Track Of The Day: Sly & the Family Stone - Thank You (Falettinme Be Mice Elf Agin) (Epic)

 

I’ve just finished reading the eponymously-titled autobiography of Sly Stone. It was good. However, as with most autobiographies of musicians, there is a sense of the whole work being a collection of sequential anecdotes. After what he went though the most amazing thing is that he had any memory left. This is one of his best. Maybe the first time a bass was ever plucked so specifically and disco before it existed. I think the video is important because these recorded TV performances very much recall a time and place. Even though the UK already had its fair share of music-based tv, nothing compares to the technicolour dream of American band performance in the late sixties and early seventies. I don’t know if this particular video is mimed or done live, but it doesn’t really matter. it’s memorable and, as far as an example of a group of musicians standing in front of the cameras is concerned, never bettered.