Words in the way

My recent rediscovery of Marvin Gaye's classic album What's Going On has led me to the excavation of another 70's soul music classic, There's a Riot Goin' On by Sly & the Family Stone. Sly Stone's reputation as a musical genius is safe, but is based on a meager output: five albums from 1967 's A Whole New Thing to 1971's Riot. He made a few more records, but for all intents and purposes, this album was his last gasp, commercially and critically.

I had the vinyl album when it came out; I was 15 and couldn't make heads or tails out of it, so the only things I played on it were the hit singles "Runnin' Away" and "Family Affair," and the seven minute finale, "Thank You for Talkin' to Me Africa," which is an incredibly slowed-down version of the earlier hit "Thank You (Falettinme Be Mice Elf Agin)." The word at the time was that this was a junkie masterpiece. When I listen to it now, that seems true, but it also obviously became a very influential album for 70's funksters and today's hip-hop artists. Many of the cuts, like the opener "Luv N' Haight," are barely songs at all, just bass-heavy riffs with some stabbing keyboard and/or horn coloring and lyrics that trail off before they're over. Most of the vocals are distorted, and the whole thing sounds like it's being played through an AM transistor radio running out of batteries.

All the peppy joy of earlier Sly songs ("Dance to the Music," Everyday People," "Stand!") is gone, and whether that's because Sly was indeed a nodding junkie through most of the sessions or because he was reacting to the tumultuous times doesn't really matter. This is a dark album, even if you don't pay attention to the lyrics (when you can actually figure them out), but it does indeed sound like a lot of the minimal backing tracks used today in hip-hop music. My opinion about the individual songs hasn't changed much, though I think the slowed-down "Thank You" is truly a funk masterpiece. I chuckled at Sly's yodeling in "Spaced Cowboy," the most upbeat he sounds on the whole album, and I still don't care much for the other individual cuts, but I find the album as a whole quite listenable, and not really dated at all. But be warned that it will not take you to a happy place.