#20 & #21: Sly and the Family Stone - Dance to the Music and Life

I took yesterday off, so here's a double dose. After reading this piece in Vanity Fair a few weeks back, I decided to push further into the Sly and the Family Stone catalog. Luckily for me, some chump had traded in his mint-condition copies of Dance to the Music and Life, the band's two 1968 releases, and the ones that broke them into mainstream consciousness. Fun fact: the Stewart family (the real last name of Sly and his siblings) was originally from Denton, Texas.

Dance to the Music is the record the band made after Clive Davis, then the head of Columbia Records, said he wanted some hits - the same struggle Kelly Clarkson would have with him thirty-nine years later. And with the album's title track, a hit he got.

Along with James Brown, there's no better inspiration for bands like Parliament than Sly and the Family Stone, especially the band's early material. Bassist Larry Graham is commonly recognized as the inventor of slap-bass, paving the way for the likes of Bootsy Collins and Flea down the road.

Along with all the dancing and upbeat, 'be yourself' vibe of the record, there's some real heart in there, especially on the blunt, gospel-driven "I Ain't Got Nobody (For Real)." After a while, there's only so much of the 'everybody get along and have a good time' theme that can really resonate, so it's a welcome change to hear something a bit more emotionally raw.

For as much as this album is credited as being a predecessor to the band's glory years, I think this is just as good as anything else the band released. It doesn't sound like a band struggling to find a sound or create its own universe - the universe is already there, and they're in full control of it. This is probably my favorite Sly and the Family Stone record I've heard at this point.

Life came out only a few months after Dance to the Music, and wasn't as big of a hit. The album was solid from start to finish, but there was no defining or outstanding single that let the record break out. Regardless, Life is commonly regarded as the record that established the band's persona, musically and visually, and as the cornerstone of funk.

Maybe it's because I listened to this back-to-back with Dance to the Music (after having listened to Stand! earlier in the day) and I got a bit burned out, but Life didn't connect with me as well as the other two. There's something of a stripped-down approach on its predecessor that appealed to me, and on Life, it feels more like the band is throwing everything it can find into its proto-psychedelic funk pastiche and leaving it all in.

What stands out the most is what the band borrowed or who borrowed from it later - "Plastic Jim" nicks the vocal melody and some of the lyrical structure from "Eleanor Rigby," and Fatboy Slim would later use the opening seconds of "Into My Own Thing" for "Weapon of Choice."

It's certainly a stunningly creative record, and it's likely that my slightly lesser opinion of it is due to my late evening funk OD, but my opinion so far on Dance to the Music and Life seems to be the reverse of the standard critically-accepted version of where these albums fall in the band's oeuvre. I definitely enjoy both and I'm glad I bought them, but I think I need some cracker-ass white boy music next to even me out.

"Dance to the Music"



"Life"