A List Of Things Thrown Five Minutes Ago

IF YOU WANT ME TO PLAY, I'LL BE AROUND TODAY: The Washington Post is reporting that reclusive soul star Sly Stone may perform at the Grammy Awards on February 8th. He has not performed publicly since 1987.

Stone is a major figure in the history of pop music. If you don't own it already, you should buy The Essential Sly & the Family Stone. As the WaPo article observes:

In its heyday, from roughly 1968 through 1971, Sly and the Family Stone created revolutionary music, an intoxicating mix of psychedelic pop, pulsating funk and social commentary. Among the first fully integrated groups on the American music scene, with blacks and whites and men and women together onstage, the seven-piece San Francisco band played the world's biggest venues while cranking out hit after cutting-edge hit.

Stone was an innovator whose work inspired Motown to find its social conscience, helped persuade Miles Davis to go electric, and ultimately laid out a blueprint for generations of black pop stars, from Prince and Michael Jackson to OutKast, D'Angelo and Lenny Kravitz.