There’s a Riot Goin’ On

I liked a lot of this; especially the last track, a slowed down version of "Thank You (Falettinme Be Mice Elf Agin)". Disliked Space Cowboy a lot, but overall here more to like than not. A strong 3

While I enjoyed their prior album, Stand! I was still anxious that I wouldn't "get" this album, being as I don't consider myself a funk version at all, I openly admit that, and my partner, who admittedly has not heard Stand! is not a fan of this release. However, I'm happy to say I quite like this release, and while I'm sure I still don't "get" it fully, I do at least enjoy it quite a bit. The groove within the grooves of the vinyl don't always get me funking, other than some great bass playing, but what I truly appreciate here is the melodies. See, my issue with someone like James Brown was always that I felt every song tended to feel like a carbon copy of the last, but here you can tell songs apart extremely well, and I'd even say there's some tracks here that focus mostly on being catchy pop tunes, such as Smilin' and Runnin' Away, and do an incredibly good job of adding a solid chunky texture to these songs to really make them stand out, and I think it rounds out the album marvelously. It does still have my usual qualms with this sort of stuff such as some of the tracks going on too long (this could easily be a flat forty minutes) or just the fact like songs like Family Affair don't hit the same as they did some fifty years ago, but they're more nitpicks than anything, and I totally get why this would be considered a vital part of the music canon.

No está mal. Debería volverlo a escuchar. Me ha sorprendido Runnin' Away, pero no puedo decir que sea imprescindible para mí.

smooth and funky.

There's A Riot Goin' On is an okay album at best. The songs all sounded fine and the singer did have a cool voice at points but the songs did sound really samey outside of a few tracks. I also don't get why silence needed its own track especially when it was just 4 seconds long. Beyond that, i don't really have too much to say about this album
Best Song: Runnin' Away
Worst Song: Just Like a Baby

Tough one to rate. I can appreciate how good the funk parts of this are, and some of the bass lines were really great. But I really didn't like it. Had a hard time finishing it.

I just don’t really know, but I think I’m at a 3.

For my tastes and my sensibilities, I think I came into this album with the wrong expectations, which is to say an evolution of the funky, polished, catchy idealism that was present on Stand!, and that expectation broke itself down very quickly. This album is a bit darker, a bit less polished, a bit less “catchy” in the sense that there’s definitely no Everyday People-esque songs on this album, and almost certainly a lack of the idealism from Stand!.

I tried to shift myself into the mood once it became apparent, but to me, there’s a sort of ethereal emptiness to this album that stopped me from ever really getting hooked in. Even with such funky instrumentation, the rougher, obviously re-recorded, re-dubbed, and re-taped vocals kept pulling me away from that instrumentation in a way that I think negatively affected my perception of the individual songs; they all felt like demo tapes to me. As an entire album, I think the looser style of the instrumentation here is very effectively realized, and with the context of the drug usage and loneliness that affected the production of this album, it’s really kind of a miracle that this exists as coherently as it does.

However, I just don’t think all of those elements hit on any of my sensibilities. There is something kind of intoxicating about this album though – I can see myself coming back to listen again and try to understand it better, but I also get the feeling this album is never going to fully click for me, and that’s where I’m stuck with a 3.

Ooooo, shit. I’ve listened to this in the past few months, but this hit so good today. The tones, the arrangements, everything. So, so good.

Ihan hyvää funkkista, mut ei nouse ihan neloseen asti.

Best thing about this site is getting me to listen to artists that I'm "aware of" but have never really "listened to". Funky stuff here.

Hell yea. funk and soul, groove and bop.

It's funk. It's soul. It swings. It's good.

Funky. Not bad, I just kept waiting for this one to end

a very fun album but I wouldnt usually listen to the genre

I felt bad about dismissing the last couple funks on the list as Weather Channel music, so it was really refreshing to draw this and be reminded that there's good stuff out there that is both unmistakably funk, and able to transcend that association. Still, I'm really itching for "Maggot Brain" to show up on the rotation, because so far no other group has matched how big and bold Funkadelic went with "One Nation Under A Groove"

I didn't realize that this was a real band. Had never heard anything by them. Big meh.

Really enjoyable album, I found that there weren't too many standout moments though.

F U N K

Setting aside all the profound sociopolitical circumstances out of which this album arose, this music is deep funk, so deep Sly can yodel and make it work, make it as black as the space that cowboy is floating in, so deep you can just fall into it and never stop falling. Amazing stuff.

Family Affair is great. The rest of the album is good, could be shorter, not quite a 5 star album for me.