Call me cliché... an old romantic... or just simply silly, but there are lyrics I  live by.  Don't get me wrong... lyrics about the beauty and sweetness of love are, at best, half-truths (I'm so diplomatic!), but there are those lyrics which ring so true you just can't ignore its profound absoluteness.    The lyric quoted above is one such truth, and it's author is none other than the profoundly absolute poet/songwriter  Sly Stone!

Looking back... we all reveled in the acknowledgment of "Underdog", and it was definitely "Hot Fun In The Summertime" while we "Dance To The Music". "Stand" was the ultimate "four corners" (it was a dance, okay? :)) tune.  Sly and the Family Stone kept us on the dance floor well into the early seventies, and the masses loved it.  Then one day I heard the lyric "I'm never lost cause I know I will be found" from "Luv N Haight", and from that moment on I recognized the lyrical genius of this brother! 

For those of us who didn't get the clue, he spelled it all out for us in "Poet".  Alas, it was a time when the lyrics started getting "too deep" and people wrote the message off to Sly being an egomaniac or some sh*t.  The album "There's a Riot Going On" was much more than the jammin' "Family Affair", the riot was going on in Sly's heart, mind, and soul and he had the genius and talent to write about it.  The masses just didn't have the savvy to see the brilliance or the truth and wanted the old Sly to make us dance.

Sly continued to express and expand his brilliance with the albums "Fresh" and "Small Talk".  These masterpieces were far too deep for the masses to get the message.  Most critics attributed his "new style" (they missed the revolution and evolution and called it new)  to drugs and mourned the loss of a musical genus gone mad by way of chemicals... THEY JUST DIDN'T GET IT!   When you're as brilliant as Sly, one may need drugs to keep  grounded... perhaps to maintain the level of insanity to deal with this madness called  life.

"High On You" got us back on the dance floor for a reprieve of "the way things used to be", but when Sly failed to make the comeback to the good ol' days complete,  the critics and masses fell into mournfulness once again.  Damit!  They STILL don't get it!