Sly & The Family Stone – Life

While Sly and the Family Stone were kicking it out from the get go, they also built it up quickly from really good to the apogee of amazing, with this album clearly taking a trajectory toward the top. If this is not their strongest album, it's pretty close, and it's better than nearly every album ever recorded on this planet. At their best, this band offered pointedly protest songs and celebratory party songs, sometimes at the same time. This one starts off with a blast with "Dynamite," lighting the fuse with the opening electric guitar licks and getting into the hand-clapping celebration, the perfect introduction to this classic album. This opener ends with a trail out call back to their previous album, and then launches into the finger licking "Chicken," going into a focus on poking pointed sticks at the squares, chickens, and plastic people, before launching back into full celebratory, both modes fairly bold considering the time, the targeting a bit more comical, direct, and unique than the typically protest songs of this era, and the party tunes simply bold considering the times, far from the first time music offered celebration in trying times, but clearly having some influence on the directions of music of the coming decade. While Jimi Hendrix was almost single handedly creating and setting a standard for the hard rock of the 1970s, at the same time with songs like "Fun," Sly and the Family Stone were doing the same for 1970s hard funk. Sure, when someone makes such sweeping claims, it's bound to open room to interject the names of other artists, but all those other names don't weaken the claims--Sly Stone's claim to fame. The set kicks to the front of the stage from the get go and remains there for the duration. While Hendrix was effectively stretching out the songs with Electric Ladyland in 1968, even with all the innovation, Sly and the Family Stone were keeping the songs punchy and concise, almost all the songs clocking in under the 3 minutes, and the other two clocking in under 3 1/2, songs like "I'm a Animal" weaving into designs that seem custom made for songs that stretch way past the length of the 7" single format, but Sly and the band still cut to the quick, and while so many of these songs seem ready for extended workouts on the stage, they manage to keep it packaged tight, into sticks of dynamite. And that word sums this up quite accurate: this is bundle of DYNAMITE! -- winch (green noise)