Boom Acka Lacka Lacka Boom!5 Out of 5 Stars
One of the men who can lay an honest calling to "Father of Funk" is Sly Stone, and this brief but effective best of maps it out brilliantly. When I was in high school and on the Wrestling Team, there were "Sports Buses" that took team members home after practice. In reality, they were Ford Vans, but they also had 8-Track players. Our driver was this burly, bearded bear of a man named Terry, and he almost always had this album in the 8-track. I have many memories of going home on dark winter evenings as "Hot Fun In The Summertime" and "Everyday People" would play.
Almost Forty years later and I'm still digging it. Sly cross pollinated funk, rock, 60's psychedelic and a decidedly political bent and emerged with not just the first truly integrated rock band to create hit records, but anthems that partied and thought out loud. While Stone's eventual personal disintegration happened after this anthology was released (meaning it's missing "If You Want Me to Stay" and "Family Affair"), what's here is still extraordinary in its power.
After all, if you can't smile to the hits here, you're probably too old or old enough to have gone deaf. "Stand!," "Thank You (Fallettinme Be Micelf Agaon)" and "Dance To The Music" are still guaranteed crowd pleasers, and the non/lesser-hits like "You Can Make It" and "Sing A Simple Song" will pack the party. Which is the cool thing about this Greatest Hits. Stone may have had a little gas left in the tank, but this album was released at a peak moment in his creative timeline. You can pop it in and it rings joyously from beginning to end, holding together like a whole album and not just a collection of singles. To this day, it remains a classic time capsule for creativity in American Music.
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