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50th Anniversary Album Spotlight
Stand!
Sly & The Family Stone
Released May 3, 1969
Chart debut: April 26, 1969
Chart peak: #13, June 7, 1969
#118 on
Rolling Stone's 500 Greatest Albums of All Time
Wiki said:
Stand! is the fourth album by soul/funk band Sly and the Family Stone....Written and produced by lead singer and multi-instrumentalist Sly Stone, Stand! is considered an artistic high-point of the band's career. Released by Epic Records, just before the group's celebrated performance at the Woodstock festival, it became the band's most commercially successful album to date.
Now we come to an album that's inclusion on the
Rolling Stone list is beyond question, serving as it does as a showcase of this band's pioneering of the style of funk that would become an integral part of the music landscape in the coming decade. The one thing I might question is why this album didn't make the top 100 of the list. In my book, it's more clearly deserving of that honor than
Odessey and Oracle or
Dusty in Memphis.
The album opens strongly with its memorable, attention-grabbing title track, "Stand!" (charted Apr. 12, 1969; #22 US; #14 R&B; #241 on
Rolling Stone's 500 Greatest Songs of All Time):
In deference to board policy, I won't even be posting a text link to "Don't Call Me N*****, Whitey"...suffice it to say, it delivers its message with a heaping helping of funk. There's a lot going on in this song musically, including what sounds like Sly doing some of his vocoder-filtered scatting.
Next is their current single 50 years ago this week, the powerful "I Want to Take You Higher" (B-side of "Stand!"; charted May 24, 1969; #60 US; #24 R&B; recharts May 23, 1970, reaching #38 US):
Their wee-hours performance of this song will be a highlight at Woodstock. There is one mildly annoying bit of business going on in the mix...a low, droning horn, I guess, that sounds distractingly like a vibrating cell phone.
I'm not sure what to make of the less familiar
"Somebody's Watching You"...it has a quirky playful sound, and strikes me as being more "pop" than most of the album.
The first side closes with the funktastic "Sing a Simple Song" (B-side of "Everyday People"; charted Mar. 8, 1969; #89 US; #28 R&B):
On the subject of this song reminding someone of the Jackson 5, I read that the Jacksons would cover it (along with much of the rest of the album, it seems).
Side two opens with the uber-classic hit single that preceded the album, "Everyday People" (charted Nov. 30, 1968; #1 US the weeks of Feb. 15 through Mar. 8, 1969; #1 R&B; #36 UK; #145 on
Rolling Stone's 500 Greatest Songs of All Time):
During the song's time on my weekly playlist, I really fell in love with the line "you can't figure out the bag I'm in". Also,
I read this...
Wiki said:
"Everyday People" popularized the expression "different strokes for different folks".
Is this true? It never occurred to me that it might be the case! That's cool if so.
The bulk of side two is occupied by "Sex Machine," a 13:45 instrumental jam that does have vocals of a sort...Sly scatting through the vocoder.
The dominant guitar riff in this piece reminds me of "Rocky Mountain Way"...a coincidence, or more of Sly & the Family's influence?
The album closes with
"You Can Make It If You Try," an enjoyable, poppy number, but relatively lightweight compared to most of the album's contents.
Wiki said:
The album sold 500,000 copies in 1969 and was certified gold in sales by the RIAA on December 4th of that year. By 1986 it had sold well over 1 million copies and was certified platinum in sales by the RIAA on November 26 of that same year. It then went on to sell over three million copies, becoming one of the most successful albums of the 1960s....In 2015, the album was deemed "culturally, historically, or aesthetically significant" by the Library of Congress and selected for inclusion in the National Recording Registry.
Definitely a worthwhile purchase...and I should note that, as touched upon previously, I went ahead and bought the complete album in spite of everything but "Sex Machine" being on an Essentials compilation that I'd already invested in for the band's singles.
Next up:
Nashville Skyline, Bob Dylan
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One of the most shocking pop/rock music deaths of the decade, not only due to its unexpected nature, but the circumstances surrounding it. As the police arrived at Cotchford Farm and conducted interviews, the conclusion that his death was the result of a "normal drowning" did not find support with Hartfield officer Albert V. Evans, who said he had a "policeman's instinct" that the witnesses did not tell him the whole story, yet he had no hard evidence to move beyond suspicion. The witnesses--Janet Lawson, Jones's then-girlfriend Anna Wohlin and Stones office-contracted builder Frank Thorogood have--according the police--given very contradictory accounts of the how and why of that night.
Somehow I knew there'd be a conspiracy angle. I'm not sure one is necessary here...a guy with extreme drug problems is left unattended in a pool. If the last people who saw him couldn't get their stories straight, it's likely because they were as high as he was.
Ok, but nothing really grabbing the ear.
Pretty much the same for me.
