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FULL CIRCLE This spring Epic/Legacy finally started releasing Sly and the Family Stone: The Collection, the band's seven albums complete with previously unreleased music, new liner notes, and great sound, with the final installment, Greatest Hits, to come July 24. The event had been on the horizon for some time, but like everything connected with Sly Stone, a fan was never sure when — or if, for that matter — the music would be available.

If you aren't familiar with Stone's music, get this collection and enjoy. These days it's popular to credit the Beatles, Brian Wilson, Jimi Hendrix, and a few others as the essential pioneers from that era — with no mention of Stone, who was as important as any. If you're wondering why that is, find the title track from his hugely popular 1971 album, There's a Riot Goin' On. It's on the brief side — as in zero seconds, which was Stone's idea of a joke or something. As San Francisco Chronicle writer Joel Selvin points out in the notes, the riot was going on in Stone's life.

There was a moment in the late 1970s when music fans were asking, "What happened to Sly Stone?" Time passed, and the question evolved into "Whatever happened to Sly Stone?" The answer — "I don't know" — didn't change, until one day, sadly and inevitably, the question generated only another question — "Who?" — an answer all by itself.

In the early 1980s — somewhere between "what" and "whatever" — the band booked a show at the now-defunct Keystone Berkeley. Stone had gone phantom, which made the performance an event. Accordingly, the place was packed. The band was introduced and began to vamp, and after way too long — it was clear the Family didn't know what to expect — Stone emerged and took his place behind a keyboard and, without acknowledging anyone, began to play. The band was thrown at first, but after a few halting bars and some nervous glances, they seemed to recognize the groove. Never mind the key or tempo, or where they should jump in. It didn't matter, because suddenly Stone lurched into something else, with the same result. A moment later he did it again. And again. And again.

The set didn't last more than a few minutes. That was the upside. The downside? Everything else.

Yet forgotten or not, Stone was once arguably the most important figure in pop. During the late 1960s and early '70s, the Vallejo native wrote and recorded one hit after another: "Dance to the Music," "Everyday People," "Stand!" "I Want to Take You Higher," "Hot Fun in the Summertime," "Thank You (Falettinme Be Mice Elf Again)," "Family Affair." He brought black music to San Francisco's tumultuous hippie scene and created rich, innovative, rock-flavored R&B, played by a deliberately integrated band. Rock fans — most of them white — welcomed the bridge to black music and, by inference, black people. If the door didn't swing as wide or as often the other way, a glimpse of the band's appearances on YouTube, which has great Family Stone material, shows a genuinely mixed audience responding to the group's appeal for peace and understanding.

Stone was a founding ...