Customer Reviews

Whole New Thing

5 star:		(13)
4 star:		(2)
3 star:		(1)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

When I first picked up this CD, I did it only to complete the collection. I was amazed at how great this album is. "Underdog" leads off the set with a bang, and in my opinion Greg Errico's best drumming performance. "Let Me Hear It From You" & "What Would I Do" are lost soul classics. The album's mixing, production, and over all sound are better than any other of Sly's 1960's albums. It's a must listen for headphones. The sound quality is so superb that you will be reaching for the CD case again and again to look for the sound engineer's name. FYI - I read somewhere that the album was done on a 4-Track machine.

Actually, this is Sly's best album, an unrecognized wonder, a great lost album, really. As he went downhill (from drugs), his music became simpler, here it begins at its most clever and ambitious. What sets it apart from his subsequent output is how eclectic and highly arranged his songs are. It's the late sixties; Sly is opening up his kind of R&B-- just as the British Invasion opened up the rock/pop song in general. He was a music major in college, so his beginning the disc with a minor key "Frere Jacques" was a conscious borrowing from Mahler.... Listen to how tight and varied and "Advice" and "Dog" are-- as Sly keeps the beat, but puts the tune through one change after another. Wonderful use of the different voices, distinct and blended. Two excellent touching slow ballads: "Let me Hear it from you" (sung by Larry Graham), and "That kind of person" (by Sly's brother, Freddie). Dig the insanely frantic "Turn Me Loose"-- which they used to attach to their equally frantic version of Otis Redding's "I Can't Turn You Loose." Great drumming! Great sound; beautifully produced, by Sly.

But so many of these potent songs fall apart at the end... Sly didn't have the sense of an ending. And then-- is there a connection?-- he fell apart in the end, and became a druggy shadow of the talented wizard that he once was.

Presenting Sly & The Family Stone,brand new band reaching out to the summer of love!And 'A Whole New Thing' a great contribution.What Sly presents on this album is not exactly funk but a supercharged variety of soul,embellished with 60's rock touches.This style is known as psychedelic soul and this is a very early example.As far as the songs are concerned "Underdog",the first song and "Dog",the last song are among the strongest examples,and the catchiest.Strange enough this is the only Sly album that really has any distinct ballads,notably the gospelish "That Kind Of Person".Now this album has some pretty obvious points against it,but only when compared to the brilliant Dance to the Music,Life and Stand!.That point is that,especially in case of the brilliant "Advice" and "I Hate To Love Her" is that each of these songs tends be be bogged down in mountains of musical ambition;within less then three minutes sometimes there is more information packed into them then most full albums have.So this never had an enormous breakout single but Larry Graham's solo vocal on another ballad gospel type tune "Let Me Hear It From You" does leap out as an obvious single.Strangly enough "Only One Way Out Of This Mess" and "What Would I Do",two bonus tracks have incredible hooks and are the strongest "hit" type songs you'll hear on this album.Another bonus track "You Better Help Yourself" opens the door to the genre of proto funk;a groovier variety of soul based in rhythm.So while nothing on 'A Whole New Thing' truely leaps out as a hit record it does live up to it's name by presenting a unique sound and a legendary band.

I heard this fine selection when I was a student in Hertfordshire. I was born in 1960, and for the life of me I can't imagine how I heard any of this material. I must have only been in primary school. And yet this stuff immediately stirred and moved me. It has so much soul, this stuff is irresistable. If you weren't there, it will make you feel like a fully paid up member of the sixties, like you were really one of the dudes...

It has so much to offer ("Underdog" really jumps) and the inventiveness of the horn parts... Well, you would get a good deal from this in so many ways, but more than anything, the yearning and longing for the years past when this stuff was being made.

What soul... Where are you now, Sly old friend?

This album is spectacular. While it's obvious that it is Sly and the Family Stone there is a different vibe due to the changes that would be made for Dance to the Music. Underdog is a standout track but every fan of Sly should check out this album to see what he was originally thinking when he put the band together.

1967 in San Francisco music is probably best remembered for the psychedelic rock bands and the Summer of Love, but perhaps the most criminally overlooked emergence in that scene is that of Sly & the Family Stone. Formed by DJ and producer Sly Stone, the band was (as best I can recall) the first integrated pop act, with white and black musicians (and a woman in a role other than as a vocalist) working out Stone's stew of funk, soul and psychedelic rock. While debut album "A Whole New Thing" is a bit less ambitious and worthwhile than future albums, it certainly has all the pieces-- Stone's great, hook-laden songwriting, ably performed by a band anchored by a virtually unparalleled rhythm section of bassist Larry Graham and drummer Greg Errico.

Opener "Underdog" is a great example of everything that's right here-- Sly hits a hot vocal on the verses over a galloping funk rhythm with the whole piece hitting a boil at the chorus-- the band's many vocalists chant the chorus over which Stone cries in an almost preacher-like fashion. This is the formula under which the band seems to succeed best-- similar great efforts can be found on "If This Room Could Talk" and the fierce "I Cannot Make It". The rest of the album doesn't fare as well, alternating between mid-tempo funk pieces ("Run, Run, Run", "Advice") and soul balladry (Larry Graham's turn at a lead on "Let Me Hear It From You" is the best of these). None of it is bad per se, but a lot of it is fairly generic, the notable exception being "Trip to Your Heart", featuring what sounds like a psychedelic improv intro and bridge.

This reissue remasters the album, appending several bonus tracks (leftovers, additional album tracks from reissues and some mono single mixes). It sounds fantastic, crisp and clean, that has the effect of actually rendering the music a bit more relevent-- it sounds a bit more timeless with a clean sound. The artwork reproduces the original liner notes and includes a new essay on the album.

"A Whole New Thing" is really a beginning-- Sly and the Family Stone would go on to a lot better material in the next few years. This ons has its moments, but pales in comparison to the band's later work.

Sylvester Stewart knew the Sixties music scene like the back of his hand, having been a San Francisco disc jockey, record producer, and songwriter before he put his own group together and started making music himself. His band was both racially and sexually integrated--groundbreaking at the time. "A Whole New Thing" is the Family Stone's debut album from 1967, a seminal year which saw the initial releases from several major groups--the Doors, the Jimi Hendrix Experience, the Grateful Dead, and, from across the pond, Pink Floyd. The record was not commercially successful (the band's breakthrough would come with the single "Dance To The Music" early the following year, 1968). This first release shows Sly's easy familiarity with soul, R & B, psychedelia, and straight pop; he wrote and produced every one of its twelve tracks. This 2007 Sony repackage also contains bonus tracks such as the original monophonic versions of the early singles "Underdog" and "Let Me Hear It From You" (it would have been nice if Otis Redding had covered the latter ballad before he died). Sly Stone's music (in addition to his personal, drug-induced meltdown as an artist) traces precisely the massive disillusion which characterized the death of the "love generation"--contrast this peppy, upbeat first album with his fuzzy, strung-out, weary masterwork "There's A Riot Goin' On", released just four years later. Therein lie the late Sixties in a nutshell.

In truth, this is Sly's best album, an unrecognized wonder, a great lost album. After this bold new work, his music became simpler, here it begins at its most clever and ambitious. What sets it apart from his subsequent output is how eclectic and highly arranged his songs are. It's 1967. Sly is opening up his kind of R&B-- just as the British Invasion opened up the rock/pop song in general. He had already worked with the Beau Brummells, the first American band to respond to the British Invasion. He was a music major in college, so his beginning the disc with a minor key "Frere Jacques" was a conscious borrowing from Mahler...!

The album is consistently strong. Listen to how tight and varied and "Advice" and "Dog" are-- as Sly keeps the beat, but puts the tune through one change after another. Has anyone else written songs like these? Not that I've heard. Wonderful use of the different voices, distinct and blended. Two excellent touching slow ballads: "Let me Hear it from you" (sung by Larry Graham), and "That kind of person" (by Sly's brother, Freddie). Dig the insanely frantic "Turn Me Loose"-- which they used to attach to their equally frantic version of Otis Redding's "I Can't Turn You Loose." Great drumming! Great sound. Beautifully produced, by Sly.

But so many of these potent songs fall apart at the end... Sly didn't have the sense of an ending. And then-- is there a connection?-- he fell apart in the end, and became a druggy shadow of the talented wizard that he once was.

In the notes to this 2007 release (which includes 5 bonus tracks) we learn that the simplification in the subsequent single "Dance to the Music" was requested by David Kapralik, an executive at Epic, since this amazing first album had failed to achieve significant sales. Sly was much annoyed by this request to "dumb down" his music... but "snarled "OK, I'll give them something." That something was the simplified groove of "Dance to Music." Then came fame, fortune.... and major drugging.

In the next album, "Dance to the Music," only "I'll never fall in love again" is comparable to the superior songs found on the first album. The third album, "Life" is more enjoyable for getting beyond the numbing redundancy of DTTM. And in time, Sly will get to the major charms of "Hot Fun in the Summertime" and "Everybody is a star," as well as the power-house funk of "Sing a simple song."

In time, it also adds up to one of the sadder and more precipitous drug casualties. David Kapralik and cocaine have much to answer for...

But that first album really was a "whole new thing."

This album, along with 'Dance To The Music' and 'Life', comprises what I believe is some of the most important music ever in rock, soul and funk history. Every single song on each album is important. Whether the songs have blazing horns, chicken-pluckin' guitar, rich Hammond B3 chords, or Sly's incredible variety of vocal styles it doesn't matter. I listened to each of these albums every day for the year I was in Southeast Asia, and every note is imprinted on every cell in my body. Even to this day 35 years later I still say, "Sly, you and the gang are something! Keep on smoking!"

This album's greatness is only diminished by Sly & the Family Stone's subsequent efforts. Check out "Trip to Your Heart" to hear where LL Cool J got the groovy sample for "Mama Said Knock You Out"