Sly and the Family Stone: Sly and the Family Stone: Live at The Fillmore East October 4th and 4th 1968

Sly and The Family Stone's galvanizing appearance at the Woodstock Music and Arts Fair in August of 1969 may well represent the pinnacle of their career, but their rise to this apogee of recognition was the culmination of a long slow climb to fame dating back even further than Sylvester Stewart's, nee Sly, tenure as a disc jockey and record producer during the early to mid-Sixties in San Francisco.

Melding r&b, gospel, rock and roll, blues and pop, the groundbreaking eclectic mix of genres within the group's oeuvre, was a wholly accurate reflection of the personnel in the band: male, female, African-American and Caucasian that, at the time in the mid-to late Sixties, was equally unheard of. However precarious might've been the balance of style and personality, however, the fusion evolved over a period of time, its honing documented with clarity on Live at The Fillmore East 1968, the mixing and mastering of the music itself offering a realism comparable to the scholarly albeit truncated annotation provided here by Sly scholars Arno and Edwin Konings, as on the box set Higher (Legacy, 2013).

The four shows, recorded over two nights on October at the New York mecca operated by late impresario Bill Graham, were, in one limited sense, typical of the venue, where bills often included two and three acts on a given night and there was no guarantee which performance would be superior. The bands had equal opportunity to steal a show or save the best for last, but in the case of Sly & co., this highly visible string of appearances constituted a coming out party within which they were encouraged to trot out all the finery at their disposal: in doing so, the ensemble firmly and joyously made a case for itself as the finest possible combination of disciplined musicianship and crowd-pleasing showmanship(including various vocals teases ranging from the children's song "Old MacDonald Had a Farm" to the faux hootenanny of The Rooftop Singers' "Walk Right In.")

Thus, on the first night's early show, the slow blues led dreamily by the leader's harmonica evolved naturally to the frenetic medley of "Turn Me Loose"/"Can't Turn You Loose" in a way that amply demonstrates the septet's grasp of dynamics as well as their own debt to Otis Redding and his generation. Perhaps inspired by the first set Sly's understated introduction to the late set October 4th belies the full-bore approach he pilots for his unit, scat singing leading to social commentary, "Don't Burn Baby," from his usual idealistic perspective, a position as illuminating as he and the Family Stone's stage attire and presentation.

No doubt Sly's aforementioned experience in the nascent FM radio of the time furthered his ability to compose, arrange then formulate sets that all his band to exhibit their full range of skills: Cynthia Robinson's graceful emotive vocal offsets the punchy agile horns that then condense themselves to her trumpet to introduce another blues in the form of "St. James Infirmary," it's twelve-bar wholly instrumental structure radically modified through the bubbling sound of bassist Larry Graham whose innovative approach to his instrument would influence the entire Parliament/Funkadelic family in years to come.

If such innovation in this form stretches the conventional wisdom and perception of Sly and The Family Stone, so much the better for their legacy as further consolidated with the one-two of "Dance to the Music" and "Music Lover" that became emblematic of their style. Of course, the ultimate influence of Sly and his Family was sufficiently far reaching to color the music of Miles Davis, Herbie Hancock and Jimi Hendrix, so if the slight but crucial variations on setlists from show to show at the Fillmore kept things fresh for musiclovers who attended multiple performances (perhaps in the same night), it also maintained the vigorous interest of the musicians themselves. In the midst of mixing it up, though, Sly made sure to repeatedly polish his own delivery in such a way it maintained a palpable and infectious measure of spontaneity as he interjected "I Want to Take You Higher" into the rousing finale.

Given the trajectory of Sly and the Family Stone's career (admittedly with hindsight), it should probably come as no surprise career that these Fillmore recordings evince a readily discernible momentum from one show to the another, the intensity growing in direct proportion to the ensemble's heightening confidence by the onset of the second night's initial show, the shortest of the four. But the encore here is also the beginning of the second show, as if it's one long performance that, on its own terms, tells the story of Sly and The Family Stone, at least until that previously-mentioned legendary performance. Perhaps it's no coincidence the sound here is the biggest and best of the run, the layers of keyboards, horns and rhythm section all readily apparent as the male and female vocals that, by the time "Life" is done, is producing the sounds of a circus.

Taking far less time than his ascension to stardom, Sly Stone's fall from grace in the early Seventies toppled the Family through a series of disastrous concert appearances while the ennui of There's A Riot Goin' On (Epic Records, 1971) documents the ebb and flow of their recordings at this period. Sly Stone's slide continued for years into anonymity, enigmatic and eccentric one-off appearances (the 2006 Grammies), not to mention rumors of abject poverty, a sad stage of affairs taking a turnaround with an early 2015 court order. It's poetic justice for a man and his band who worked so hard and not just for the hour-plus intervals on stage as contained in Live at The Fillmore East 1968.

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