riffs

Marcella Detroit on Sly and the Family Stone's "Hot Fun in the Summertime"

I vaguely remember hearing this for the first time in the school cafeteria. It was lunchtime in Detroit in the late Sixties. It was only later on, when I was a musician and considering my influences, that I realised how important this song was to me.

It's mid-tempo and it has to be one of the funkiest songs ever recorded. There's a lot of pseudo-funk around these days - mainly mechanical stuff masquerading as funk and doing it without flexibility and syncopation. These mid-period Sly records really were funky in the true meaning of the word. They weren't just playing on the beat - they laid back right inside it. No machine can ever convey this amount of raw sexuality.