I created Love City as a way to connect fans of Sly & the Family Stone and its individual members. In mid-1997, I examined the e-mail I had received from everyone who had ever contacted me about the group, as well as e-mail from the group members themselves, and constructed a list of people whom I would send an e-mail every one or two weeks to let them know about what was happening in the Sly & the Family Stone community: recent concerts, new albums, new impressions of the classic recordings. After a few e-mails I began to include obscure quotes from Sly Stone at the beginning of every e-mail. Then a bizarre thing occurred ...

"So I'm driving through Pennsylvania. The road is open and corn fields whiz by at about 80 miles per hour. Been on the road for about 6 hours as part of a road trip from Boston to Pittsburgh to hook up with Larry Graham, Rose Stone, Cynthia Robinson and Jerry Martini at their concert with The Artist Formerly Known as Prince. Sly & the Family Stone's Life album is blarin' on the stereo.

"Life" fades out and the opening chords to "Love City" come on. "This is one of my favorite songs," I said to my friend who was joining me on the trip. "I particularly like the lyrics." That having been said, we listened intently to Greg's infectious drum rhythms and Sly's optimistic words of wisdom.

At some point it occurred to me that with the creation of the Internet and the establishment of web sites and mailing lists like this one, everyday people are establishing and becoming active members of virtual "communities" shared with people with similar interests. I thought about the 1,200+ people who receive this mailing and considered the demographics: people on this list are male, female, black, white, yellow, red, blue, and live all over the world. There are people as young as 15 years old and others who are in their 70's. There are folks from small towns and there are folks like Larry Graham, Greg Errico, David Kapralik, Stephen Paley and others who were directly involved with Sly & the Family Stone.

I guess the point that I am trying to make is that by being a part of this Internet community you are helping to realize Sly's vision of "peaceful minds, beautiful heads with short and long hair." In the near future there is going to be hardware and software which will cater to such "virtual communities" and help to bring together and bring information to people who care for similar things. I will make sure that the Sly & the Family Stone and Graham Central Station community will be an important and rewarding part of this future, and would love any advice and comments from people who would like to contribute to this musical community. This is the Sly & the Family Stone "Fan Club" of the 90's!

So from now on, I hereby dub this newsletter "LOVE CITY" in honor of what we've done and in honor of Sly's inspiring music. Yeah!"