Sly and the Family Stone's There's a Riot Goin' On

Description

The story behind the making of the album that signaled the descent of Sylvester Sly Stone Stewart into a haze of drug addiction and delirium is captivating enough for the cinema. In the spacious attic of a Beverly Hills mansion belonging to John and Michelle Phillips (of the Mamas and the Papas) during the fall of 1970, Sly Stone began recording his follow-up to 1969's "Stand!" the most popular album of his band's career.

Miles Marshall Lewis is a cultural critic based in Harlem, where he has been writing about music, film and literature since 1993. He is the author of the memoir Scars of the Soul Are Why Kids Wear Bandages When They Don't Have Bruises and editor of Bronx Biannual literary journal.

a heartfelt insight...informed and impassioned....But it's his ability to make sense of this album's cocktail of crushed optimism and acrimonious revolt that makes this volume so impressive. -- Stevie Chick * Mojo * Miles Marshall Lewis's absolutely essential 33 1/3 on Riot tells a good part of the story-the disillusioned national mood after the Death of the Sixties, Sly's post-Woodstock ambivalence towards the fame he once craved, and his sonic turn towards introversion and quietude that manifested in muffled vocals and a restrained drum machine in place of Greg Errico's thunderous backbeat. -- Nate Patrin * Pitchfork *