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at this store called Zebra. We go into the store and he says, `Dress my baby sister up, she's got a show to do! Dress her up like a biker!' And they did," Vet giggles. "I had on Harley-Davidson boots, the corset thing, the big baggy pants, the whole thing.... So I got back on the bike ... and when we got there, they lifted up the side of the Knitting Factory so that Sly could drive his bike in. But Sly didn't drive right in, he sat outside, and people were just everywhere, and the tears were really flowing from people, because they really thought he'd died. People were just snapping pictures, and he was just as calm and collected as he could be." Sly was taken to a closed-off booth on the Knitting Factory's second level, while his sister joined the Phunk Phamily Affair onstage. "To me, that was one of the best shows we'd ever done," she says. "And when I looked up, where Sly was, I threw him a kiss, and he was dancing away. And I thought to myself, `Dancing to his own music!' And after the show ... he said to me, `You know what, you guys play my music better than I've ever heard anyone play it in my life.' That's when he took a real interest in us."

And the wider music world seemed to be regenerating interest in Sly, or at least in what they remembered of him. Don Was, successful producer of acts as diverse as Iggy Pop, Bob Dylan, the Rolling Stones, Paula Abdul, and Waylon Jennings, positioned Sly & the Family Stone among "The Greatest Artists of All Time" in his 2004 article in Rolling Stone. Sly "is a singular folk orchestrator; Duke Ellington is probably the best reference point," Don declared, before choosing another laudatory comparison from the world of art. "As time went on, Sly started using some more dissonant colors; he became like the Cezanne of funk. It's like he took these traditional James Brown groove elements and started putting orange into the picture." Don went on to reflect on the era of his great artist's greatest hits. "The so-called revolution that was coming at the end of the Sixties: We might have lost that one, but Sly won his own personal revolution, musically and in the minds of the audience. I just hope he knows that, and maybe that he's OK with it. I hope he's not sitting around with any kind of remorse. Because by any real criteria that you could measure success, this guy is a titan."

A somewhat longer tribute to Sly and to a particular landmark album appeared in 2006 in the form of Paris-based African American pop culture critic Miles Marshall Lewis's brief but fascinating booklet There's a Riot Goin' On. Miles provided some interesting biographical info and a valuable, if questionable, perspective on the connections between Sly's music and hip-hop and between Sly's struggles and those of African Americans in general. Miles makes special mention of the influence of Sly's introduction of percussive "break beats" and of an attitude in lyrics that sounds "pretty hip-hop boastful, like LL Cool J."

Shortly into 2006, the National Academy of Recording Arts and Sciences issued a press release announcing that a special tribute to "legendary funk band" Sly & the Family Stone would take place at February's Grammy Awards ceremony at the Staples Center in Los Angeles. Guesting in the tribute would be a couple of veteran performers and a bunch of younger Grammy-nominated acts. No explanation was given of what any of the listed guests had to do with Sly and his band. But at the very least, it seemed, the Grammys would serve as an opportunity for yet another reunion of most of the members of the original Family Stone-and maybe for Sly's first public appearance since the Hall of Fame inductions thirteen years ago.

"There were lots of rehearsals," reports Jerry, "and Sly came to some of them, up in Hollywood.... [He] didn't participate too much.... He just listened. And I was really glad to see him. I said, `I love you, man,' and he goes, `I love you too, Jerry,' and I'll remember that always."

Another perspective on the rehearsal process, reported in the Los Angeles Times, described how Sly"came to a