Sly & the Family Stone "Stand!" [1969]

That's OK, feel free to sit... unless you're a "midget standing tall," that is. Cross-"fro"ver soul group Sly & the Family Stone -- think the Staples Singers with WAY more drugs backstage -- scored several hits with this schizophrenic effort that's part major-label Steppin Fetchit and part Black Panther paranoia (witness "Somebody's Watching You" and especially "Don't Call Me Nigger, Whitey," which I think was a reworked cover of the German anthem "Don't Call Me Nazi, Jew Boy"). Chalk this up to the extreme psychotropic confusion of the late 60s, when everything seemed to carry the splotchy sheen of a Jackson Pollock light show. For sure, Sly took himself higher during and after the success of this record -- apparently into orbit, when he'd be too high to bother showing up to his own gigs. Present and plugging away on his frog-croaking keyboard here, though, Sly deserves to shoulder the blame for giving George Clinton the idea to self-medicate into obliteration before turning on the recording equipment. Thus we can trace most embarrassingly drug-addled soul and dance music of the 70s -- which means close to 100% of it -- back to this abomination, the LP equivalent of a hippie party gone on too long, where the hosts argue over who needs to tell the black guys to go home.