There's a Riot Goin on [Limited Edition, Original recording remastered]

Sly & The Family Stone | Format: Audio CD

Product Details

• Audio CD (April 24, 2007)
• Original Release Date: 2007
• Number of Discs: 1
• Format: Limited Edition, Original recording remastered
• Label: Sony
• ASIN: B000MTFG1W
• Also Available in: Audio CD  |  MP3 Download
• Average Customer Review: 4.7 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (19 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #174,899 in Music (See Top 100 in Music)

Editorial Reviews

Amazon.com

The hazy hints of dystopia from Sly and the Family Stone's fabulously successful 1969 hit album Stand! turned full-force on its follow-up, There's a Riot Goin' On. By 1971, Sly had his Hollywood mansion and legions of droppers-by laying down parts of Riot, many of them later overdubbed by Sly himself. The resulting album is entrancing, backed often by an austere, early drum machine and featuring dope-glazed vocals, paranoid shadows and, of course, a stewing funk groove. Horns are here, thinned out so they jab harder, and the keyboards gleam and shimmer and icily coat the beats, which sound in today's parlance simply lo-fi. And the beats, they've slowed menacingly, with voices dropping in, dropping out. Drugs were flowing freely by this point, complicating Sly's sound, inadvertently making an album that indelibly matches its maker's psyche-in-time. --Andrew Bartlett

Product Description

Riot is unlike any of Sly & the Family Stone's other albums. Stripped of the effervescence that flowed through his previous albums, it is a dark come down from the late '60's high. What makes Riot so remarkable is that it's hard not to get drawn in with him, as you're seduced by the narcotic grooves, seductive vocal slurs, leering electric pianos, and crawling guitars. Featuring the hits ''Family Affair'' (You Caught Me) Smilin''' and now with 4 bonus tracks.

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

22 of 23 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Sly Stone's dark masterpiece., May 16, 2007

By 

Michael Stack (North Chelmsford, MA USA) - See all my reviews
(VINE VOICE)    (REAL NAME)   

This review is from: There's a Riot Goin on (Audio CD)

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.

10 of 10 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Eerie funk, May 27, 2008

By 

finulanu ""the mysterious"" (Here, there, and everywhere) - See all my reviews

This review is from: There's a Riot Goin on (Audio CD)

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.

8 of 8 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars 10 Most Dangerous Albums of All Time (Entry Three), August 21, 2008

By 

Dr. Geek - See all my reviews

This review is from: There's a Riot Goin on (Audio CD)

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.