Dance to the Music. Everyday People. Thank You (Falettinme Be Mice Elf Agin). Joyous, explosive, utopian funk that made you believe things could be different. They played Woodstock at 3:30 AM and woke everybody up. Sly was on top of the world.

Then came There's a Riot Goin' On -- a dark, murky, drugged-out masterpiece recorded mostly by Sly alone in a studio on a Teac 4-track, overdubbing himself into oblivion. The utopian had cracked. Family Affair hit #1 anyway. The band dissolved. Sly descended into addiction and became a recluse. But those records -- the early joy and the later wreckage -- are two halves of the same American story. The dream. And what happened to it.

Sly & the Family Stone were Black and white, male and female, funk and rock and psychedelia all at once. Then the utopia crumbled and Sly made There's a Riot Goin' On. The dream and what happened to it.