RIP Stone and Wilson

It's not often you lose two absolute titans in the space of a couple days, let alone a couple guys that a good chunk of the population may have already thought were dead. So of course it could fix the dry blog spell. These were two troubled geniuses in an industry where "genius" is thrown around too much and "trouble" is manufactured way too easily.

I came to both Sly Stone and Brian Wilson late. Obviously both were all over oldies radio and I knew their hits by heart, but I didn't see why The Family Stone was important until later, and I didn't "get" the Beach Boys' most artistically successful period until the songs were dragged out of that oldies radio and experienced in the context of the whole Pet Sounds album. When you get into stuff like the Elephant 6 groups, or Jens Lekman, or any number of "baroque pop" acts, you start to realize that he's the wellspring.

As for Sly… on a visceral, purely emotional level I never felt him the way I felt James Brown, but many years ago I bought a used record of There's a Riot Goin' On and I guess I was ready for it. There are weird drum machines, odd textures, entire songs filtered so there's barely any high end — it's experimental in a way that even the Beatles or Stevie Wonder didn't do. And it's funky as hell, played by a mixed-race, mixed-gender group.

It's sad that both of these guys, even though they were highly appreciated in their time, went through at least 6 or 7 levels of Dante's Hell (which circle is "Shortenin' Bread"?), but they seemed to settle into some comfortable elder-statesman status later in life.