What Sly Stone's music means (to me)
What Sly Stone's music means (to me)
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.
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
- Posts: 5211
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- Lightning Rod
- Posts: 5211
- Joined: August 15th, 2004, 6:57 pm
- Location: between my ears
- Contact:
...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.
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.
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.
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.
- hester_prynne
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