Saturday, April 24, 2010

Sly Stone's Coachella Trainwreck




The mighty keep falling. Sometimes they tumble into an abyss of abuse, confusion and delusion until paranoia and anger take over their lives. The brain can only take so much, until it becomes untethered from the network where creativity and coherent thought end up rolling around like tumbleweeds in grey matter. Such is the case of Mr. Sylvester Stewart aka Sly Stone Sly Stone, along side James Brown and George Clinton, is responsible for funk.
Without him, there would be no Prince, no Talking Book, no Soul Train, no Flea slapping his bass(Thanx Larry Graham) He's that important. With the Family Stone he gave us classic albums like Stand and There's a Riot Goin' On. Then the drugs (that he used to carry from gig to gig in a violin case) took right over. He lost it all and we lost track of him. Now after years of secluded unknowns he has emerged...doing sporadic gigs since 2007. These "gigs' have NEVER gone as planned. He either leaves the stage mid gig, shows up 3 hours late...or starts, stops and switches songs while performing them.

At Coachella last weekend, he basically gave the crowd one of the most bizarre train wreck shows ever recorded. This You Tube video is just a taste of what went on. Feel free to seek out more video of the event. I've never seen anything like it.  I don't know whether to laugh, cry or be angry.  I don't think he does either.

4 comments:

  1. Tried to watch the whole thing but couldn't. The crowd was probably very high and didn't care. Let's hope so.

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  2. I have never been that loaded.....I think.

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  3. yeah...we actually had him booked here at first ave....of course...cancelled at the last minute! Shocking eh!

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  4. Phew, painful to watch, this. Why doesn't he just give it up and save what little of his reputation he has left.

    You forgot to put Curtis Mayfield in that list of those responsible for funk - he is definitely one of the progenitors (and probably my favourite of them all).

    YourZ

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