Sly & The Family Stone - 1967 - A Whole New Thing

Sly & The Family Stone 

1967

A Whole New Thing

01. Underdog 3:59

02. If This Room Could Talk 3:14

03. Run, Run, Run 3:07

04. Turn Me Loose 1:57

05. Let Me Hear It From You 3:36

06. Advice 2:23

07. I Cannot Make It 3:21

08. Trip To Your Heart 3:44

09. I Hate To Love Her 3:33

10. Bad Risk 3:06

11. That Kind Of Person 4:28

12. Dog 3:07

Bonus Tracks

13. Underdog (Single Version In Mono) 3:06

14. Let Me Hear It From You (Single Version In Mono) 3:30

15. Only One Way Out Of This Mess 3:53

16. What Would I Do 4:07

17. You Better Help Yourself (Instrumental) 2:19

Bass, Vocals – Larry Graham

Drums – Greg Errico

Guitar, Vocals – Freddy Stone

Keyboards, Vocals – Rose Stone

Vocals, Keyboards, Guitar – Sly Stone

Saxophone, Vocals – Jerry Martini

Trumpet – Cynthia Robinson

In truth, this is Sly's best album, an unrecognized wonder, a great lost album. After this bold new work, his music became simpler, here it begins at its most clever and ambitious. What sets it apart from his subsequent output is how eclectic and highly arranged his songs are. It's 1967. Sly is opening up his kind of R&B-- just as the British Invasion opened up the rock/pop song in general. He had already worked with the Beau Brummells, the first American band to respond to the British Invasion. He was a music major in college, so his beginning the disc with a minor key "Frere Jacques" was a conscious borrowing from Mahler...!

The album is consistently strong. Listen to how tight and varied and "Advice" and "Dog" are-- as Sly keeps the beat, but puts the tune through one change after another. Has anyone else written songs like these? Not that I've heard. Wonderful use of the different voices, distinct and blended. Two excellent touching slow ballads: "Let me Hear it from you" (sung by Larry Graham), and "That kind of person" (by Sly's brother, Freddie). Dig the insanely frantic "Turn Me Loose"-- which they used to attach to their equally frantic version of Otis Redding's "I Can't Turn You Loose." Great drumming! Great sound. Beautifully produced, by Sly.

But so many of these potent songs fall apart at the end... Sly didn't have the sense of an ending. And then-- is there a connection?-- he fell apart in the end, and became a druggy shadow of the talented wizard that he once was.

In the notes to this 2007 release (which includes 5 bonus tracks) we learn that the simplification in the subsequent single "Dance to the Music" was requested by David Kapralik, an executive at Epic, since this amazing first album had failed to achieve significant sales. Sly was much annoyed by this request to "dumb down" his music... but "snarled "OK, I'll give them something." That something was the simplified groove of "Dance to Music." Then came fame, fortune.... and major drugging.

In the next album, "Dance to the Music," only "I'll never fall in love again" is comparable to the superior songs found on the first album. The third album, "Life" is more enjoyable for getting beyond the numbing redundancy of DTTM. And in time, Sly will get to the major charms of "Hot Fun in the Summertime" and "Everybody is a star," as well as the power-house funk of "Sing a simple song."

In time, it also adds up to one of the sadder and more precipitous drug casualties. David Kapralik and cocaine have much to answer for...

But that first album really was a "whole new thing."

The reissue of these long-out-of-print late-’60s albums documents the birth of funk — the bastard offspring of gutbucket soul and psychedelic rock. The collected early works of Sylvester Stewart, a.k.a. Sly Stone, provide a musical bridge between James Brown’s bedrock grooves and George Clinton’s cosmic slop. A former DJ and veteran music-biz hustler, Sly is a supernaturally gifted band leader, arranger, player, producer, songwriter and onstage instigator. The lyrics of his catchy choruses tempered uplifting messages with urban reality; 11his flashy persona and streetwise cool set the style standard for the superbad, superslick early ’70s.

he Family Stone were a comfortable rainbow coalition: Sly’s brother Freddie Stone on guitar, sister Rosie on electric piano, cousin Larry Graham on bass and Greg Errico on drums, plus saxophonist Jerry Martini and trumpeter Cynthia Robinson. Their sound was democratic, too: Each instrumental voice was carefully articulated, always in step with the others. Everybody in the group sang, as one crucial Life track puts it, in perfect “Harmony.”

A Whole New Thing, the group’s 1967 debut, isn’t quite the genre-busting exercise its title promises. To contemporary ears, it more closely resembles a slightly. different thing: straight-up, pumping R&B flavored with some freaky trimmings — a fuzz-tone guitar blurt here (“Run, Run, Run,” “Trip to Your Heart”) some pointed protest lyrics there (“Underdog,” “Dog”). Even when these trappings feel a bit dated, the Family Stone’s boundless high energy, tight musicianship and soulful convictions get the motivating message across loud and clear.

Twenty-seven years later, the title track of Dance to the Music provides a sure-fire jolt of pure adrenalin. Overall the album is uneven, but its highs are intense, prolonged, ecstatic. Earthy bass and drums put a spring in your step while seductive melodies and horn lines tickle your mind. Song titles like “Ride the Rhythm” and “Higher” are more than hooks — they’re statements of purpose. And Sly’s half-spoken and half-sung band introductions on “Dance to the Music” neatly prefigure the rise of rap. “All we need is a drummer,” he declares, “for people who only need a beat.”

Life is where Sly’s dazzling all-things-to-all-people vision snaps into full focus. “Dynamite!” explodes in a hailstorm of volatile, feedback-laced rock. “Plastic Jim,” “Into My Own Thing” and “Love City” connect hippie idealism to wickedly syncopated rhythms. And the joyously hedonistic party numbers — “Fun,” “M’Lady” — just won’t quit. When Sly testifies on “Life,” insisting that “you don’t have to come down” and “you don’t have to die before you live,” the ebullient music supports his spiritual tightrope walk.

The rest, as they say, is history: Sly and the Family Stone’s remaining career paralleled the rise and fall of the baby-boom counterculture. They peaked at Woodstock in ’69, bottomed out after There’s a Riot Goin’ On in ’71 and eventually broke up. Sly Stone remains a spectral presence on the contemporary scene, a troubling rumor at best, though his profound influence can be felt every time you turn on a radio. While the man may not have survived the ’60s intact, surely his music has endured beyond all expectations.