It's all about approval
by Bob on August 2, 2007
For the last two months, I have been thinking in the back of my mind, what Sly Stone said before he and the Family Stone played some music at Woodstock (actually, offically, The Woodstock Music and Art Fair) in 1969. I was there and I couldn't remember. No one else remembered. It coulnd't be looked up easily since all I remembered that Sly said was "It's all about ...". It's all about something. But I couldn't remember what that something was that he had said. Google didn't help. Nothing helped. So I had to rely on my memory taking its time to come forward, because the harder I tried to remember to 1969 at Woodstock, the more it didn't work remembering. So I just let it percolate.
And WHAM ! Today whilst walking on Washington Street in downtown Boston, right in front of a theatre, it hit me. I remembered what Sly said. I thought "that's brilliant" and easy to remember so I didn't write it down. Off I went to my next place of the day near Park Street and sure enough after talking to some people in an office, I went to think of what Sly said and POOF it was gone from the front of my mind. That was upsetting after a couple of months of percolation.
So I had to let it percolate again. Remember that seeming universal oracles liek Google and other search engines didn't answer my query with the right answer. Although, I did manage to find out that Sly was in the current issue of Vanity Fair magazine ! Oh well. Onwards.
So I am sitting in the university library writing some correspondence to academic, music industry, and other friends, and reading: "Shamanism" by Mircea Eliade, "The Golden Bough" by Sir James Frazer, "The Spirits Are Drunk: Comparative Approaches to Chinese Religion" by Dr. Jordan Paper, "The Secret" by Rhonda Byrne, and "Chinese Mythology" by Anne Birrell, when SHAZAM ! I remember what Sly said at Woodstock in 1969. This time I wrote it down.
Sly Stone said that "It's all about approval".
It hit me right on the face when he said it on stage. It seemed so important and empirical and relevant to the human condition, especially in 1969.
But it's true now, too.
Everything in life would seem to hinge on approval of deity (otherwise known as approbation of the Almighty), our parent, elders, children, colleagues, friends, or just even ourselves.
Seeking approval is a complicated psychological dynamic. Should we seek approval at all from others or just carry on ourselves ? Is that even in itself a mini-approval from ourselves ? Does it pre-suppose approval of others ? Does it subsume it ? Does it consume it ?
A musician yearns for the approval of his audience, as an act of closure and joy to a performance. Bob Dylan had a hard time with that at the Newport Folk Festival when he played electric for the first time in the early 1965 there. Approval was not there. People tried to pull the plugs. He was boo'd off the stage. He had to be convinced to come back on an play acoustic guitar. Joan Baez convinced him to go back on stage. People were not ready for electric guitar mixing with folk music. That was blasphemous to folk purists and the folk tradition, it was said. Bob did go electric soon thereafter, and this gave rise to Jimi Hendrix and even The Byrds folk-rock.
See, it's all about approval. But in Bob's case, he didn't wait for the approval to keep on keepin' on as he once said. ("The only thing I knew how to do was to keep on keepin' on" Bob actually phrased it).
But most people can't take that risk. That poking of one's head thrrough the clouds into the cosmos and beyond normative thought patterns and behaviour.
So, it is all about approval.
Well, Sly and the Family Stone went right into "Dance to the Music" after Sly said that at Woodstock and blew the gaskets of the festival and had eveyone at Woodstock alive and dancing and celebrating life. Hippies and Conservatives, police officers and Firemen, farmers and milkmen. They were all dancing to the music. Then Sly and the band did "I Want To Take You Higher" which really reached the stars of heaven as the whole audience joined in to say "higher", and that even was a bit tongue-in-cheek given what most people were doing at the festival. But they blew the musical lid off the festival. It was one of the high points of Woodstock.
Thanks, Sly, it is still all about approval. And when we should not seek it.
So it goes. Sly is still gigging and doing great music. We salute you, Sylvester Stewart. And Cynthia, who played great trumpet lines with him at Woodstock.