I Want to Take You Higher_ The Life and Times of Sly & the Family Stone - Jeff Kaliss [74]
The resulting profile of Sly appeared in the Los Angeles Times on January 9. A couple of days later, Neal and Mario conveyed Sly and his live-in girlfriend, Shay, down the coast to Anaheim in a costly rented motor home, in which Sly was able to continue to work out on a keyboard. Despite the Times story, his imminence was to be kept secret from his fans till the last minute. I made my own way to Anaheim, curious about how Sly would do it, almost two decades since his last foreshortened gig at the Las Palmas in L. A.
At the House of Blues, adjacent to Disneyland in Anaheim, a sizeable crowd was kept waiting an hour and a half on the evening of January 13 for the start of what had been billed as the Family Stone show. Just like old times. "They're very patient," Dawn Elder-D'Agostino, a regular at the venue, remarked to me. "If it was a punk crowd, they'd be raving." She added, "You don't see many crowds that are this diverse," in reference to the multiethnic, multigenerational audience. There were younger neo-hippies and designer-leather-jacketed Hollywood cognoscenti, but also a large portion of pre-punk Baby Boomers, happy to groove during their wait to a succession of funky songs played over the house system. Also in the throng were the twins Arno and Edwin Konings, who'd rewarded themselves for their continuing research on Sly by flying in from Holland, just for the concert. Positioned right up against the stage was a wise-looking lady in a wheelchair, sporting a flower in her graying hair. She was Serena-Marie Diflipo, Sly's one-time drug counselor and long-time informal advisor. They were all listening to the recorded sounds coming over the house system, of those funkmeisters who'd preceded Sly ("Sex Machine," James Brown), his contemporaries ("Atomic Dog," George Clinton; "Got to Give It Up," Marvin Gaye), and a few of the many he'd influenced ("Nasty Girl," Prince with Vanity; "Jungle Boogie," Kool & the Gang). Sometime around ten o'clock, the revelers were advised to "Put your hands together for Sly & the Family Stone." This heralded, to the sound of "Dance to the Music," the appearances of Vet, dressed in a three-quarter-length white jacket and gold boots, Skyler Jett, the designated male vocalist, wearing a leather jacket and leather pants, and Lisa Stone, Rose's daughter and Sly's niece, looking slim and lovely in an airy outfit. Cynthia, the only player lateraling between Jerry's and Vet's bands, also took the stage with three other horn players, one of them Pat Rizzo, who'd partnered with and then replaced Jerry in the original group. Four string and rhythm players completed Vet's lineup. But there was no sign of her celebrated sibling, and not even any confirmation of his proximity. Yet.
Through a string of nine tunes from the original Sly & the Family Stone songbook and a couple from Vet's lither days with Little Sister, Skyler acted as a sort of barker to the crowd, demanding, "How many people know this song?" and "How many people got Sly Stone records out there?" Skyler also mimicked the chuckle from the closing bars of "Sing a Simple Song," an odd affectation, since Sly's original chuckle had been an act of unrehearsed spontaneity (a reaction to Larry's apparently improvised lyric, "livin, lovin', overdubbin"'), and was not meant to be reproduced. In other aspects, the arrangements of this new Family Stone seemed intent on retrofitting the classic hits with the trappings of neo-soul and jazz. It was fun, however, and well-received by the assembled.
After the eleventh number, "Everybody Is a Star," Skyler reminded everybody that "this is a historical night, y'all!" And then the real star himself finally shuffled out onto the stage, and displayed a credible reaction to the rapt crowd. "I don't know whether any of you are as