What's on your mind?
sly stone, emma stone, rabbit holes, metacognition, and vampire weekend
What’s on your mind?
I’ve been thinking about a lot lately, and the most recent catalyst was that new Vampire Weekend song. Ever since I heard “Capricorn” while driving in the rain to Bub & Grandma’s for breakfast (highly reco the Greens Egg Cheese), my cognition feels like one long, continuous rabbit hole. The entire song itself is catchy, and lead singer Ezra Koenig’s lyrics are poetically evocative. The structure is soft and languid before it starts introducing mechanical tones that feel sludge-like. What sticks out to me specifically is the major harmonic piano chord in the first chorus that morphs into bursts of white noise with steely guitars reminiscent of Sleigh Bells during the second and third choruses - it’s weirdly soothing.
As I drove in the rain and pictured the delicious breakfast sandwich I was about to consume, I also mentally tracked the band’s evolution from precocious Ivy League hipsters to experimental, adult NEW YORK BAND (capital letters for emphasis). The sounds they transmit, only made possible by an extremely creative imagination, are one of the main reasons they have staying power (and this sentiment is coming from someone who doesn’t have VW on their Top 20 list).
When you really think about it, it’s pretty wild that every song’s sounds are entirely made up in Koenig’s head. He hears the sounds in his mind before he translates them physically. I can’t help but imagine how the band’s recording process must have gone - Koening playing the rest of the band naked demos and then brainstorming additional ideas before layering those sounds on top of each other. I get lost in this thought, picturing Ezra at the mixing console, sliding buttons and twisting knobs like they do in the movies, and then I suddenly realize that I’ve arrived at the restaurant and need to secure some primo parking while sheets of rain continue to hit my windshield.
This all got me thinking, about thinking, which is actually a thing:
Metacognition - the process of thinking about how we think and learn.
Come to think of it, I think about that a lot.
“Thinking” is absolutely mind-boggling, the idea that we can have an idea. We can see, hear, smell, taste, feel all of life within ourselves, as an abstract form. We can travel to the past and see into the future. Conscious thought is perhaps the one thing that differentiates us from every other animal and species on this planet (I won’t be so bold to say universe - the truth is out there, folks). Different works of art, of course, have had different takes on this. The most recent example that comes to mind is Poor Things, in which Emma Stone plays Bella Baxter, a Frankenstein-type-woman with a baby’s brain who then develops knowledge, intellect, awareness, and a soul over the course of the film’s delightful 2 hour plus running time. Knowledge begets awareness. Awareness begets a conscience. And it all begins with a thought.
I’ve been curious lately about what people spend their time thinking about rather than what they’ve been doing; what they’re trying to figure out, sort through, and move past; what captures their imagination, and what takes up space rent-free in their head. After all, the things we think about are often the most important things to us, even if what we are thinking about isn’t really important at all. Rarely, though, do we express these inner thoughts in outer environments.
I wish I could have asked Sly Stone what was on his mind when he was making 1971’s There’s A Riot Goin’ On. I want to know why he went from the simplistic joys of “Dance to the Music” and “Everyday People” to the sludge-driven, overdubbed masterpieces “Family Affair” and “Just Like A Baby.” What was he thinking about that made him make such a career reversal, a total 180? How did he go from some of the catchiest, happiest soul/funk hits of the late 60s to this drugged-out, hazy, slow paranoid nightmare of the 70s?
There are few theories about this. If you don’t know Sly’s story, I suggest reading his his fantastic memoir Thank You For Lettin Me Be Mice Elf Agin and listening to this podcast episode between Questlove and the book’s writer Ben Greenman*. Both pieces of content try to answer the same two questions: Who is Sly Stone, and more importantly, why? This investigation only surfaced more questions than answers.
I won’t do Sly any justice to try to sum up his importance except to say that he is literally one of the most beguiling geniuses that we have ever had in music. Born Sylvester Stewart, Sly was the first person to create a mixed-gender and mixed-race band. In the two year span between 1967 to 1969, he crafted a compendium of soul/funk pop masterpieces like the aforementioned songs as well as “Hot Fun in the Summertime,” “Stand!,” “I Want to Take You Higher,” and so many more. By the summer of ‘69, Sly & the Family Stone were the biggest band in the world, especially because of their headlining performance at Woodstock, and the documentary that helped them reach a wider audience.
Something changed, though, after Sly & the Family Stone played Woodstock; after Sly achieved all the fame and glory that he ever wanted; after ‘Sylvester Stewart’ took a step back while ‘Sly Stone’ moved forward.
In between the ponderings, pressure, and procrastination to deliver a new album (which resulted in the record label releasing the seminal and joyful Greatest Hits compilation, considered the polar opposite to Riot, much to Sly’s consternation), Sly created in his mind and then laid on track the deeply influential and forward-thinking masterpiece that is There’s A Riot Goin’ On. He utilized drum tracks, worked with Billy Preston and Bobby Womack instead of the Family Stone, overdubbed the shit out of his vocals, and ended up building the framework for funk music, all in the midst of a drug stupor full of cocaine, PCP, guns, bodyguards, women, and whatever else Los Angeles offered at that time (this tale runs parallel to what the city had done to David Bowie during the making of 1976’s Station to Station, but that’s a story for another day).
Sly has been on my mind a lot lately because of research I have had to do for work. To really dive into his mindset, I bought nearly his entire discography on vinyl. I have to admit, I was shocked at how many albums I had never heard because they never crossed over into the mainstream. He has so many incredible songs, but the hits hog the spotlight. The man is a prodigy who crafts inexplicable sounds that only he can hear in his head. Just like Ezra Koenig. (Dare I say, Better than Ezra, though? I’m sorry, I had to.)
There are nuanced parallels between Sly Stone and Ezra Koenig, like the soothing industrial tones that appear on “Just Like A Baby” and “Capricorn,” respectively. However, there are also the obvious dissimilarities between the two. I could never and would never compare them to each other, though, because they are incomparable. They seemingly have nothing in common, yet somehow, they both ended up in my stream of consciousness. I wonder how that happened, and why my thoughts flowed like that from one to the other. I wonder what Sly was thinking about as it all went down. I wonder what Ezra thinks of Sly.
Most of all, I wonder what they’re both thinking about right now.
Other things I’ve been thinking about lately:
The Curse - have you watched it yet? I’m still trying to figure it out, but I did figure out, at least, that I loved it.
Pro-tip: Vintage clothing stores are an untapped market for crate digging because many of them will often have a record section.
That I’ve been buying too many records lately, and I should probably start selling some in an official capacity.
How to get my cats to stop scratching my speakers and jumping on every surface. Any tips?
How record collections are reflections of their collectors and representations of moments in a person’s life. Exploring life through record collecting is a line that keeps repeating in my head, and I think this is the direction that my collection, and by extension, this Substack, are heading in.
This Sly Stone playlist I made, especially the first song “Sylvester.”
That I should give thanks. If you’ve read this far, you’re a real one. Thank you.
That’s it for this issue of First Pressing. Hope you enjoyed reading. Until then, happy spinning :)
Kadrian
P.S. What’s on your mind?
*a previous iteration of this newsletter mistakenly called the author Ben Greenspan, which was called out and corrected (thank you, Jami!)
Love the Sly bio. (Ben *Greenman is the author. He also wrote "Dig If You Will The Picture," which is an amazing Prince bio.) Thanks for compiling a great playlist!
Where Is My Mind?
Nice writing