Sly Stone in the earlier days

In his heyday, he lived at 783 Bel Air Road, a four-bedroom, 5,432-square-foot Beverly Hills mansion that once belonged to John Phillips of The Mamas & the Papas.

The Tudor-style house was tricked out in his signature funky black, white and red color scheme. Shag carpet. Tiffany lamps in every room. A round water bed in the master bedroom. There were parties where Stevie Wonder, Jimi Hendrix, Janis Joplin and Miles Davis would drop by, where Etta James would break into "At Last" by the bar.

Just four years ago, he resided in a Napa Valley house so large it could only be described as a "compound," with a vineyard out back and multiple cars in the driveway.

But those days are gone.
Today, Sly Stone -- one of the greatest figures in soul-music history -- is homeless, his fortune stolen by a lethal combination of excess, substance abuse and financial mismanagement. He lays his head inside a white camper van ironically stamped with the words "Pleasure Way" on the side. The van is parked on a residential street in Crenshaw, the rough Los Angeles neighborhood where "Boyz n the Hood" was set. A retired couple makes sure he eats once a day, and Stone showers at their house. The couple's son serves as his assistant and driver.
Inside the van, the former mastermind of Sly & the Family Stone, now 68, continues to record music with the help of a laptop computer. -[NY Post]

Let's hope that this is the bottom of an arc towards a triumphant return for the funk/soul legend.

Larry Graham came to the audience to play the bass in our face!!! :) (StephenGHill)

As commenter knowYERbassGODS helpfully pointed out in Wednesday's WGO post, Larry Graham, someone who you might not know by name but definitely do by sound (slap bass? he invented it), played BB King's last night (6/16). He brought out one friend and collaborator, Prince, to cover another, Sly & the Family Stone (of which Graham is a founding member - he's also uncle to Drake, says Wikipedia).

Two videos of Prince and Larry Graham playing "Thank You (Falettinme Be Mice Elf Agin)" at BB King's, and another pic from the show, below...

Continue reading "Prince joined Larry Graham @ BB King's"

photos by Rachel Carr, words by Daiana Feuer

Gorillaz Clash

The third and final round of the Coachella Music & Arts Festival was funky, and not just because the port-a-potties reeked. Keeping a loose theme every day (see Friday & Saturday), Sunday focused on relentless rhythm and groovy basslines. The absolute golden moment belonged to Yo La Tengo's blistering final song. Rhythm that revels in repetition + guitar that tries to destroy itself = wee mind blown. Sometimes the moodiest things are the most uplifting.

Thom Yorke brought his dancing shoes, his favorite Flea, and Nigel Godrich. His band Atoms For Peace played almost every song off The Eraser, many of which featured strong world rhythm sections. When Yorke didn't have a guitar in hand, he danced, whirled, and punched the air like he was rehearsing a scene from Fame. We wanted a high kick, but it didn't arrive. King Khan & The Shrines, on the other hand, featured legs flying all over the place, DJ Lance Rock and Yo Gabba Gabba characters, burning money, as well as a visit from the police-who crept on stage to snap pictures. Probably the first time Khan runs into cops and doesn't leave wearing cuffs. Sunny Day Real Estate had the audience offering bids to buy property, and Phoenix had people choking on dinner as they tried to dance and eat at the same time.

King Khan Gabba Gabba

Not every Julian Casablancas song captivated, but his band delightfully binged on rhythms. Each musician had a personal backbeat player supporting each fill. The drummer plus his sidekick especially sounded great. Matt & Kim's ebullient smiles inspired chaos in the audience, as usual. Mayer Hawthorne and the County revived Motown soulful brassiness and covered Biz Markie's "Just a Friend." The Big Pink played some new songs from next year's album, reaching out for Depeche Mode with a drummer in a pink bathing suit. Electro sweet popper Little Boots forgot her pants as well, wearing a sparkly shirt and knickers, and played with the lasers on stage. Charlotte Gainsbourg inaugurated her "first tour, first everything" with a feminine "Candy-O" sensibility, sometimes in French. Florence & the Machine rounds out the great lady performances of the day, and brought on Nathan Willett of Cold War Kids.

All clad in white, France's DJ ego-powers Club 75 demonstrated the ability to cooperate together with just a few elbows thrown. Cassius, Justice, Busy P, and DJ Mehdi still use CD's (so old school), and took turns passing on the headphones between them and finishing each other's remix sentences, trading places at each station. Backstage security bobbed along while staying tough. When it was their turn, Rusko turned the Sahara tent into a mechazoid robot battle and Orbital live-produced virtual reality anthems for Satan wearing Matrix miner lights around their heads. Infected Mushroom instructed on the benefits of "Becoming Insane" flanked by two mushrooms with red eyes.

The Middle East should not be confused with The Soft Pack, formerly The Muslims. The former may be from Australia but it sounds like a back porch band from Woodstock, and the latter offers a "Parasite" infestation that's as pure as sunshine and a neat drum set up that packs a giant tom punch. What appears as regular rock on headphones reveals its brilliance when experienced live. One of the strangest live moments of the festival belongs to Sly Stone, who played four hours late and on the wrong stage. He bitched, he slurred, he cursed, lay down, walked off, stopped songs and good grief, made a total mess of himself. But that's rock and roll.

Sly Stone made history look unable to get past its youthful drug phase, but Jonsi, Pavement, and Spoon come from a music scene that did a little bit less cocaine. Jonsi repped the awesomeness of Sigur Rós and great hats. Steve Patterson of White Rabbits joined Britt Daniels and the rest of Spoon to add percussion on "I Turn My Camera On". Spoon's tour-mate Bradford Cox (who played earlier in the day in Deerhunter) also joined Spoon on stage, like he did on their recent Kimmel appearance. Pavement ran through the hits during one of their first U.S. shows since reuniting. "That's the 90's in a nutshell," said Stephen Malkmus after the angsty "Unfair"...

"...Pavement, the iconic slacker band of the '90s, who took the main stage against what turned out to be one of the fest's chief attractions, the finally wildly popular French dance-rock band Phoenix, who wowed possibly the biggest crowd of the entire fest ... while Pavement played to a field half-full of true believers rather than the massive throngs many expected, and thought the band deserved.

No matter, though. Pavement still delivered a set that vindicated the group of prior crimes -- namely a Coachella performance near the end of their career so notoriously bad, many in attendance point to it as the moment the band decided to break up.

This night, however, they were tight, they were loud, and they sounded large on that vast field -- an odd statement, given the fact that in their heyday they were far more known for being introspectively small rather than arena-ready..." [The OC Register]

Virtual Snoop Dogg introduced the Gorillaz set, but Blur's Damon Albarn appeared in the flesh, with a few special guests including Paul Simonon, Mick Jones, De La Soul-who kicked their own old school jams earlier in the day-and Little Dragon's Yukimi. One unique rhythm transcended the next, showing the mutability of hip hop and dance music. And then that was it, suddenly. The festival ended and tens of thousands of people started wondering where they left their car keys...

Radiohead Peppers For Peace

Daiana's Weekend Top 10:
1. Yo La Tengo's last song
2. Little Dragon's Yukimi
3. Gossip leading a revolution
4. Thom Yorke dancing to African rhythms
5. PiL giving a history lesson
6. Sly Stone wigging out
7. Bouncing penises + fat people in undies (Die Antwoord + Major Lazer)
8. Devo putting on the hats that ushered in modern pop culture for "Whip It"
9. John Waters corrupting many young minds
10. The Gorrilaz lyric: "Super fast jellyfish going super fast. You can't even see him but you wanna eat him."

--

Owen Pallett, Local Natives, Miike Snow, and Yann Tiersen also played the fest Sunday. Gary Numan was among those who couldn't. Reviews & pictures from Day One, HERE and Day Two, HERE. Setlists (Thom Yorke and Pavement), pictures, and videos from Day Three, below...

Continue reading "Coachella 2010 - Day Three in pics, video & review (the Thom Yorke & Pavement setlists included) "

Wow...Public Image Ltd, The Specials, Grizzly Bear, Passion Pit, Echo and the Bunnymen, Grace Jones, Fever Ray, Devo, Hot Chip, Phoenix, Orbital, Spoon, Sly and the Family Stone, Charlotte Gainsbourg, Sunny Day Real Estate, Yo La Tengo, Mew, Camera Obscura, Gil Scott-Heron, The xx, John Waters, Dillinger Escape Plan, Deer Tick, Gary Numan... Full Coachella 2010 lineup below....

Continue reading "2010 Coachella line up announced (Faith No More, Pavement, Muse, Gorillaz, Thom Yorke, Jay-Z, LCD Soundystem, ???)"

Sly and the Family Stone @ Woodstock

July 16, 2009 7:00pm
FOUR NIGHTS OF PEACE, LOVE & MUSIC: A CASTLE CLINTON TRIBUTE TO WOODSTOCK - "IT'S A FAMILY AFFAIR" STEVEN BERNSTEIN'S MILLENNIAL TERRITORY ORCHESTRA PLAYS THE MUSIC OF SLY & THE FAMILY STONE

Castle Clinton National Monument, Battery Park at State Street Steven Bernstein's Millennial Territory Orchestra creates an evening that features the music of Sly & the Family Stone with special guests that include legendary Funkadelic keyboardist Bernie Worrell, and an array of vocalists including Sandra Saint Victor, Shilpa Ray and others. Steven Bernstein is a trumpeter, bandleader, arranger and composer who lives outside of musical convention. Join us for this one-of-a-kind show that pays homage to Woodstock's 40th anniversary year. Tickets will be distributed 2 per person, outside Castle Clinton on a first-come, first-served basis starting at 5:00PM on the day of the show.

It would be great if Sly himself shows up at this event which is one of four Woodstock tributes that will happen at Castle Clinton this summer.. Sly and the Family Stone's actual performance at the actual Woodstock in 1969 is legendary. Check out the video below.

Another, much bigger Woodstock 40th Anniversary concert is hoping to happen in Prospect Park this summer.

Shilpa Ray also has many other shows coming up.

Conor Oberst and Jenny Lewis are also playing a free show in Battery Park this summer.

Continue reading "a tribute to Woodstock & Sly Stone @ Castle Clinton in 2009"

Sly @ The Grammys in 2006

Sly & the Family Stone was an American funk, soul and rock band from San Francisco, California. Active from 1966[1] to 1983, the band was pivotal in the development of soul, funk, and psychedelic music. Headed by singer, songwriter, record producer, and multi-instrumentalist Sly Stone, and containing several of his family members and friends, the band was the first major American rock band to have an integrated lineup in both race and gender. [Wikipedia]

You can keep reading the Wikipedia entry for more of their history since then, but more importantly - what have Sly and his Family Stone been up to recently? Well, in 2006 Sly made a rare appearance at the Grammys.

Reclusive funk music pioneer Sly Stone stole the show in bizarre fashion at the Grammy Awards on Wednesday, surprising everyone by making his first major public appearance in almost 13 years. [Reuters]

And even more recently (as you can see from their official website), S&TFS re-released their entire catalog, and came out with a new "Best Of" album this summer. Along with that came an interview in Vanity Fair, a 9.5 on Pitchfork, and a short European tour. How did that go? Well,...

...After spending only 20 minutes on stage at the Montreux Jazz festival in Switzerland last week, the 64-year-old musician performed only four and half songs during his latest gig in the southern French city of Nice.

True to his reputation as an unpredictable, combustible character, he walked off stage after 10 minutes leaving his backing band, known as the Family Stone, to keep the audience entertained.

Half and hour later, the brooding singer, hidden behind big sunglasses and baseball cap, reappeared to sing for another 10 minutes before disappearing for the final time. [the raw story - July 21, 2007]

You get the picture. What next?

Sly and The Family Stone are playing BB King's in NYC on December 7, 2007 - their first NYC show in 33 years (or so I'm told). There's going to be a presale on Friday, and a public sale next week. Stay tuned.