Sly Stone has a way with words. Anyone who can use language like Sly does to conceptualize a solution to a problem has my undying respect. Sly formed the first racially-mixed band. His smiling, whirling mass of flashing color danced in the aisles on The Ed Sullivan Show. He is talented beyond measure. And he was royally cheated out of his rightfully due writer royalties for which lawsuits ensued almost forty years later. Besides the systemic and requisite problems bands of that era faced — sex, drugs, and rock-and-roll do take their tolls — Sly constantly got pressure from the Black Panthers to make his message more militant. After all, their “All power to the people” lacked punch and they needed a song they could sing when they marched. Of course, as good Socialists, the Panthers used force and intimidation as their first go-to leverages. But what was worse, and what all artists should Continue reading Sly Stone, Race Relations, Trump Inauguration.→