The Fifth Desk · Evaluation
Act I · The Map
Sly and the Family Stone · written, arranged and produced by Sly Stone · Epic · twelve titles on two sides, about forty-seven minutes
Mode
Funk and soul at moderate and slow tempi, densely layered, over a preset rhythm machine
Mythos
The fall of the bringer of joy; the flag re-sewn, the riot that is a silence, Africa named as source and voice
Phase
Twelve titles on two sides; side one opens on a refusal to move and ends on a title with no music, side two ends on the band’s own anthem slowed to a crawl; each side’s last music a long groove with Africa in its title
Presentation
Album; issued by Epic in November 1971, number one on the Billboard album chart, with Family Affair a number one single
Register
A lead voice mumbled, croaked or buried; electric piano, guitar and bass against a ticking box; horns and voices half heard in the murk
Scale
One man, a family band, a nation and its flag, and an emptied dance floor, held in one slowed sound
Governing Proposition
The band that had sung one integrated dance floor into being slows its groove, puts a preset rhythm machine where its drummer stood, sinks its singer into the mix, announces a riot with a track that has no music, and ends by playing its own anthem of gratitude as a dirge: the utopia did not survive its success, and the record says so by what it has stopped doing.
Act II · The Essay
Movement I
The first thing a dance band says on this record is that it does not want to move. Luv n’ Haight is a song about feeling too good to get up, and it is played with a feverish, hemmed-in intensity, the groove pressing against walls it cannot leave. A few years before, the same band had made records whose whole purpose was to lift a room off its feet, Dance to the Music and I Want to Take You Higher among them. Nothing on this record has that drive. The tempo is moderate at best, and it only falls from here.
Epic issued the album in November 1971, after recording that ran through 1970 and 1971. Sly Stone wrote, arranged and produced it, and played much of it himself: keyboards, guitar, bass, and the preset rhythm machine that stands in for a drummer on several tracks. The album went to number one on the Billboard chart, and Family Affair went to number one on the Hot 100 at the end of the year. The sleeve is an American flag with suns for stars.
The unit here is the LP as first released, twelve titles in their original order on two sides; the later editions with added tracks and alternate mixes are not the record. It runs about forty-seven minutes, the sides near equal. Eleven of the titles have sound. Seven of those eleven are under four minutes, and the two long grooves with Africa in their titles take about a third of the whole. The shape is plain before a note is heard: short, slow songs, and at the end of each side a long, dragging vamp.
Movement II
The record’s hit is its quietest song. Family Affair is built on a box that ticks, an electric piano, a bass figure sliding underneath, and Sly’s voice, a croak low in the mix, as if the singer were in the next room. Nothing resolves. The beauty is real, hushed and numbed, and it is the record’s plainest height besides its last track. It went to number one, which means that in the last weeks of 1971 the number one song in the country was one in which the singer could barely be heard.
The words say what the sound says. From the same house, one child grows up to love learning and another to be someone you would love to burn, and the song does not choose between them. The family is refuge and trap at once. “Blood’s thicker than mud” is sung as a fact, without comfort. A band of siblings that had sung the family of man is singing the family as the place where the damage starts.
This is where the record’s disclosure is most nearly stated: the integrated utopia of Stand! did not survive its own success, and what came after was exhaustion and suspicion. Played by the band of 1969, at tempo and with the vocals forward, the song would be sad; as made, it is the condition itself. That is the form doing the knowing. It is also the limit of the disclosure. Across most of the record the lyrics are fragments, mumbled or buried, and the condition is shown as a mood of withdrawal more often than argued as a meaning.
Movement III
Side one ends on the title track, and the title track has no music. It is a listing on the sleeve and nothing in the grooves. The riot is announced and nothing sounds. Before it comes Africa Talks to You, the first of the long closers, nearly nine minutes of slow vamp; then the record names its own subject and declines to play it. Whatever the riot is, in the streets, in the band, in the man, it is not given a sound, and the silence is the sharpest thing the record does.
Around the silence the myth is laid out in emblems. A flag with its stars re-sewn as suns. A riot that is a silence. Africa named twice, as source and as voice, in the titles of the two long grooves. A figure grinning at his gun in the old anthem remade. These are strong patterns, and the particular stays particular: one man, one family band, one year. One of them is built. The record’s whole shape tells the fall of the bringer of joy, the star who sang the people together and now cannot rise from his room.
The rest are evoked rather than built. The Africa frame is named and placed twice, and never developed; the flag is on the sleeve, and the riot in a title. That difference between the pattern that bears the record and the patterns that decorate it is what holds the myth below the gate, and it is the clearest place where the record’s reach exceeds what it constructs. The emblems are memorable because they are simple, and they remain emblems.
Movement IV
Side two opens with short songs. Brave & Strong and Time are sketches of the same sedated groove, and could change places, or leave, with little loss. (You Caught Me) Smilin’ and, on side one, Just Like a Baby stand a little apart in brightness. Spaced Cowboy is the joke, Sly yodelling over the rhythm box, deadpan in the same key as the grief. Runnin’ Away is the brightest sketch, light on its feet and short, and still a song about escape. This middle is where the record’s slack lies, and where its command of its own making is least even.
The swerve is the record’s greatest strength beside its form and its survival. The tradition it left was its own, and the band had made it the field’s: bright, many-voiced, horn-driven funk at dance tempo. Here are slow tempi, a machine for a drummer, a buried voice, density in place of open ensemble, the anthem rewritten as its negation. The cost was real, with a label and an audience waiting for another Stand! and a reputation the record could have confirmed. What holds it below the top is that the songs keep their verse and chorus and the groove remains funk; What’s Going On had already turned soul inward that year.
The record moved its field. It showed that a groove could be slow, dry and unresolved, that a machine could carry a number one hit, and that one man layering himself could make a pop record. Critics draw the line from here to Prince’s one-man, machine-driven funk, to D’Angelo’s Voodoo and the neo-soul made around it, and to the later record made alone in a bedroom. Part of that reach was shared with the soul records of the same year, and part arrived only in the 1990s. The force that began it is this record’s.
Movement V
The record ends by taking back the band’s last anthem. Thank You (Falettinme Be Mice Elf Agin), a number one of 1969 to 1970, returns as Thank You for Talkin’ to Me Africa: its refrain and verse kept, its tempo and its spirit not. Over seven minutes the groove drags and builds into a hypnotic menace, the bass and the machine pulling against each other, and the old line about “grinnin’ at his gun” is no longer fun. It is the record’s height, and it is a height of dread.
One law governs the whole: slowed time, a dry box beneath, the voice at a distance, feeling held under. Family Affair and Spaced Cowboy, grief and joke, obey it, and the remade anthem brings the band’s old world into the record under the new physics. But the range is narrow by design. Every track is moderate or slow, and much of the sound is one colour. The making is uneven in the same way: the interlock of bass and machine is high craft, while some vocals are unintelligible beyond what the design needs and some tracks sound unfinished.
A little under fifty-five years on, the record survives whole and in print, Family Affair is a standard of radio and sampling, and the album is returned to by critics and musicians more than by the general public. Its surface of hiss and dull tape is part of what was released. What it holds is a self, a family, a nation under a re-sewn flag, the aftermath of a movement, and an emptied dance floor, more of them as emblems than as worlds. It ends where it began, unable to rise, with its gratitude turned to accusation.
Act III · The Twelve
The subtractive test finds a real core and real give. Family Affair, Luv n’ Haight, Runnin’ Away, the title’s empty track and the two Africa closers cannot go without the record losing its argument, because the argument is a turn from the band’s own past, and the remade Thank You is where the turn is completed. The give is in the middle of side two and in the length of side one’s closer. Brave & Strong and Time are sketches of the same sedated groove and could change places with little loss. Spaced Cowboy belongs to the record’s law, but no moment depends on it. Africa Talks to You runs nearly nine minutes on a vamp whose middle could lose a third. Low and Remain in Light carry less slack.
Score: 8.0 / 10
The disclosure can be stated: the integrated utopia the band had sung on Stand! in 1969, black and white, men and women, one dance floor, did not survive its own success, and what came after was exhaustion, suspicion, and the family as both refuge and trap. It is disclosed through sound as fully as through words, and credited as such. The tempo falls, the voice retreats, a machine replaces the drummer, and the old anthem returns as a dirge. Family Affair states it in words: from one house, one child who loves to learn and one you would love to burn. The empty title track is the sharpest stroke. Held near the gate: many lyrics are fragmentary or mumbled, and the condition is shown more as a mood of withdrawal than argued as a meaning.
Score: 8.6 / 10
The record refuses the elevation the band had commanded, and the refusal is its point; the question is whether the dread rises, and in places it does. Family Affair reaches a hushed, numbed beauty: electric piano over the box, Sly’s croak low in the mix, and the bass figure sliding beneath. Thank You for Talkin’ to Me Africa builds over seven minutes into a dragging, hypnotic menace that is the record’s height. Luv n’ Haight has a feverish, hemmed-in intensity. The frequency is lower than the height: Brave & Strong, Time, (You Caught Me) Smilin’ and Spaced Cowboy stay flat, by design or by fatigue. The record rises perhaps three or four times in forty-seven minutes, where Kind of Blue and Low rise again and again.
Score: 8.2 / 10
The record evokes deep patterns and builds one. Built: the fall of the bringer of joy, the star who sang the people together and now cannot rise from his own room, told in the shape of the album, from the opening refusal to move to the closing anthem slowed to a crawl. Evoked: the flag with suns for stars, America re-sewn; the riot that is a silence; Africa as source and voice in two titles; the figure grinning at his gun in the remade Thank You. The archetypes are strong and the particular stays particular: a man, a family band, a year. What holds the axis below the gate is that the Africa frame is named and not developed, and the flag and the riot are emblems more than structures.
Score: 8.2 / 10
The tradition inherited is the band’s own, which it had made the field’s: bright, horn-driven, many-voiced pop funk at dance tempo, with uplift in the chorus. The departure is near total. Slow tempi, a rhythm machine for a drummer, dense layered murk for open ensemble, a lead voice mumbled or buried, the signature anthem rewritten as its own negation. The cost was real: a long wait after the last hit, a label and an audience expecting Stand! again, and a public reputation for missed shows and drugs that the record could have confirmed. That it went to number one is evidence that the wager paid, not that it was safe. Held below the top because the swerve is in mood, density and means more than in grammar: the songs keep verse and chorus, the groove is still funk, and What’s Going On had already turned soul inward that year.
Score: 8.8 / 10
Change the form and the record stops knowing what it knows, because the sound is the disclosure. Played by the band of 1969, live and at tempo with the vocals forward, Family Affair would be a sad song; as made, with a box ticking under a muffled voice and nothing resolving, it is the condition itself. The sequence is counted here, once. Side one opens with a song about not wanting to move and ends on a title with no music in it; side two ends by taking the band’s last anthem of gratitude and slowing it until it sounds like an accusation. Each side’s last music is a long Africa groove, a frame placed twice. Held short of the top because the middle of side two loosens: Time and Brave & Strong could change places, or leave, and the form would know the same.
Score: 8.8 / 10
The record yields on return, and there are more than fifty years of evidence that it does. Its density rewards attention: buried guitar lines, half-heard voices, the bass and the machine pulling against each other, lyrics that come clear only after many hearings. The meaning has shifted with its listeners. It has been heard as a document of the end of the sixties, as a record of addiction, as a political record about the state, and as a forerunner of the record made alone in a bedroom, and each hearing finds support in the grooves. What holds it below Kind of Blue: the formal depth is narrower, and part of the semantic depth depends on hearing murk as meaning, which some returns do not reward.
Score: 8.6 / 10
The field is the soul, funk and rock of the early 1970s, and this is one of the records that turned it. The intrinsic force is a real reorganisation of possibility for funk and soul: it showed that the groove could be slow, dry and unresolved, that a machine could carry a number one hit, that a lead singer could withdraw into the mix, and that a pop record could be made by one man layering himself. Achieved reach is scored with intrinsic force: critics draw a line from this record to Prince’s one-man, machine-driven funk, to D’Angelo’s Voodoo (2000) and the neo-soul around it, and to the later bedroom record. The figure stays below Low and Kind of Blue because the reach was partly shared with What’s Going On and partly delayed into the 1990s.
Score: 8.8 / 10
Weighed on form, presence and fabric. The form survives whole: the record as released is in print in its original sequence. Presence has been continuous since 1971 among critics, musicians and listeners; Family Affair is a standard of radio and of sampling, and the album has been reissued many times and stands on the long critical lists, which is presence and not proof. The span is a little under fifty-five years. Presence is wide among critics and musicians and narrower with the general public than that of Kind of Blue, and the murky surface can be heard as fixed to its moment; the figure is held below the widest. The hiss and dullness of the tape are part of the record as released, not decay.
Score: 8.8 / 10
Command of the recorded medium is load-bearing in places. The bass and the machine interlock on Family Affair and on Thank You for Talkin’ to Me Africa; voices are set against the box with care; and the sustained density of parts layered by one hand is high craft. But the measure asks for command throughout, and the command is uneven. Vocals are at times unintelligible beyond what the design needs, Brave & Strong and Time sound unfinished, and the surface dullness is partly chosen and partly the cost of the method. The invention, the rhythm box and the one-man layering, is credited to The Swerve and Pressure on Tradition, not here. Low and Remain in Light are the more consistently exact makings.
Score: 8.5 / 10
The two most distant elements are Family Affair, a hushed and grave hit, and Spaced Cowboy, Sly yodelling over the rhythm box, the record’s joke. They obey one law: slowed time, a dry box beneath, the voice at a distance, feeling held under. The joke is deadpan in the same key as the grief, and the remade Thank You brings the band’s old world into the record under the record’s new physics. That is real coherence. The range covered is narrow by design: every track is moderate or slow, much of the sound is one colour, and narrowness is not coherence. Just Like a Baby and (You Caught Me) Smilin’ stand a little apart in brightness. Kind of Blue and Low govern halves further apart.
Score: 8.4 / 10
Five orders are held: the self, in addiction, withdrawal and fame; the family, in Family Affair and in a band of siblings; the nation, in the flag, the riot and the year; race and the African diaspora, in the two Africa titles and a movement’s aftermath; and the dance floor as a public space now emptied. They are integrated in one sound, and that is the achievement. What holds the axis lowest is that many of these orders are emblems on the sleeve and in the titles rather than worlds held in the music, and the state and history are present by implication only. Forty-seven minutes of record cannot hold what a novel holds. It stands level with Zooropa, above Low and Kind of Blue, and below Remain in Light.
Score: 7.4 / 10
Act IV · The Reckoning
8.4 / 10 · Final Average
Placement: Tier IV · Canonical
Strongest Dimensions
The Swerve, The Living Form, Pressure on Tradition and The Imperishable at 8.8. A band that dismantled its own bright, many-voiced funk for slow tempi, a machine and a buried voice; a form in which the sound is the disclosure; a slowed, one-man, machine-carried soul record that reorganised what the genre could be; and a record whole and present for more than half a century.
Limiting Dimension
The Encompassed at 7.4: a self, a family, a nation, a movement’s aftermath and an emptied dance floor, many of them emblems on the sleeve and in the titles rather than worlds held in the music. Below the rest, The Inevitable at 8.0: a sedated middle to side two and a long closer to side one that could lose a third. Then The Archetypal Deep and The Sublime at 8.2: one pattern built and the rest emblems, and elevation three or four times in forty-seven minutes.
The Necessity Cap clears at 8.0 against a threshold of 7.5. The Coherence Floor clears: The Living Form at 8.8, The Made at 8.5, The Inner Law at 8.4, each against 7.0. The Epochal Gate is unmet: The Swerve at 8.8, Pressure on Tradition at 8.8 and The Imperishable at 8.8 clear the bar of 8.5, and The Unconcealment clears it by a tenth at 8.6, but The Archetypal Deep at 8.2 falls short. The Universal Minimum is met: no axis but The Encompassed falls below 8.0, against 7.5, and The Encompassed, which is exempted, clears its own floor of 6.0 at 7.4.
Basis · the complete album as first released by Epic in November 1971, twelve titles in their original sequence on two sides, the last title of side one a listing with no music; about forty-seven minutes. Judged from knowledge of the recording, its making and its reception; no recording or lyric sheet was in hand. Reissues with added tracks and alternate mixes are not the unit and are not scored. Songs are cited by title, and lyrics are quoted only in two fragments of four words. Running times are given only roughly. Facts that could not be verified are not given, among them the day of release, the studios used and the manner of the overdubbing, the division of parts among the players and the guests, the make of the rhythm machine, how the empty track was printed on the label, the chart positions of the later singles, the cause of the record’s surface sound, the circumstances around the band in those years, and particular claims of influence on named musicians.