, Sly offered the album to Epic. Credits are sketchy as to who did what, though when Graham or Freddie Stewart are present, their parts are unmistakable. The album's first single was "Family Affair," a skeletal track on which Billy Preston played keyboards, the drum machine counted rhythms, and Sly and Sister Rose sang, according to Selvin's notes, through cupped hands, as there were no vocal treatments. It's a strange, disorienting tune with an infectious melody. It's the seduction for an album that is a nightmare journey through disillusionment, with racial and class politics, a resignation to drug addiction and to the nightmare of trying to ruin one's life in the face of reigning chaos and the pressure of the four preceding years. The tune, like the album it comes from, seems to drift with no center, no anchor except that drum machine. Sly sounds weary even if he pretends an optimism. He's resigned, and stating a simple truth, that "blood is thicker than mud." Remember this was the Vietnam era. The slippery funk and Preston's killer fills give the track its irresistible riff. "Luv N' Haight" is a dark, fractured funk tune that passes its own judgment on the new Aquarian Age with insulations and allegations that nothing much has changed. Still, its arrangements are killer. There's a ton of space between instruments, but the whole is cohesive, slithering, sliding, and greasy. It's night-time gospel from the pusher's living room. Other places here are nearly impenetrable. The music becomes so dense. Legend has it that Sly overdubbed and overdubbed until things bled out into the margins, leaving a muddy, sludgy sound to permeate the record's grooves. If the earlier, joyous psychedelic funk sides were a reflection of optimism and possibility, There's a Riot Goin' On's sound is one of entropy, the sound of the funk caving in on itself and the hope of a generation falling into a place of darkness. This is after Malcolm X, Dr. King, and Bobby Kennedy, after the escalation of the war, and more recently, after Kent...
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