Previous to that, I'd heard the greatest hits. Stand! is also one of
my favorite Sly songs. However, Stand! isn't my favorite Sly album,
and it has nothing to do with any of the reasons you mentioned.
As I stated in that other post, I prefer A Whole New Thing and Life
to Stand! Why, you ask? Because those are his more "experimental" records
and that's what Sly really wanted to do.


After Sly dropped A Whole New Thing, his label told him he was too left.
So he said, "aight, I got something for that ass" and came back with
Dance To The Music. Now this song was catchy and radio friendly yet
still defied conventions.. something Sly loved doing, musically. So he
gave them what they wanted and also got to do what he wanted.

Now, riding on the commercial success of DTTM, he went back left with
Life. We open with one of my favorite Sly joints in Dynamite.
Experimental, rock-ish yet funky... But very LEFT, especially for an
R&B artist. One of my favorite Sly songs though.. the shit just HITS me.
There's also stuff here like "I'm An Animal", "Chicken", "Jane Is A
Groupie", "Into My Own Thing" etc.
This album is very similar to A Whole New Thing in its out-of-the-box
stylings. I love it when Sly takes it there, but this album didn't
do the numbers. Again, he was being too experimental for radio.

So, fuck it, back to doing it for the people... and we have Stand!
The amazing thing about Sly is he was so musically gifted that he could
make hits whenever he felt like it. You want big hits? Aight. It's
nothing.

Then drugs take over and he's scrapping songs left and right, just
completely in his own zone, Larry bounces but Sly was probably too high
to notice. We get TARGO, which sounds like it came from Sly's subconscious
mind. Listening to this album is like hearing what goes on in Sly's
head. Personally, that's why I enjoy it so much. I get more from
that album that I would get from a personal journal of his. Fuck what
you heard, Spaced Cowboy is BASED music from the 70's.

But without going on forever, that's the short version of why I prefer
AWNT, Life, and TARGO over Stand! As I stated before, I love Stand!,
but I just love the others more.