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A long time in the making, with all the attendant stories about Sly's non-appearances, being fined for not producing, accusations and denials...but it's here and it's Sly as before creating a lot of almost physical excitement. Listen to "Thank You For Talkin' To Me Africa" and that will take you higher in your seat. Good times are to be had listening to the fun "(You Caught Me) Smilin'." There's some put-on here but also a lot that makes Sly the in-person rave that he is.
- Hit Parader, 4/72.
Bonus Reviews!
Despairing, courageous, and very hard to take, this is one of those rare albums whose whole actually does exceed the sum of its parts. Bleak yet sentient songs of experience like "Runnin' Away" and "Family Affair" lend emotional and aesthetic life to the music's dead spaces; bracing alterations of vocal register, garish stereo separations, growls and shrieks and murmurs, all the stuff that made Sly's greatest hits the toughest commercial experiments in rock and roll history, are dragged over nerve-wracking rhythms of enormous musical energy. The inspiration may be Sly's discovery that the pot of gold at the end of the rainbow doesn't mean shit, but what's expressed is the bitterest ghetto pessimism. Inspirational Verse: "TIME they say is/The answer/But I don't believe it." Original title: Africa Talks to You. Length of title track: 0:00. A+
- Robert Christgau, Christgau's Record Guide, 1981.
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- Bill Shapiro, Rock & Roll Review: A Guide to Good Rock on CD, 1991.
The party always ends, the drugs take their toll, and things fall apart. In the late sixties, thanks to their spirited records and their filmed performance at Woodstock, Sylvester Stewart and his San Francisco band the Family Stone epitomized optimistic egalitarianism. Their greatest hits -- "Dance to the Music," "Everyday People," "Stand!," and "Thank You (Falettinme Be Mice Elf Agin)" -- were as celebratory and openhearted as any in pop music. These were songs about unlimited possibility for oneself and tolerance for others; these were love songs in dozens of ways.
Sly's drug problems were transforming him into something of an unsure show on the arena scene (among major performers, only George "No-Show" Jones earned a worse reputation), and the physical and spiritual dissatisfaction such habits represented were a major part of his 1971 album There's a Riot Goin' On. Sly was far from the end of his rope -- subsequent records suggest that he could find nooses in all corners -- but it was clear that Sly's intention was to make a record that was nothing so much unexpected as off-putting. Yet he accomplished both. Desolation and anger, sadnesses triumphed over in his earlier albums, were at the core of There's a Riot Goin' On, and coming from someone known for his ability to dance over all sorrows, the record shook many listeners awake. And although the LP peaked at Number One, it also scared many away.
The deliberate beats underline the sense of violation of There's a Riot Goin' On: Basses burp at odd intervals, drums stumble and stutter, and rhythm guitars sometimes drop out of the mix completely. The big hit from the record, "Family Affair," at least partly a play on the name of the band, provided a perfect extended metaphor for the sorrow and ravages that Sly suddenly recognized around him. His shouts before the fade, a brief arousal from his sad stupor, sound like the cries Al Green was perfecting a continent away, but this was the dark side of Green's romantic longing. There was nothing warm about the performance: "Nobody wants to be left out" was its key slurred line. Even more muddy, moving and ominous was "Thank You for Talkin' to Me Africa," a downer remake of "Thank You (Falettinme Be Mice Elf Agin)" that remains incredibly influential to this day in its call to address untouched issues in unexpected ways, no matter the costs (it cost Sly his career). Bands like Public Enemy and N.W.A. are this scary only in their dreams.
- Jimmy Guterman, The Best Rock 'n' Roll Records of All Time, 1992.
Sly gets darker and funkier. By Riot, Sly was a bona fide superstar. His personal behavior became more erratic, and his songwriting became more eclectic and adventurous. There is no precedent for such a record; songs were conceived from the rhythm up, and often left in sparse, naked, seemingly semi-finished form. Sly's earlier hit,"Thank You (Falettinme Be Mice Elf Agin)" is slowed down, turned inside out, and retitled "Thank You for Talkin' to Me Africa." The result is an extremely personal stab at exorcism that takes the listener through the new reality of Black and White America in the early '70s. Mesmerizing. The album's most accessible songs, "Family Affair" and "Runnin' Away," were R&B and pop hit singles, the former reaching the #1 spot on both charts. * * * * *
- Rob Bowman, The All-Music Guide to Rock, 1995.
Sly's epic, angry and sarcastic masterpiece, There's a Riot Goin' On, is a bitter, snarling diatribe that presaged his downfall. * * * *
- Joel Selvin, Musichound Rock: The Essential Album Guide, 1996.
It's said that Bobby Womack, Miles Davis and Herbie Hancock played on this million dollar production but no one's quite sure of their place -- not even the Family's drummer Gregg Errico -- since singer, frontman and main producer Sly Stone was totally drugged-up for its two-year duration. Although he worked more in dance, Sly Stone partly picked up the crossover baton from Hendrix -- they were due to gig together the week Hendrix overdosed -- with the stoned Mr. Stone taking things to their psychedelic soul-rock conculsion on Riot..., an album peppered with bass thumps, screams, shouts, abrupt backing vocals and yodelling. Sly's previous disc Stand had sold millions and the bizarre Riot... soon eclipsed it, going gold within weeks. The hit singles that came from it were ambiguous pieces: the poignant, drum-machined "Family Affair," which sounded like a slice from some funky radio soap, and the wistfully breezy "Runnin' Away." Both remain elusively different from anything recorded before or since -- soul with irony. Some of it, especially the intriguing shuffle of "Riot..." itself, turned out to be lo-fi stuff, but the real miracle is that it got finished at all -- the fact that it's stone great was, is, a real bonus.
- Collins Gem Classic Albums, 1999.
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There's a Riot Goin' On was chosen as the 99th greatest album of all time by the editors of Rolling Stone magazine in Dec. 2003.
- Rolling Stone, 12/11/03.
Sly And The Family Stone's upbeat multiracial rock 'n' soul reflected the optimism of the Civil Rights movement through the 1960s; but as that optimism withered away into bitter radicalism, so Stone underwent a similarly paiful spiritual journey. Darkness was no stranger to Sly's Day-Glo fusion-pop; "Hot Fun In The Summertime" slyly sang of the Watts riots. But worsening civil unrest and the carnage of Vietnam, combined with his fragile emotional state and a mess of drugs, prompted him to deliver this haunted State of the Nation address.
This album was the product of endless sessions and overdubs, a coke-wired Stone wearing out the tapes. Rumor has it Miles Davis contributed some trumpet to the album, and live drums struggle for space with primitive drum machines; bass squelches freely about, loose and predatory; wah-wah guitars slash.
The heavyweight funk that dominates the album -- hazy, spooked, stoned -- lends an extra poignancy to the album's wistful slivers of pop, "Runnin' Away" and "You Caught Me Smilin'" -- moments of tenderness, relief from the defeated, angry funk. Previous Sly hits are referenced, pointedly the "'Everyday People' looking forward to a simple beating" on "Time," or a death-rattle crawl through previous hit "Thank You" was a closer.
A painfully accurate diagnosis of America's malaise and Sly's own spiritual disintegration, it alienated much of the fanbase, and signaled Sly's subsequent drug-fueled descent. It remains, however, a starkly brilliant album, a bruised, funky howl of soul under pressure.
- Stevie Chick, 1001 Albums You Must Hear Before You Die, 2005.
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