Toby Pazner of The Olympians on Sly & The Family Stone – A Whole New Thing

A timely release from The Olympians hits this week. The band’s new album finds them exploring a bouquet of swoonworthy orchestral soul. Toby Pazner, along with the assembled Olympians, turns Greco-Roman myth into soaring swells of strings and horn stabs, dipped in a ‘70s color palette. In conjunction with the new album, Toby sat down to dig into a past treasure that’s made its mark on his own songwriting. Dip in as Toby explores the often overlooked debut from Sly and the Family Stone.

“All the musicians I was growing up with were constantly finding records that we loved.  A friend and bass Player Nick Movshon burned a couple songs off this record onto a CD about 25 years ago and I was hooked,” recalls Paznner.  “We all are into Sly Stone but this one is off the radar because it doesn’t have any hits on it.  It doesn’t have the more popular music elements on it that made Sly famous later on. It was described by the label as a failure when it came out, I believe, but it is truly an original piece of work.  It found life later through hip-hop samples, but it still remains relatively unknown in Sly’s catalogue.” 

“From the very beginning Sly was experimenting with new sounds,” notes Toby.  “It was his first real record but he took risks that he didn’t take until much later on when he was very established.  It just is a very mature record for a first crack at it.  Reminds me to always try to mix it up; change the rhythms, change the chords, change the feels, and don’t be afraid to try something new even if it doesn’t work. Always mix it up, don’t copy what everyone around you is doing and hopefully the listener feels what you are doing.”

As he mentioned, Sly is a long cemented legend, but this is a record that’s too often shuttled away from the story of Sly Stone. It’s nice to revisit here with Toby’s urging. Unlike a lot of gems in this column, this one is relatively easy to track down. Digitally it remains on services, but if you want to slip it onto the turntable, the mid ‘70s reissues are reasonable and there’s a 2016 reissue that came out on Music On Vinyl. Pairs well with The Olympians’ new one, In Search of a Revival, out today from Daptone.

Support the artist. Buy it HERE.