“I mostly ignored the Grateful Dead at first, had them shrugged off as brain damaged hippies or whatever. But then I heard some of their less than normal stuff, like the Blues For Allah suite found at the end of the album of the same name. That was hard to ignore. Hard not to embrace as genuinely cool and deep progressive music of high attainment. A trip to a place that no exists on no map, but it’s there regardless, and necessary. You had to come here, with Allah himself sitting right next to you at the edge … of all eternity.” (Philip Random)

Sly and Family Stone’s There’s A Riot Goin’ On is one of the best albums period, from any genre, any era. A seamless flow of barely post-1960s truth-telling, most of it rather grim. Africa Talks To You [the asphalt jungle] is the strange dark heart of it – not a song so much as an excursion, a side trip to a multi-dimensional galaxy that’s equal parts heavier than a planet, lighter than air. And yes, that is a drum machine keeping things in line, a good decade before it was the hip thing to do.