In short (and I was serious earlier about my lack of expansiveness at the moment; this is a busy day for me, and I'm telling you straight up that I'm not gonna be able to give this topic the attention that I'd like to--I mean, asking me how I feel about Sly Stone is like asking me how I feel about my arm): Sly was more of an eccentric, and made more room in his music for explicitly personal and off-kilter expression.
James's expression was beautifully, powerfully, and almost totally abstract. Curtis's great gift was the ability to make the personal seem universal and the universal seem personal, and to do so with an unassailable, elemental sincerity that never felt false. Ever. Sly was never as crystalline as all that, though--his shit is always sliding in and out of focus, never adhering for too long to either James's raw power or Curtis's purity of emotion, which gives Sly's material its own elusive quality. I'm a pretty sometimesy dude myself, so I guess I tend to respond to that quality more consistently.
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(Incidentally: "wordsmith" means "An expert on words." Using it in the same post in which one has had to offer clarification of one's intent is something of a questionable look. Sorry if that sounds snotty, but your tone here is somewhat south of friendly.)
Comments
You shoulda been say so.
In short (and I was serious earlier about my lack of expansiveness at the moment; this is a busy day for me, and I'm telling you straight up that I'm not gonna be able to give this topic the attention that I'd like to--I mean, asking me how I feel about Sly Stone is like asking me how I feel about my arm): Sly was more of an eccentric, and made more room in his music for explicitly personal and off-kilter expression.
James's expression was beautifully, powerfully, and almost totally abstract. Curtis's great gift was the ability to make the personal seem universal and the universal seem personal, and to do so with an unassailable, elemental sincerity that never felt false. Ever. Sly was never as crystalline as all that, though--his shit is always sliding in and out of focus, never adhering for too long to either James's raw power or Curtis's purity of emotion, which gives Sly's material its own elusive quality. I'm a pretty sometimesy dude myself, so I guess I tend to respond to that quality more consistently.
...
(Incidentally: "wordsmith" means "An expert on words." Using it in the same post in which one has had to offer clarification of one's intent is something of a questionable look. Sorry if that sounds snotty, but your tone here is somewhat south of friendly.)
all in the spirit of friendship
anyway, just curious about your reasons - I can see what you're saying about sly, but his lack of focus seemed to hold him back somewhat.
although, 'riot going on' probably does mean more to me than any 'album conceived as such' that JB or Curtis did.
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