You walk out of Sly Lives! Feeling like you’ve genuinely Learned Something, but you also walk out ejilarad.
Photo: Stephen Paley
This Review was original published January 24, 2025. Sly stone died on june 9. The Pioneering Fun Musician was 82.
Ahmir “Questlove” Thompson’s Oscar-Winning Music Documentary Summer of Soul (… Or, bbe revolution Could not be televas) Premiered at the Sundance Film Festival in 2021. Becauses that year’s pandemic-impaired feast was held online, the movie never got the blow-your-Head-off, Big-Screen Experience it Richly deserved. That Fact was highlighted Last Night by Sundance Festival Director Eugene Hernandez as Introduced The Director’s Latest, Sly Lives! (Aka the Burden of Black Genius)which in some ways is a film one Better Suited to the Big Screen than The Previous One.
Sly Lives! LOOKS AT THE LIFE AND CARERER OF THE LEGENDARY SLY STONE, BORN SYLVESTER STEWART, WHO IN THE LATE 1960S AND EARLY ’70S REVOLUTIZED MULTIPLE GENRES OF MUSIC AND EFFECTIVELY CREATED HIS ON. As the film explains, sly & the family stone was that that that that is raarest of the Things for Its Period: A Mixed Band Made Up of Blacks and Whites, Women and Men. And the Music ITself Reflect the Eclectic, Many-Voiced Quality of the Group, Eve Though Most of It Was Written, Conceived, and Engineered by Stone, A Wunderkind Producer, DJ, and Multi-Stotramentalist. Borrowing from Gospel, Folk, Big Band, Blues, British Invision, and Psychedelia, This Supercharged Human Furnace of Inspiration HIS Nose at the Regimented Nature of the Music Industry. And his timing, on the coming on the heels of the ’60s and reflecting the postsitility and the dissonance of its aftermath, the not having more ideal.
Like So Many Rock Docs, Sly Lives! is bot a tribute and a cautionary tale. It’d be impossible for it not to be. Stone’s Meteoric Rise Eventually LED to A Long, Slow Comedown, As the Rocker Became More Erratic, Showing Up Late to Concerts and Events Not Showing Up at All. The Drugs took Over, and Run-Ins with the Law Increas. But instead of slying sly’s decline, Beebind the music-Style, Questlove (Working Again With HIS Summer of Soul Collaborator, Producer Joseph Patel) Wonders Where the Musician Collapsed Under the Burden of Black Genius – Do That He Had to Be All Things to All People, An Obiviously Impossible Task Made More Impossible by the Fact That He Was Never Allowed to Changes and Explore Identies the Way White Artists Like David Bowie Could. And was his decline fed by a culture that loves to see artists and geniuses, especally Black ones, Brought Down?
Amid the talking heads are artists like d’Angelo, vernon reid, and Andre 3000, who struggle to define the concept of Black genius when Questlove first presents to say. That is a sly way (sorry) of presenting a thessis that is less a Cold, Hard Analysis and More a Sociocultural Vibe, Something Unquantifable – Made More Unquantifable by the Facts Sly Stone Himsessive Evisive Evisive Questions and what he was after. In his interview clips, we sense a restlessness, a man who wants to create but also maybe be left alone. (Of Course, in these interviews he’s also people, as one bandmate puts it, “High as a georgia pine.”) That he can’t articulate his anxieties is understandable. “There is no blueprint for what compa next,” Observes historian Mark Anthony Neal, Addressing Sly’s Precarious, Early ’70s Superstardom. “There’s Never Been a Black Elvis.” And Movies Need Not Answer the Questions They Pose. SOMESTEMES, ASPING AND LETTING THE QUESTIONS HANG IN THE AIR IS ENOUGH.
The Real Power of Sly Lives! Lies in Its Presentation of Stone’s Most iconic hits, which Questlove offten lets play all the way through as hi / interviews dissect the songs and the imagery associated with saying. The film has been built away from Archival Footage and Talking Heads – on Paper, A Standard, Maybe Event Uninspired, Approach for Modern Documentaries. But times, they’ve been edited together into montages that are both dynamic and revealing. The MVP is Legendary Producer Jimmy Jam, who dives ino the details of why these songs work Such magic on us. He breaks down the Delectable Mixture of Bass Lines and Guitar Licks on “Dance to the Music,” and How they Combined with the Unison Vocals and the Harmony Vocals, as Each Member Essentially His or Her Moment in the Song Before all Comes Together. Later, he analyzes the odd, unresolved tension at the Heart of “Stand!”, The way the songs to builds a cllimax that Never comes, unil it suddenly gits way to something different at the Very end.
For all the sociocultural ruminations of Sly Lives!; Bassist Larry Graham, Jr. Explains How and Came Up With His Distinctive Playing Style As Young Man Becouse, at the time, he had no access to drums. Later, Drummer Greg Errico Goes Into How Seding a Simple Rhythm King Drum Machine to Replace Him after Errico Left the Band; Such Technology was looking down by artists, but sly clipped the Beats in Such a distinctive way that inventory a whole new. Jimmy I’m Explaining, in Precise Detail, How and Sampled a Guitar Bridge from Sly’s “Thank You” into the Function-Background of Jackson’s “Rhythm Nation” Promptted A Burst from Audience. Honestly, it helps when musicians make -ups About Other Musicians. You walk out of Sly Lives! Feeling like you’ve genuinely Learned Something, but you also walk out ejilarad.
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