What Sly Stone's music means (to me)

[Nazz]

Sly taught me how to roam the desert
between the wars and godawful jingles.
I gyrated to the funk of ages of course,
sweet child of blight, I just might.

He used to have a mansion.
Maybe a pit bull and some lyrics I imagine.
Maybe a holy haze of now, can you imagine.
Like culture shock, the wall, the gun issue,
the orange billboards and stop signs.
He taught me how to stop.

Mostly I see him sitting here,
and we would talk about the mountains,
or the smog, or the price of heat in Texas.
We could write until it made no sense,
the perfectly ordered ripples in sand.
We could write another song.

[Lightning Rod]

I met Sly Stone one time, briefly
we were both shopping in a little edgy boutique in the Village

he was looking for a 'contour belt' a regular belt wouldn't do.

I was looking for something to shoplift

[Nazz]

It's strange when I sense I could communicate so naturally with someone. Of course it's all probably a myth I've built up in my head and eyes and ears, but what the hell, I need to write that song anyway, don't I?

[Lightning Rod]

yes, write the song

[mtmynd]

write the words. they'll sing themselves.

[Nazz]

...started with Stand! Those tunes were in rotation at my old "hippie pad" back in the '90s. But it wasn't until There's Riot Going On (an answer to Marvin Gaye's question?) when I heard stretches of wistful desert in the music, the place I was about to explore. Some of the tunes on Fresh hit me that way too.

And I remember a story about a drummer showing up at Sly's place to try and get the gig. Sly of course got right to the point... "are ya funky?"...

Geeze, not sure why this all popped into my head yesterday. One of those things. One of those days.

[alienpoet]

diggin this and diggin Sly
we are Everyday People ...

i am the blue alien ...altho other shades blend in and...well...the mingle of ocean colors...

sorry back to it. write that song.sing that song
where is Sly...it's been so long...?

[Nazz]

Thanks alien.

I don't think I've expressed well enough the connection I felt between certain music and the basin and range desert. Perhaps some things are impossible to describe adequately in words. I mean, when I wrote about the marriage of dub reverb bouncing off mountains, that was a hard enough "sell"-- perhaps not the echo part but the underlying reggae platforms.

And Sly?-- an even tougher "sell". What does Sly have to do with the desert? The short answers are disillusionment and the muffled, overdubbed quality of "Riot". Yeah, Sly's connection is more to the lower, blazing hot basins under the powerlines, though I really can't explain it. When he wrote, "because I promise I'll be gone for a while", that enhanced the visual too. In my head.

I was also thinking of those godawful commercials and "jingles" they used to run back in the '60s and '70s when I scribbled this. Go figure.

all rambly again.

[alienpoet]

it made things pop into my head too...i have some memories...

[hester_prynne]

"all we need is a drumma
for people who only need a beat yayeeeah"

H