Customer Reviews

There's A Riot Goin' On

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Sly and the Family Stone's "Stand!" was an album of optimism and the brightness of '60s counterculture, but creeping just below the surface on that record was a darkness and claustrophobia-- an edge that separated "Stand!" from any of its predecessors or its peers. That darkness is the sound of "There's a Riot Goin' On", Sly Stone's bleak masterpiece, in its way the sound of civil unrest and, in my assessment, the greatest funk album ever recorded.

When I speak of claustrophobia, I mean it as a production vaue, and it's something evident throughout the record. There's a density to the record, even on the looser and less arranged pieces, that really sets the tone for the album. And while not all the album's songs have a message to match this claustrophobia, it does have a tendency to make even the optimistic material sound like you're trying to remember a dream after you've woken up. Take single "Family Affair"-- it's loose, based around a gentle pop vocal hook and is presented with a smooth baritone lead, but it sounds like "Stand!" dragged through the mud. It works out fantastically. All of this is accentuated by the tendency to move towards funk vamps for everything-- sometiems as much as seven minutes of the same riff feeds into this feeling of density.

But really, it's dark funk that dominates the record throughout-- wah wah guitars, dirty basslines, snapping horns, and Sly Stone vocalizing and singing all over the map, fierce and at times nearly out of control-- opener "Luv N' Haight" and Brave & Strong" are two fine examples of this. Along the way, he manages occasional moments of delicate beauty with a hint of melancholy that keeps the album from being a bit too bleak ("Poet", "(You Caught me) Smilin'") and closes things up with a recasting of "Thank You (Falettinme Be Mice Elf Agin)" as a slice of slow funk that somehow manages to be as intriguing as the original.

This reissue remasters the record, appends a handful of bonus tracks (a single mix of "Runnin' Away" and three instrumentals leftover from the sessions) and includes a nice liner notes essay. The remastering alone makes this a worthwhile pickup, all the dark beauty of the record really comes forth and the feeling of the record is, if anything accentuated by it.

Truthfully, "There's a Riot Goin' On" may not be for everyone, it's a pretty dark record, but it's also the kind of thing that can really reinvent someone's opinion of Sly & the Family Stone (it certainly reinvented mine). It also serves nicely as a companion to "Stand!", they are very much opposite sides of the same music. I give a slight edge to "There's a Riot Goin' On" as Sly Stone's masterwork. This is essential listening.

If you're wondering what the big deal about Sly is, start here. Sly's famous "response" to Marvin Gaye's What's Going On is his masterpiece, a dark, murky funk album recorded while he was in the deepest throes of his depression. His drug dependency was hurtling out of control, his band was collapsing, and he had lost all faith in the counterculture he once banked his life on. Conflicts within the band got so bad that most of it was actually performed by Sly alone - any other musicians there may have been were dubbed in later. More proof that the best of music often comes from the worst of times. The album doesn't seem like a collection of individual songs, but instead a dark, deep, murky stew of foreboding grooves. But for simplicity's sake I'll describe these songs individually. "Family Affair" was the #1 hit, and its primitive drum machine rhythm is way ahead of its time - it also boasts a fine chorus (co-sung by Rosie Stone) and electric piano (courtesy of Billy Preston). And while it's the best song on the album, there are plenty of competitors. Like all of them. "Brave and Strong" has wonderful slap bass, horns and organ; "Poet", some of the best lyrics on the album; "Just Like a Baby" contains a beautifully melancholy melody; "You Caught Me Smilin'" is a light, mellow break from all the menace; "Luv `n' Haight" is a powerful indictment of the hippie culture; the gentle waltz "Time" is at once mournful, soothing, and desperate; the tripped-out yodeling on "Spaced Cowboy" is a blast and much-needed comic relief; "Running Away" makes for a triumphant, if wizened, return to the Family's old sound. The two extended pieces are controversial, but I like them: "Africa Talks to You `The Asphalt Jungle'" is eerie and entrancing, and it's helped along by both the falsetto vocals and the long guitar solos; "Thank You for Talkin' to Me Africa" (pretty much "Thank You (Falettinme Be Mice Elf Agin" slowed down and with added guitar noodling) is a completely different interpretation of that classic - it's haunting, slow, druggy, and awesome. The peak of Sly's career and a funk milestone.

Altamont is the burial site of the idealism and hope that riddled the late 1960s. Inspired by the community pacifism of Woodstock, the Rolling Stones sought to create an extension of the mentality that surrounded Woodstock by creating a similar festival on the West coast. What was intended to be a celebration of the ideals that fostered American culture in the late '60s was, however, mired in tragedy (all of which is presented in the excellent documentary Gimme Shelter, well worth watching). Hope disappeared. Death followed. The ideals that marked the 1960s died at Altamont.

One man, one album, would revisit the corpse of the '60s. If Altamont was the death and burial, this album would be the exhumation, assuring the decade was, indeed, dead.

Sly & the Family Stone's There's A Riot Goin' On

In the late '60s, Sly & the Family Stone served as a social voice of many discontented blacks; through their recordings, Sly & the Family Stone gave voice to many of the concerns of the black community. Peppered with funk and pop, Sly Stone presented social criticism with a bit of honey, making his group an integral part of the social, political, and musical landscape gripping the end of the decade. But as the decade came to its eventual end, so did Sly Stone.

Or so it seemed.

Deep into heroin addiction, Sly Stone gathered his fragmented mind and headed into the Plant Studios to begin recording of There's a Riot Goin' On. Working alone, what resulted was a druggy, murky, deeply-funky album echoing Sly's disenchantment with the late '60s and its failure to provide any answers or solutions to the nation's burgeoning problems.

"Family Affair," with its funky beat produced by a rhythm box, reflects on the ups and downs of being a family. "Runnin' Away" serves to highlight the economic uncertainties many in the community faced, with debt and surmounting despair. Perhaps the most poignant and critical song on the album is the closer "Thank You for Talkin' to Me Africa." Incorporating bits of Sly & the Family Stone's previous hit, "Thank You (Fallettinme Be Mice Elf Agin)," the closing track is the stinging rebuke directed at the false optimism of the '60s. The track is harsh and unflinching, Sly Stone's eulogy for a decade now dead, a decade which spoke of much promise but saw little change.

The original cover of the album itself, a waving American flag with suns in place of stars, seems ironic, given how fractured the country was left as the decade closed. With a new decade unfolding, the country was left to find and mend itself.

Perhaps the flag was, for Sly, an expression of hope. Perhaps, much like the American flag was in the '60s, the album cover was a warning of the dangers and false promises wrapped around this album.

There's a Riot Goin' On (1971) is Sly And The Family Stone's masterwork. Dark, dissatisfied and foreboding, it's the evil twin of (Sly ATFS album) Stand!. Where Stand! was optimistic, energetic and melodic, Riot is disillusioned, restless and FUNK. Both albums are great, but compared to Riot, Stand! almost sounds bubble gum. There's a Riot Goin' On is that heavy. And why shouldn't it be? Sly brought in friends Larry Graham (bass), Billy Preston (electric piano), Ike Turner (guitar) and Bobby Womack (guitar) to play on Riot. The musicianship is the best part of the album. It's tight, funky and cool to the point of being ice cold at times. It's great stuff! Sly's vocals fit the shattered theme of the album. He's hoarse and spent, stoned but focused on his message of a new and desolate reality. It almost sounds as if the old Sly was abducted by aliens, had the life sucked out of him, and returned to Earth only to be disappointed. In Thank You For Talkin' To Me Africa, Sly sings:

Flamin' eyes of people fear
Burnin' into you
Many men are missin' much
Hatin' what they do

This is not an album of "hit singles", even though Family Affair went to number 1 on the charts and (You Caught Me) Smilin' and Runnin' Away were moderately successful as singles. There's a Riot Goin' On is a heavy funk album experience. Cool, funky and fascinating.

The bonus cuts are, with the exception of the single edit of Runnin' Away, fantastic and spacy funk instrumental pieces. They're all as good as anything on the album.

At times, There's a Riot Goin' On sounds like funk music from another planet. It isn't for everyone, but if it's a funk/rock/soul masterpiece you're looking for, it doesn't get much better than this. Sly And The Family Stone's best album.

This one of the most harrowing albums ever made, a brilliant musician caught in the transitional stage of losing almost everything to drugs but before his creativity imploded. File under Skip Spence's Oar, Big Star's SisterLovers, Syd Barrett and Brain Wilson's Smile-era flame-outs. The basic deal is Sly deconstructing a more polished album by substituting his own sloppier instrumental overdubs, narcotic vocals, mental wanderings. Easily one of the greatest albums of the 1970's, it's like a slow motion audio trainwreck you won't want to turn away from.
Essential dub funk but also a audio document of drug-induced brain damage.
Many of us from my generation experimented with drugs and came through it.
This is the sad, cautionary tale told in beautiful music of one of our greatest musical lights being extinguished.

Sly And The Family Stone-There's A Riot Goin' On *****

In the time I have owned There's A Riot Goin' On I have not been able to put it down. As I think about Stand! and what a great and positive (well sort of) and up beat album it was and how much I love it, I realize that I love this because it is everything that album isn't. The two albums have become sort of a yin and Yang thing. Where the former is bright and colorful Riot is dark and eerie and basically the seedy underbelly of society as well as funk.

The more I researched the album it seems to me that Sly Stone had given up on the counter-culture which he had built his entire career around and abandoned all rules and began running with gangs of thugs and low-lifes and sunk even further into drugs than I thought he did. Well there is nothing like pain and anger to create great art with, and clearly Sly knew that.

As the album opens with the cleverly tittled 'Luv N' Haight' referencing Haight & Ashbury in San Francisco, and it is about the most positive sounding song one the album, and from there it is doomy with low tuned Fender Telecasters early drum machines and some heavy, and I do mean heavy grooves. 'Poet' just might be the sexiest groove this side of T.Rex's 'Mambo Sun' while the lyric could be anything but, creating a texture to the song unmatched by any other. 'Family Affair' was obviously the center piece of the album, as it was the groups biggest hit off the record and has on of Sly's best lyric endeavors as well as some of the greatest duo vocals of all time rivaling the Stones' 'Gimme Shelter.' The title track is concidered a joke as it is really not a track, though I am sure Sly had some hidden meaning behind it. 'Spaced Cowboy' more or less was autobiographical of Sly's personal situation wither he meant it that way or not. 'Thank You For Talkin' To me Africa' at times feels like a rewrite of a certain hit (I bet you can guess which one) but it works and it closes the album perfectly.

I've heard that this was Sly's response to Marvin Gaye's What's Going on and I would go so far to say that this is an even greater album, though both had equally great messages to say. That is saying something considering that this album took months and months to record as Sly keep throwing all the tracks out. One thing is for sure there is going to be a riot in constant rotation in my stereo for a while to come.

If you've never heard Sly & the Family Stone before, start with Stand! and Fresh. For many, that will be all they ever want. This album is Stand! turned inside up and upside in by a narcotic, gun toting haze. Not for the faint of heart.

Thing is, it's also very, very good.

To make things perfectly clear: Sly was drugged out of his bleepin' mind when he recorded Riot. It's testament to his enormous talent he managed to get out an album so funky most musicians would give their left nut to have done one track from it. "Luv N' Haight" is a damning indictment of the Summer of Love. "Poet" has one of the deepest funk grooves ever recorded. "Thank You for Talkin' to Me Africa" is the deliriously joyous "Thank You (Falettinme Be Mice Elf Again)" slammed into the mud and shot up. It's also the standout track and the core of the album. It is inexorable downward pressure. It doesn't go anywhere, it starts you low and keeps you there for the duration as guitar and organ flourishes waft in and out as phantoms of his (then recent) happy past. The Velvet's "Heroin" romanticizes the rush and crash waves of using; this track is the grinding reality.

The sound of the album is sometimes frustratingly murky. His vocals are slurred. All part of the package.

Finally. This is the CD reissue treatment this masterpiece deserves. It still sounds like a rainy day dream away apartment with the heat up too high and smoke filling the room but now the Clavinets and Telecasters are as sharp as the cold outside. Easier to pick out the individual instruments. It's the next best thing to hearing it for the first time. I A-B'd it with my English issue until I got to the Smilin'-Time-Spaced Cowboy triumvirate & then I just went on the nod without going on the nod. My Desert Island Discs just got that much better.

By all rights, this album should have been a mess. Sly was heavily into drugs at this point and was feuding with members of the band. The group's last album, Stand!, was released two years earlier and Sly was being pressured by the record company to release something new.

So, what did he do? He released one of the greatest funk albums of all time. Instead of the optimistic, yet direct, music found on the previous records, here the band lays down the darkest grooves of their short career. If Stand! was the heads, "There's A Riot Goin' On" is the tails. The yang to the yin. Part of the same musical family, but totally different from one another. This album feels desperate and claustrophobic. The momentum of the 60's was over and this album is the soundtrack to it's reality.

This isn't an album you listen to. It's an album you experience. Sly put a few more out after this, but none of them managed to reach the heights of this one. This is where he peaked.

If memory serves me, I first received this album as a birthday present from my brother when I turned twelve in 1971 . I was a a fan of my brothers counter culture music and was always getting into his records, one that I liked was Stand by Sly and the family Stone Stand!, understandably, the message and lyrics were not acceptable by my parents, so naturally, my brother did something unusual and bought me a present (at all) and made it one that would not be popular with my folks. I of course was very happy to get this album.

Recently some of my friends (I sometimes share an office with) and I were taking about the music of the 70's and Sly came up so I went and got a greatest hits CD, but this is the album I have played over and over through the years.

I think the problem with the success that this album was the death of Jimmy Hendrix, because he along with acts like Sly & the Family Stone had been making Rock music the common denominator for the (Pepsi) younger generation. Coinciding with the death of the amazing Hendrix, was the boiling tension of the civil rights movement, and Sly (Sylvester Stewart) Stone was pummeled with pressure to make a more "Black Statement" in his music. And although for me at least this is a very successful social statement of an album, I think it was a break with the ones who brought him to the dance ( those who wanted to put differences aside and move on).

Personally, I think that any way you slice it, this is very good music and worth a look to anyone interested in the beginnings of Classic Rock and the schisms that eventually separated Rock Music into color camps for over a decade.

But that's just me.