sly stone

as jam-meister lee allen pointed out last night, "if you want me to stay" was _not_ composed by his beloved red hot chili peppers, but rather by sylvester stewart a.k.a. sly stone, a psychedelic soul originator who inadvertently, perhaps, answered the musical question "what would hendrix have done if he hadn't checked out the year after woodstock?" by descending into a coke-induced miasma after dropping there's a riot goin' on, a true testimonial to the death of the hipi dream and surely one of the best albs of the then-new decade, in 1971. now he's back on the boards, his canon has been reissued, and he's ripe for rehabilitation if the young bloods only know where to look.