Maybe it's a coincidence that three fabulous and endlessly eclectic DJ mix-CDs - John Peel's FabricLive 07, 2 Many DJ's As Heard on Radio Soulwax Pt. 2, and DJ /rupture's Minesweeper Suite - all came out in 2002. But it sure didn't feel that way at the time. Of course, eclectic DJ mixes were nothing new; they'd been a standard from at least 1995, when Coldcut released 70 Minutes of Madness. But 2002 was a… more »
Maybe the most startling thing about Sly & the Family Stone's peak is how short it was. A mere four years elapsed from the Bay Area funk-rock septet's debut, A Whole New Thing, to the radical masterpiece, There's a Riot Goin 'On, which was recorded mostly by Sly alone. Granted, this arc coincided with the greatest mass-societal changes of 20th-century America, but it tells us plenty about Stone's singularity nevertheless.
As a top-rated Bay Area DJ… more »
It used to be easier to pretend that an album was its own perfectly self-contained artifact. The great records certainly feel that way. But albums are more permeable than solid, their motivations, executions and inspirations informed by, and often stolen from, their peers and forbearers. It all sounds awfully formal, but it's not. It's the very nature of music — of art, even. The Six Degrees features examine the relationships between classic records and five… more »
The two years or so before Sly Stone signed to Epic saw him lay down a myriad of hazily documented official and unissued recordings. Now available on a variety of labels, In the Still of the Night has 17 of them, most seeming to date from his days as a producer at Autumn in the mid-’60s (the liner notes are of little help). These are mostly sketches, really, of primary interest to Sly historians: some soul covers, some instrumental R&B vamps, and tentative originals that show Stone approaching his singular rock/soul fusion. There’s a good deal of duplication with other packages of early Sly material, and it’s much less thoughtfully assembled than the best of those (Ace’s In the Studio With Sly Stone). – Richie Unterberger