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Post by pairesta on Apr 22, 2019 6:43:36 GMT -5
To me the appeal of "Just wanna see his face" is precisely because of how slight and well, inessential it is. I doesn't stand on its own as a proper song, per se. It just cuts in and cuts out without a proper beginning or ending, like someone accidentally hit record while the band and gospel singers were warming up for a more proper song. You can't make out Mick's vocals, it's mixed weird. But you need it after the breathless tear of "Turd on the Run" and the menace of "Ventilator Blues"; it's of a piece with them, the punctuation at the end of a sentence. It's also to me the essence of this strange album that is unlike anything they did before or since.
It took a long time to "get" EoMS; I couldn't wrap my head around it. Once I did though, it became one of my favorite Stones albums, second only to, um, Sticky Fingers.
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ArchieLeach
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I talk too much, I worry me to death
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Post by ArchieLeach on May 4, 2019 9:29:28 GMT -5
Exile on Main St. - The Rolling Stones
Mick Jagger hates Exile On Main St., he’s just too good a businessman to say it in so many words. He let his life get in the way, and next thing he knew his sideman had hijacked the project. Keith Richard’s addictive personality and beat-up body kept him in his run-down mansion, shooting up smack and obsessively working endless variations of his recently discovered guitar turning, using five strings and the A string drop-tuned to G. Keith and his druggie musician friends made a racket in that mansion’s basement, and none of it reflected the theatrical jet-set high-life Mick was aspiring to. It was all grungy, primitive, and damn loud. Even the old tapes from Paris which had been stolen from Allen Klein’s financial control were slathered in the noise. But being a sideman at heart, not to mention a junkie, Keith couldn’t finish the job. Mick took the tapes to L.A.. He kept the spirit of the project alive, even as he dressed them up in some keyboards, lead guitar from Keith and Mick Taylor, and gospel choirs, but the damage was done. There was too much to grapple with. He scribbled some lyrics, recorded some vocals, gave up on the mixing and dumped the tapes on the lap of a 21 year-old to finish. Get it done, kid. When the mix came back, Mick’s voice was buried under Keith's racket. No wonder Mick hates the record – he does the clean-up job nobody else would do, brings the record home, and this is the thanks he gets. He sounds small, thin, desperate. He snarls and howls, and you can barely understand him except for the occasional phrase. There’s no room for him to pretend he’s a slave driver/rapist, or a serial killer, or the devil. He sounds like a guy yelling as a train pulls away from the station. Worst of all, the closest the album has to a radio-friendly single is the track Keith stole for himself to sing. Exile isn’t the place for impeccably crafted songs. It’s a place for feel, and for moments. The slow, slurred guitars of “Tumbling Dice” give way to Jimmy Miller’s pounding drums. On “Rip This Joint,” Mick shrieks “let it rock” and all the band charges like horses from a gate. Horns bust out in laughing lines on “Rocks Off” and “Loving Cup.” The end of the first chorus of “All Down the Line” sounds like the car chase on Bullitt, with us hitting the air as the rhythm guitar pauses, stuff flying out the window, until we hit the ground and the bass and guitar mash the pedal – the whoops are for real. “Sweet Virginia” is a piece of nonsense with a great line (“Yes, I’ve got the desert in my toenails…”), whomping drums, a heavenly shout-along chorus, and a sax that finds the swing in the hokum. When Keith’s high harmony comes in on “Torn and Frayed,” you wonder if he’s the wounded junkie guitar player in the song. Occasionally a lyric bubbles up – “…Million dollar sad…” Mysteries abound: is the title to "Tumbling Dice" a reference to the cut-and-paste method of writing "Casino Boogie"? Who is the "Sweet Black Angel," the pin-up girl? (Answer: it's the then-jailed political activist Angela Davis.) “Let It Loose” is the song which has worked its way deepest into my heart over time. Keith picks a slow, winding chord progression, the kind of brooding setting he later saved for his own vocals on songs such as “Coming Down Again,” “All About You,” and “Sleep Tonight.” Mick starts low - “Who’s that woman on your arm/All dressed up to do you harm?/And I’m hip to what you do…” It’s an accusation. Nicky Hopkin’s sparkling piano and the mumbling gospel choir imply there’s more to the story. The drum locks in, and Mick keeps going. The song builds, then it breathes out, just the winding guitar. It takes its time. The chorus lies low, waiting. The piano tiptoes about. The drums bust open the window, and the horns shine in. The brooding is over, and Mick sings his desperate ass off. It’s the best singing he will ever do. There are ways of finding out what songs specifically mean. Go to Songfacts.com and you can read all the lyrics for “Let It Loose” as well as some very good interpretations. The richness of this song and the entire album is that you can take them for the concrete meanings or for the impressions. (I never thought “Let It Loose” sounded Beatle-esque until reading Prole Hole ’s comment, but now I hear how similar it is to one of my favorite Beatles tracks, another winding accusation called “Sexy Sadie.”) Sometimes, ghosts appear in rock’n’roll. One appeared in Memphis when young Elvis Presley first recorded, sounding like some freaky pretty boy, singing to the hills from a holler, his voice echoing back from the hills. Another appeared in the hills of Saugerties, NY, as Bob Dylan and the Band conspired their next move, recording mysterious little riddles dirty and profound, never intending to show them to the general public but, like any bad criminal, leaving evidence all over the place. A ghost showed up at Bellnote, in the basement of that mansion. Like the other ghosts, there’s trickery involved – Scotty Moore couldn’t plug his guitar in in a holler, and that echo we heard was a manipulation of recording equipment. And considering the level of musicianship and imagination on The Basement Tapes, Dylan and his crew must have thought of the recordings as more than songwriting demos, but rather as blueprints for a new album. At the very least, it was image manipulation by a conman changing the direction of his career. The Rolling Stones we hear on Exile have never really existed. It’s a construct – Bill Wyman wasn’t present for most of the recording, and there aren’t more than two or three tracks where all five Stones appear. (Keith doesn’t even play on “Stop Breaking Down,” the Robert Johnson blues cover which speaks most directly to the band’s original conception. It's about their cocks.) The togetherness, the bonhomie we hear, is a product of one man's obsession and his partner’s hard work, of spats and overdubbing. The pure Exile sound, with the colliding electric guitars, really only appears on about half the tracks anyway – it’s totally absent on side two of the original two-disc vinyl. But somehow Exile has become the definitive Rolling Stones recording, whether most rock fans know It or not. It is the standard that all Stones records have been measured up against since then. Nobody wonders if a new album sounds like Let It Bleed, or Sticky Fingers, or Some Girls. They want to know if it sounds like Exile, and when another act plays something that is described as Stone-like, it sounds like this. (See Wilco’s “Monday” or Tom Petty’s “Let Me Up (I’ve Had Enough)”.) Those poor Black Crows, spending their entire careers to get the sound Keith had to smuggle onto this one record. On Exile On Main St., Mick was stripped of his preening and provocation. He may hate it, but I don’t think he ever sounded more humane. It’s his finest hour. Keith couldn't recreate this feel by himself, and Mick Taylor had other plans, so Keith recruited Ron Wood, a guy so close in style and sensibility that Keith could be comfortable that he can simulate this sound live in concert. He has never been able to recapture this sound on record. He’s tried from time to time, but time is short, business is hard, and Mick isn’t motivated to chase this particular ghost. In fact, the following several records could be heard as a repudiation of Exile. Keith's consolation prize is that he has kept the five-string, drop-G tuning. Most importantly, Keith has defined the legacy of Mick's backing band. Let us praise Keith Richards for chasing his ghost, and twenty-one year old mixing engineer Andy Johns for capturing the ghost, even if Mick Jagger doesn't appreciate it.
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Post by Prole Hole on May 5, 2019 13:08:54 GMT -5
Goat's Head Soup (1973) After the sprawling, unhinged glory of Exile On Main St, what next? Well we have this, the curiously-titled Goat’s Head Soup and a return to a single album. But can it trap the same energised lightning as its predecessor? If I’m To Be A Camera: What the everloving hell is that? What looks like Mick Jagger’s cum-face, apparently emerging from some kind of plastic or chiffon vagina or something. Profoundly strange and unsettling. The back cover and inside gatefold have the band wrapped in the same material, shirtless for no clear reason, and while not quite the nightmare fuel of the cover, are not a lot better. Album cover – one yike assigned. Pre-existing Prejudices: I don’t know any of these songs. No, not even “Angie” – hush at the back there. Songs: “Dancing With Mr D” Vaguely funk guitar line then Jagger comes in – he’s still pretty down in the mix as per Exile, but the thoughtful pacing helps him a fair bit. Nice Richards riff and (I’m assuming) some good slide work from Taylor. Jagger’s dancing with death it seems, which certainly sounds like he’s in a healthy emotional place. Solid opener, not much more to say about it. “100 Years Ago” Jagger’s immediately further up in the mix, a great improvement. Unusually reflective lyric gazing back in time. Faintly country, a little funk, a hint of the blues, the song never quite settles on one style. Wah-wah solo at one point. I really like the slowed-down break before the big instrumental outro – it helps break the song up and stops it sound samey. Yup, pretty good. “Coming Down Again” A ballad! A duet! Well, this feels substantially different to anything we’ve had in simply ages on a Stones record. Terrific work from Richards, this is really his song. Simple, but effective, and there’s some nice understated piano and a great little sax solo in the instrumental break. A continuation of the reflective mood of “100 Years Ago” but stylistically different. Great bass line too – that can’t be Wyman, right? Or maybe it is and I’m being unfair. “Doo Doo Doo Doo Doo (Heartbreaker)” Stepping back up a gear, strong funk and Blaxploitation vibes going on here – great sax work, though this is pretty bleak lyrically, cops in New York shooting a kid and someone dying of a drugs overdose. The bleak lyric does fit nicely with the urban sound, and there’s some really great electric piano going on here. Jagger’s going for it and though he’d benefit from being a touch up in the mix there’s some power to his work here. More wah-wah – did Keith by a pedal recently by any chance? “Angie” The opening chords are worryingly reminiscing of “Hotel California”. Jagger’s way up in the mix, finally, for a performance he seems to be slightly slurring out and he positively chews on the word “angie”. There’s hints of a better song in here (around the “we’ve no lovin’ in our souls” lines) but this isn’t all that fantastic – the strings on the instrumental break are also very Eagles-y, and the whispering of “angie” is just funny. Jagger seems to be aiming for fragile but doesn’t really really land it. (Side 2) “Silver Train” Pretty straightforward rock’n’roll but it breaks the slightly maudlin feel the album was starting to develop. There’s at least some energy and Jagger’s throwing himself at it with some nice harmonica (I can’t believe I keep tying that), but this is just a less good version of stuff they perfected on Exile. By the time it gets to the instrumental break and guitar solo it manages to find some genuine spark and the rest of the song is pretty great, but the first half is a struggle for whatever reason. “Hide Your Love” Nice shift in pace here, some great piano and some big bass drum work going on here. Bluesy in a way the album hasn’t quite delved into yet. They lyric isn’t anything special but Jagger’s found a different groove to sing in and it’s rather great – he’s putting in more effort here than just delivering his bog-standard performance. Liking what Charlie’s doing a lot here, that bass and just some snare and cymbal work. Rather great, actually. “Winter” Faintly reminiscent of “Moonlight Mile” and “Wild Horses”. More slightly self-pitying, maudlin reflection going on here. Some really great work from Charlie, his best work on the album in fact. Great guitar work going on also but… well, Jagger’s clearly being heartfelt here, but there’s an over-familiarity to this that’s cutting against the sincerity – Jagger obviously means that and it matters to him but it doesn’t always come across. This might have worked a lot better on Side One, because it is a strong song. There’s some beauty towards the end, and the final “wrap my coat around ya” works very well. “Can You Hear The Music” Flutefuckery! And a… triangle? What on Earth is this? Then we lurch oddly into a plodding beat that persists until Jagger feels the need to tell us “love is a mystery I can’t demystify”, in case anyone thought he could. I guess this is aiming for funk? If it is then it missed. I have no idea why we’re supposed to care about this song – no focus, no purpose, no point. Completely by numbers, and ends on the same flutefuckery. Nope. “Star Star” Ha! Fine I have to say more than that. Terrific musically, by far and away the most inspired music on the whole album. Jagger’s clearly having an absolute ball and practically digests the word “starfucker” as he chews it over. Wow someone’s woken up Keith Richards, listen to him go on the solo! About time! Why doesn’t the rest of the album have this energy? Everyone’s giving it their best and what a starfucking different it makes! Dirty but full of life and energy in exactly the way the rest of the album isn’t. Great fun. In Conclusion: Whatever the kinetic, frenetic energy that animated Exile On Main St was (at a guess heroin and bourbon) seems to have rather dissipated here. Not entirely – there’s moments of real flash and inspiration, and we’ll get to them shortly – but whatever that animating spirit was it’s one the wane. There’s a lot to appreciate about Goat’s Head Soup but it’s clearly a long way short of its predecessor in both inspiration and implementation. That’s not to say it’s bad – it’s definitely not – but it’s definitely lacking the same creative spark. What’s replaced that spark, though, is an unexpected wave of introspection. In practice it was a good idea for the band not to attempt Exile II but instead strike out in a different direction. While the similarities to other 70’s material the Stones have already turned out makes that different direction somewhat muted, there’s no question that Jagger is making a real effort to do more than just sing about sex or drugs. That’s in there too – it is a Rolling Stones album after all – but there’s an inward-looking focus that feels like Jagger’s attempting to do something a little bit different. That makes Goat’s Head Soup stand out a bit and it’s genuinely great seeing him trying to stretch himself as a lyric writer. Phenomenal though Exile was, there was no danger of Jagger referring to “restoration plays” (“Winter”) or considering cop killings (“Doo Doo Doo Doo) Heartbreaker”), and seeing the inward-looking Jagger gives us a rare insight into his inner workings. There’s real vulnerability on display here, and while Jagger’s delivery on “Angie” leans a little too heavily on him doing a self-impression and thus muting the impact, he’s clearly singing from the heart – the song matters to him, and it’s not the only one here. “Winter” is a profoundly unusual song, both highlighting the negatives of the season (fields are “brown and fallow” and “it’s been a hard, hard winter”), and continuing the theme of introspection (“and a lotta love is all burned out”). Yet there’s a longing here too, and the delivery and music undercuts the negatives to reach for something with real yearning. It’s a sophisticated, moving piece of music that highlights how skilled Jagger is still capable of being. Would that he deployed that skill a little more often. One of the problems with Goat’s Head Soup is that is just never quite catches light, and Jagger is part of that. The introspection and change of pace is welcome, but it’s often at the expense of being engaging. The opening track, “Dancing With Mr D” suggests more-of-the-same as a follow on from Exile but that’s not what happens. “100 Years Ago” is a good song but it doesn’t lead on much from “Dancing”, and it’s followed by “Coming Down Again” a slow, thoughtful piece that’s not adding much in terms of pace, however great a song it is. “Doo Doo Doo Doo Doo (Heartbreaker)” picks things up again, only for them to grind to a halt while Jagger excoriates his soul on “Angie”. Individually all of those songs are fine, but they don’t feel like they have any coherence – they’re just five songs sitting next to each other. Jagger is only part of the issue but he is part of it, turning in party-piece performances that sound like Jagger but don’t have the extra shaft of lightning that makes those performances come alive. They sound rote. Compare and contrast, then, with “Star Star”, where he turns in an absolutely barnstorming performance and the rest of the band are astoundingly great – criticise the lyric all you like but, like the similarly controversial “Brown Sugar”, there’s absolutely no denying the pace, energy and fun of it all. The introspection is fine – it’s just in the end that Jagger’s not particularly good at that, and when contrasted with what he can do this all looks a bit directionless. It’s not all his fault though – the musical side of the band aren’t quite up to snuff this time out either. For every inspired idea (the big bass thumps on “Hide You Love”, for example) there’s a lot of laziness as well. Little of the music here is bad – “Can You Hear The Music” aside, which is simply dreary – but there’s just a lack of inspiration. It’s all absolutely proficient, but again that extra effort that’s needed just isn’t there. Richards seems to be largely in absentia and though he gets one outstanding moment (“Coming Down Again”) he needs a lot more to give the album the lift it so badly needs. There’s a sense of self-indulgence creeping in here, that if they all just turn up, do their thing, and then go away again that’ll be enough. It’s frustrating, because it wouldn’t take a tremendous extra effort to make Goat’s Head Soup a stand-out, but the band don’t seem to know quite how to change gear from Exile’s rambunctiousness into a slower, more thoughtful groove. When they do manage it (“Coming Down Again”, “Winter”) the results are manifest, but too often that just doesn’t happen. I’m not, in the end, going to be too harsh on Goat’s Head Soup. It’s not a bad album at all, although it reminds me slightly of Venus And Mars by Wings, in the sense that it’s another album that needed just one extra push to really make it excel, rather than being “well, it’s fine”. The high points are all worth listening to and the moments when it can be bothered to live up to its own potential are terrific. This isn’t the chemical flame-out of Sticky Fingers, rather it more seems kind of exhausted and directionless. Back when I was talking about Let It Bleed one of the things I pointed out is what a masterclass of sequencing that album was. Well, here’s the flip side. A bunch of songs scattered across two sides of an album which individually might be good but which never tip over to become more than the sum of their parts. Maybe shuffling the track order would allow some swelling of purpose, for a mood or atmosphere to be established when not being interrupted by some random piece of funk nonsense. Or maybe not. In the end the adjective I would use to describe Goat’s Head Soup also sounds like an insult, and maybe that says something in and of itself – because the word I would use to describe this album… is “competent”. And that’s pretty tough to get worked up about. How Much Of This Album Can Be Cut?While it’s true that there’s a certain lack of inspiration running through much of Goat’s Head Soup, only the pointless, unfocussed sprawl of “Can You Hear The Music” really deserves to be excised. Why does it start and end with flutes and a triangle? Why doesn’t the song go anywhere? Why doesn’t anyone in the band seem to have any idea what the point of this is? Everyone just sounds bored, and this is the very definition of filler – one more song to get the album up to the 45-minute count and then we can all go home. So yes, this can go. I’m sure some people would love to see “Star Star” gone as well, but I’m not one of them. 2019 Cringe Factor 2019 Observations: Well, hello “Star Star”, or more accurately, “Starfucker”. Well, if ever there was a song on the album that was going to catch the eye of this section it was going to be this, an utterly filthy song about, well, starfuckers. Or women who only fuck famous people. Still, Jagger’s not exactly condemnatory – indeed quite the reverse, it seems he can’t wait to “make you scream all night”. Sort of. There is an implied criticism that the starfucker in person is going to work her way round everyone in Hollywood, and even Jagger calls her Polaroid’s “obscene” in reference to her trick with fruit and “I bet you keep your pussy clean”. In other words, it’s a pretty straightforward piece of misogyny – the woman in question is condemned for being obscene and sexually adventurous but Jagger wants it both ways, to condemn, yet also happily fuck her should the opportunity arise (“If I ever get back to New York, girl / Gonna make you scream all night”). And yet, delivered by Jagger at Maximum Strut, it’s… well it doesn’t lessen the the number of yikes’s to be assigned here, but it’s an undeniably catchy, full-throttled song, and he does enthusiastically implicate himself in proceedings. But if you want to cringe at it – well that’s entirely justified. Oh and “Silver Train” is clearly about banging a prostitute, but you know, it kinda pales next to “Star Star”. What Else Happened Musically In 1973? A lot – this was a busy old year. A brand new record label is launched, Virgin Records, which will have significant impact as Richard Branson steps forward. The first album? Mike Oldfield’s Tubular Bells. Not a bad seller for a first release… David Bowie “retires” Ziggy Stardust and subsequently releases the diabolically bad Pin-Ups to convince people that, yes, Ziggy really was gone (but at least there’s the raggedly glorious Aladdin Sane before that happens). Paul McCartney is fined for growing cannabis at his Scottish farm, and The Who release their landmark Quadrophenia. Sydney Opera House is opened for the very first time, and there’s an unexpected resurgence of ragtime as “The Sting” arrives and annoys pianists – and anyone within earshot of a piano – forever. Speaking of annoying pianos, Elton John’s inescapable “Crocodile Rock” oozes out and, in March, Pink Floyd reach their apotheosis and release Dark Side Of The Moon. Queen and the New York Dolls both release debut albums, Lou Reed comes out with Berlin, and Stevie Wonder releases Innervisions. And, since this is the year I was manufactured, it pains me to tell you that sitting at the number one single spot in the UK when this momentous event happened was Little Donnie Osmond’s from-the-depths-of-hell “Long Haired Lover From Liverpool” (in the U.S. it was the brilliant “You’re So Vain”). Enjoy hanging out at bars? You may enjoy it substantially less now – inescapable booze-friendly singalong “Piano Man” sees Billy Joel take the limelight for the first time while, right at the end of the year, Wings release their only cover-to-cover great album, the still-fantastic Band On The Run. Best Track: “Star Star” Worst Track: “Can You Hear The Music” Number Of Songs Added To My Rolling Stones Playlist: 2 “Coming Down Again”, “Star Star” Album Rankings: 1. Let It Bleed2. Exile On Main St3. Goat’s Head Soup4. Sticky Fingers
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Dellarigg
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Post by Dellarigg on May 5, 2019 14:41:17 GMT -5
Can You Hear The Music is a belated nod to Brian Jones, who produced an album of Moroccan music, full of pan pipes and such like. I don't dislike it, but maybe they did it out of obligation more than inspiration.
I think they had to ask Steve McQueen if he minded being namechecked on Star Star. Turns out he was totally, completely fine with it. I always thought it odd that the pinnacle of Hollywood to be attained for a groupie was ... John Wayne. But yes, great Chuck Berry boogie style, and another example of them kicking a song into the stratosphere over the last verse and chorus. Silver Train rattles along really nicely too, one of their more overlooked numbers.
The ballads are solid, especially Angie, and I've come to like the stylistic reachings out they did here on 100 Years Ago and Heartbreaker, with that funky wah. More of that is coming. But it's definitely a step down after - I reiterate - the greatest four album run in music history. Keith was being steadily drained at this point.
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Post by pairesta on May 6, 2019 7:04:10 GMT -5
But it's definitely a step down after - I reiterate - the greatest four album run in music history. Keith was being steadily drained at this point. What more can be said about it? It's a fine album, it's unfair as hell to say "well it's not as good as this genre-defining classic album they did", but you can't not do it. That run had to end some time, and there's many worse ways it could have gone down, but it's impossible not to be a little let down by GHS knowing what came before it. The Stones would have a few more solid, even great, albums to come, but never again reach those heights, and this album marks the beginning of them transitioning into the Stones they'd become and pretty much remain.
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Post by Prole Hole on May 6, 2019 7:13:44 GMT -5
But it's definitely a step down after - I reiterate - the greatest four album run in music history. Keith was being steadily drained at this point. What more can be said about it? It's a fine album, it's unfair as hell to say "well it's not as good as this genre-defining classic album they did", but you can't not do it. That run had to end some time, and there's many worse ways it could have gone down, but it's impossible not to be a little let down by GHS knowing what came before it. The Stones would have a few more solid, even great, albums to come, but never again reach those heights, and this album marks the beginning of them transitioning into the Stones they'd become and pretty much remain. No spoilers, but I won't be agreeing about the greatest four-album run in music history. However, depending on how I feel when I end this project I might circle back and do a bonus entry on Beggar's Banquet, since I fell so hard for Let It Bleed and it's meant to be the first of those four albums. Sonically, there's not been a vast amount of diversity on the albums I've covered so it might be interesting to hear them in a more musically adventurous mode.
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Dellarigg
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Post by Dellarigg on May 6, 2019 7:17:47 GMT -5
Turns out Waiting On A Friend was recorded during the GHS sessions. It was put aside, to surface on Tattoo You some eight years later. It would pretty much be the best song on GHS if they'd included it. Tops dates from 1973 too. This will come up when Black and Blue and its outtakes hove into view. Would we prefer the parent albums boosted by these songs, or do we prefer the great Tattoo You as it stands? (The latter for me, I think.)
(According to Keith, there's an absolute ton of outtakes in the vaults, stretching back to the earliest days. Mick, being 'forward looking', is against their release apparently. Fuck him, I say. Fuck him.)
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Post by Prole Hole on May 6, 2019 7:28:07 GMT -5
Turns out Waiting On A Friend was recorded during the GHS sessions. It was put aside, to surface on Tattoo You some eight years later. It would pretty much be the best song on GHS if they'd included it. Tops dates from 1973 too. This will come up when Black and Blue and its outtakes hove into view. Would we prefer the parent albums boosted by these songs, or do we prefer the great Tattoo You as it stands? (The latter for me, I think.) (According to Keith, there's an absolute ton of outtakes in the vaults, stretching back to the earliest days. Mick, being 'forward looking', is against their release apparently. Fuck him, I say. Fuck him.) Tattoo You will be outside of scope, so I have nothing to offer there. I do think when bands have vaults full of stuff they might as well stick them out. Why not? They're not going to damage the reputation of the existing material - as a Beatles obsessive I used to pour over bootlegs prior to Anthology and it was fun exploring that material, and however trash "What's The New Mary Jane" is it doesn't make, I dunno, The White Album any less amazing. And you would think the ever-business-minded Mister Jagger would be happy to make a few quid off them. I guess not.
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Dellarigg
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Post by Dellarigg on May 6, 2019 7:38:44 GMT -5
Tattoo You will be outside of scope, so I have nothing to offer there. I do think when bands have vaults full of stuff they might as well stick them out. Why not? They're not going to damage the reputation of the existing material - as a Beatles obsessive I used to pour over bootlegs prior to Anthology and it was fun exploring that material, and however trash "What's The New Mary Jane" is it doesn't make, I dunno, The White Album any less amazing. And you would think the ever-business-minded Mister Jagger would be happy to make a few quid off them. I guess not. I'm being slightly harsh on Jagger - some have come out. See the bonus discs on the reissues of Exile On Main St. (decent stuff) and Some Girls (outstanding stuff). But then again I'm not being harsh on him, because it would be nice to have these songs without having to buy the albums over again. Not that I did buy them over again, I just stole them off the internet, but the point still stands: a boxset of outtakes like the Anthology or Springsteen's Tracks would be great (to steal off the internet).
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ayatollahcm
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The Bringer of Peacatollah
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Post by ayatollahcm on May 6, 2019 13:50:52 GMT -5
I'll still support covering Tattoo You, since that's more of the Stones' spiritual end of the 70s...(I might argue Beggar's Banquet as the spiritual beginning, but it's also very 1968/69)
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Post by Jean Luc de Lemur on May 6, 2019 16:27:44 GMT -5
Evidently the objective with the cover was to make Jagger look like Katherine Hepburn in The African Queen and…well, that was an idea. That gatefold is definitely horrifying, though. This run’s some of my Dad’s favorite albums, so I’m pretty familiar with the first three’s album art—there’s a sort of clean dirtiness to them, if that makes sense—it’s not gross, but it’s disheveled and off, and they’re great pieces of design. Goats head soup, though, that’s like mid-nineties alternative rock levels of gross.
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ArchieLeach
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Post by ArchieLeach on May 6, 2019 22:22:11 GMT -5
I wanted to write a short response but couldn't shut the f up. You know me. Let's just say, one album earlier and two or four later is fine by me. Thank you for the forum, Prole. You'll see my longer comment sometime down the line.
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Post by Prole Hole on May 7, 2019 0:14:04 GMT -5
I wanted to write a short response but couldn't shut the f up. You know me. Let's just say, one album earlier and two or four later is fine by me. Thank you for the forum, Prole. You'll see my longer comment sometime down the line. Na, I think it's awesome that you took the time to post such a lengthly reply, I appreciate it and I like the conversations and discussions. That's what this is meant to be for me - not just an excuse to listen to these albums but to have a dialogue about them - it's not meant to be Everyone Agrees With Prole, so i really like hearing what else people have to say about these records.
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Post by ganews on May 8, 2019 19:25:35 GMT -5
The special thing about this thread is that it has the two best reviewers on the site, Prole Hole and ArchieLeach.
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Post by Prole Hole on May 9, 2019 1:15:48 GMT -5
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ArchieLeach
AV Clubber
I talk too much, I worry me to death
Posts: 289
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Post by ArchieLeach on May 12, 2019 10:20:37 GMT -5
Goat's Head Soup (1973) Album Rankings: 1. Let It Bleed2. Exile On Main St3. Goat’s Head Soup4. Sticky Fingers
This is why I love doing this stuff. My Rolling Stones collection – a chapter from the pre-internet ageDeveloping musical tastes was a random process when I was growing up. There wasn’t easy free access to recordings, there was no oldies radio to speak of, and rock music didn’t have any place you could find a critical consensus. It was all about reputation and word-of-mouth. A project like this discography review meant you had to be prepared to either gamble $100 on records, or you had to have friends who already made the investment. Not that there was any place to post your ramblings, anyway. My experience with the Rolling Stones is ludicrously out of chronology. My very first exposure to the Rolling Stones was with “Angie,” a big hit I didn’t hear all that often when I was 11, but which I remember hearing in the car the following year when our family was driving back from the airport at the end of a vacation in the Netherlands. My mother’s Dutch name is Antje, and the people in our remote and sometimes hostile dairy-farming village would often say something similar to what Mick Jagger sings when reading her driver’s license. It’s a pretty song, but as a mispronunciation of Mom’s name was an unintentional mockery at an emotionally volatile moment. My next encounter with the Stones was in the summer of 1978. I was in a high school rock band at the time, and “Miss You” was a no-brainer for us to play. The key of A Minor is the guitarist’s friend, and Mick’s yowl is easily within my range, so straight-arrow Archie was playing Keith’s licks and singing about “hauling ass,” although I tended to screw up and yell “there’s some Peter Rican girls…” I had been buying records for about a year, quickly getting to about two per month, and Some Girls was my first Stones purchase. At a Halloween party later that year I was offered the chance to borrow Beggar’s Banquet and the Beatles’ White Album. I went for the Beatles, and it changed my life late that night, but I checked out Beggar’s Banquet soon after. I was still so ignorant of rock history at this point that my first exposure to “Jumping Jack Flash” was from Frampton Comes Alive, a record I borrowed from our keyboard player in order to learn four or five songs we played. The Rolling Stone Record Buying Guide came into my life, and my collection came together as I would hear a song I liked, and if the record got four or five stars I’d drop my $7.98 plus tax down ($13.98 for a double album) and take the platter home, hoping that my good luck was continuing. Sticky Fingers (with the zipper) and Let It Bleed were early acquisitions. I got Tattoo You and later Undercover and Dirty Work when they came out – I skipped Emotional Rescue due to poor reviews and the annoyance of “She’s So Cold,” although I “won” it at an open mic in grad school. Exile On Main Street was from the summer of my twentieth year. Of the 17 albums I picked up on a trip to Holland when I was 22, there was Rolling Stones No.2, the UK Aftermath and Between the Buttons, and for some random reason Their Satanic Majesties Request. It’s incredible to me that I’ve somehow put together almost the entire Stone discography through Dirty Work without really trying. I was given a cassette tape which included the first 30 minutes of It’s Only Rock and Roll. I bought Black and Blue and Get Your Ya-Ya’s Out when the local Coconuts closed. Their debut LP was a $5 download. Although I don’t have Out of Our Heads, I’ve got some mystery German compilation with several of the songs, plus the London Singles 3-disc set. But around the time the Stones released Steel Wheels and “Mixed Emotions,” I decided that I didn’t really love the Stones. Mick came to seem a manipulator, alternating provocative and sensitive poses as his whim or maybe his bank account demanded. Now they were sounding so damned cleaned-up and wholesome, and I didn’t believe that after the two previous bile-filled records (one of which I rather like). Most of my Stones collection is on vinyl, so I haven't listened to them much in recent years. I’ve curled my lip at all releases since, although I loved their performance at the Super Bowl – six guys making a hell of a noise. It was Genuine Rock and Roll. My Goat’s Head Soup encounterI never acquired Goat’s Head Soup, and it comes to me this month loaded with pre-existing prejudices. In the first edition of The RS Record Buying Guide, Dave Marsh trashed the album, giving it one star, the most insulting grade he could give a legitimate release by a high-profile act (the dreaded bullet being saved for corporate exploitation releases such as Osmond Family-related records, or vault-clearing cash-ins like Dylan). He called “Dancing With Mr. D” silly, and I’m sure he used the word “enervated” to describe the album. The biggest obstacle is my own mind. I’ve got Mick pegged as a mannered, insincere ballad singer, and “uh-AYN-JAY” ain’t helping. In snark mode, I used to repeat “Heartbreak-ah, whichya bowlin’ ball!” I’ve dipped impatiently into the first moments of “Dancing With Mr. D.” and “Can You Hear a Music” in order to hear whether they’re really as bad as claimed, and “Coming Around Again” to see if it’s worth the attention Keith gives it in his autobiography. “Impatient” is never the right frame-of-mind for listening. Since hearing it fresh is impossible, I’ve tried osmosis mode, playing it on Spotify as I work, hoping something will stick. Here a sound, there a sound. A chord change, a guitar line, a harmony. Because I’m constantly being interrupted at work, every time something interesting came through I’d have to skip back to the beginning of the track to listen again. Something miraculous happened – I fell in love with Goat's Head Soup. It doesn’t happen often enough anymore, and in this case it was totally unexpected. And I fell for it in the most unexpected way. I have a weakness for albums which show an act searching for a way forward, records of decadence and dissipation such as Let It Be, Mind Games, Walls and Bridges, Pussy Cats, and The Who By Numbers. I also like well-crafted product – not every record has to be a huge statement. Many reviews of Goat’s Head Soup were angry at the Stones for not matching the focused urgency of their previous albums – Dave Marsh in particular reads like a jilted lover. For me, the fact that this record would fit in with Fleetwood Mac’s records from the Danny Kirwin/Bob Welch era touches the pleasure centers in my brain. It’s groovy music. “Dancing With Mr. D” has a great groove, sexy and low-down. The lyrics – eh, they sound like Mick’s been listening to Dr. John’s Gris Gris. The Doctor’s got the pedigree for that stuff. I wish Mick was singing about dancing with a bar fly instead. But I also get a sick satisfaction from the song. It sounds like Mick is trying to do a variation of the advocate for the Devil he has done as a pose on previous records, but trying it in a different direction. I’m not terribly disappointed that he fails, because I don’t want to be told again that I helped kill the Kennedys. Some of us knew that before you told us, Mick. I hear now that I seriously underrated “Heartbreaker.” It has a similar groove to “Mr. D,” and the horns sound fantastic. The sound isn’t hard and clanging like on Exile, it’s more smudgy, like Al Green’s work. The guitar sound is moody as the music drops down. I love that this is a variation of Joni Mitchell’s “Big Yellow Taxi,” with Mick raging against societal issues on the first two verses while griping at his spurning lover on the third. The other rock tracks each have unique feels. “Silver Train” charges along with its blues harp honking. “Hide Your Love” is relatively slighter, and it lets down the tension on the album, but it’s at least as good as “I Just Want to See His Face.” “Star Star” is rude, taut, and funny – they’ll make an album dominated by this sound in a few years. The ballads are the meat of the album. "Angie" gains by the presence of the surrounding songs - it's an emotional counterweight to the preceding "Heartbreaker." Keith contributes the old, dramatic “Maleguena” chord change, A Minor to E Major, and Nicky Hopkins adds his graceful piano. The sound is stark and clear, miles away from Exile. I still have problems with Mick’s performance, but it feels like he’s trying to spill his guts. The biggest gift this album brings to my life is my favorite “new” song of this year, “100 Years Ago.” I’m a total sucker for this kind of Van Morrison-style narrative – chords which shift keys from major to minor, and a declarative melody with variation. Add a wah-wah guitar that balances brashness with fragility, harmonies for emotional support, tempo shifts, and Mick at his most charming, first when he says “sweet and strange,” but later when he calls himself “Lazy Bones.” Most importantly, it moves quickly, too quickly for my soul, because I want this song to go on. All I can do is play it again. “Winter” more or less covers the same turf – when he drops “aw, lord” at the beginning of the second verse, I’m positive he’s been listening to Van the Man. Not enough people do. Maybe I’ve set my sights too low. Maybe my osmosis-style introduction has sacrificed an all-important impact of a fresh hearing. All I know is, I like “Can You Hear the Music” plenty. This drenched psychedelia is dense, enveloping. I don’t care for Mick as a preacher or a shaman for either side of the moral coin, but here he’s dipped in honey and gold, too overwhelmed in sound to do much damage. He wants us to feel the love – no, he wants to feel the love. The man is struggling, but he’s inadequate to the keyboards, the bells, the pan pipes, and that gorgeous distorted lead guitar as everyone shifts keys easily. The double-tracking of his vocal adds to the remove of his performance. This is better than Their Satanic Majesties Request, because Mick has led us to a world bigger than himself. I imagine that those who first wrote about Goat’s Head Soup had a sinking feeling when they heard “Coming Down Again.” Three songs in, and we are at a near stop, as Keith circles round at a slow pace. It’s not plodding, though – it’s like he’s exploring a deserted mansion. A sax, then two, and Mick mumbling. It takes its sweet and sour time. I love this – it feels as lived-in as any Stones song. Maybe I shouldn’t be able to relate to it, since I don’t have a drug habit or numerous affairs with super models all over the world, but the inner struggle is the same – if you’ve already got what you’ve been fighting for, what’s next? Just you and the person in the mirror. Although it's Keith's song, “Coming Down Again” is the perfect representation of Goat’s Head Soup, which came to life as Mick tried to take control of the band back after Exile. I frequently criticize Mick, but I love the sound of him struggling. On Exile he grappled with Keith for control. On this album, Mick is back in the driver's seat. He's just not sure where to go, and that's a feeling I can relate to.
When I first saw Prole Hole ’s ranking of album, with this above Sticky Fingers, I thought, “Poor misguided Prole.” Now I’m thinking, “Stupid me” for not buying this album long ago, when I could have enjoyed it both as listening and as a great record to jam along to (seriously, there are at least five songs here which would be fun to play along with).
I understand that this is not what listeners of 1973 wanted from the Stones. I love Exile On Main St. - depending on the day, I frequently list it in my Top 5 by anybody. But there's good in a serious band of talented musicians putting together some product at a time when they don't necessarily have their act, or their heads, together. You can hear the struggle, the doubt, the blues.
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Post by Prole Hole on Jun 9, 2019 10:00:25 GMT -5
It’s Only Rock And Roll (1974) If Goat’s Head Soup seemed to lack a certain energy, both musically and creatively, the question is, can It’s Only Rock and Roll manage to get it back? If I’m To Be A Camera: A painting of the band descending a long red staircase in a temple, surrounded by women and children all gesturing in their direction welcoming them in. Jagger is posed in full strut mode, clearly loving the attention, but even in a painting Charlie Watts seems to find the attention a little embarrassing. The back cover sees the name of the band “graffitied” at the top of a staircase, with the song tracks listed below. It’s a bit tacky. Pre-existing Prejudices: I hadn’t even heard of this album prior to starting this project, so very little in the way of expectations going in. With one exception, and that’s the song “It’s Only Rock And Roll (But I Like I)” which I absolutely fucking love. Somewhere in one of his most excellent review projects our very own Nudeviking posed the question “are there actually any good songs with the words ‘rock and roll’ in the title?” and the answer is yes, there are two and this is one of them (the other is “I Love Rock And Roll” by Joan Jett and the Blackhearts, and I will punch anyone in the throat who disagrees with me on that, because that song is awesome). It’s also worth watching the video to see Charlie Watts trying to keep his dignity while being slowly consumed by vast amounts of foam while the rest of the band try to look alluring in what appear to be faux sailor-boy outfits, all inside some kind of plastic tent. It’s… well. Worth a watch, at least. Songs: “If You Can’t Rock Me” Big chunky opening riff gets things off to a solid start. Jagger’s a bit self-parodic in his delivery here, but this is “rock me” in the “fuck me” sense, though he’s abnormally aggressive here in his delivery. There’s no sense of romance whatsoever – he wants to fuck, and that’s it. Ohh, a bass solo! This is a solid enough I Just Wanna Get Laid opening track, though Watts is the stand-out here. Hmm, they didn’t know how to end this one did they? “Ain’t Too Proud To Beg” A perfectly cromulent cover of The Temptations. Some nice piano going on here, and Jagger’s putting something into it. It sounds like the band are having fun playing this, and that comes across – certainly more than it did in the opener – but there’s not a vast amount to say here. Nice sharp ending, which I strongly approve of. Fine. “It’s Only Rock And Roll (But I Like It)” OCH AYE AYE! Yeah, I still fucking love this song. Jagger’s found how to do a version of the self-parody that works, with his over-exaggerated annunciations matching the “what do you want from me?” lyric perfectly. Charlie is, naturally, doing great work here, and Keith’s got a great chugging guitar line going on. Apparently Bowie’s on backing vocals here, which makes this even more awesome. Fantastic middle eight falling into the instrumental, and it all ends up with repeated, increasingly silly, run-throughs of the chorus, which is incredibly infectious. Simply brilliant. “Till The Next Goodbye” Unusually intimate lyric from Jagger here as we abandon the uptempo start of the album for a reflective, country-ish ballad. I like Jagger in this mode, he can do this closely-written style very well, and the lyric feels like it has a real honesty to it so it resonates well. The instrumentation is also pleasingly restrained – it’s nothing we haven’t heard before, but it works for the song. To be honestly musically this could do with one more idea to really elevate it, but there’s an embracing regret and melancholia that works well here, and Mick Taylor’s giving some good slide work. Yes, very commendable. “Time Waits For No One” I really like this. It’s not, truthfully, a million miles away from the last song, but the music feels noticeably stronger. Taylor’s slide guitar takes a more prominent role and it’s really well integrated – the extra idea that was maybe lacking last time out. Jagger’s lyric is slightly piss-take but he also really seems to invest himself in it, so it kind of overcomes its (presumably intentionally) overwrought nature and ends up being weirdly sincere. That long instrumental close-out also comes in as weirdly sincere and really adds something. I’m doubtful this is high up anyone’s favourite Stones song but… yeah, I really like it. Little gems like this make this project worthwhile. (Side 2) “Luxury” Absolutely fucking terrible. The faux-Jamaca accents, the patronising lyric, the horrible sub-reggae instrumentation, this is the absolute definition of misjudged and the worst Stones song I’ve come across since starting this. A guitar solo so bad it could be me playing it. White guys, don’t sing “de” when trying to sound not white (“keep you de luxury”). Christ this is bad. Let’s move on. “Dance Little Sister” Thick rock guitar riff kicks us off as Jagger invites his “little sister” to dance. The lyrics here are completely rote, there to sing something over a traditional, straightforward rock’n’roll riff. It sounds like the band are having great fun playing this but, unlike “Ain’t Too Proud To Beg”, the fun never makes it beyond the speakers. They had fun, all we’re doing is listening to them having fun, we never get to be part of it. This never coheres into anything – maybe a better producer could have done something with it, and I can imagine it works well live with an enthusiastic audience but as it is this doesn’t achieve very much, and it all drifts to a “we’ve really out of things to do” ending. “If You Really Want To Be My Friend” Back to ballad mode again. Jagger’s over exaggerating but the balance between self parody and sincerity isn’t here – the comic backing vocals, which sound like they’ve been copied from any number of soul bands, don’t help here at all. Jagger’s pleading to be allowed to do his own thing, but this sounds rather self-pitying, which isn’t a good fit for him. Charlie’s a bit off his game here, which is unusual, and there’s an ugly guitar solo in the middle that’s trying way too hard. There’s some ideas here but they don’t emerge into anything, and there isn’t over six minutes of song here – if you’ve ever complained that “Hey Jude” goes on too long here’s the Stones proving they can do that they can do it too! Yay? “Short And Curlies” Incredibly stupid and great fun. Honky-tonk workout who’s opening line, “she’s got you by the balls” pretty much says it all. But this is actually funny, everyone seems to join in and the album finally finds its send of fun again. About time! I mean, it’s just one riff, they play it, then piss off. Fine by me! “Fingerprint File” The only song on the album that might be legitimately described as, “the Stones actually trying”. There’s elements of funk in here, some electronic, and a definite dance vibe going on. This feels bracingly modern compared to the rest of the album. Some really great vocals going on here – Jagger’s actually really stretching himself here, not just doing That Thing Jagger does, and its great. It’s so pleasing when he actually bothers. Lyrically this seems very 70’s-paranoid, and it fits the music fantastically. Funky breakdown around the three-minute mark its really great, and again shows what great musicians these guys are when they’re not just doing genre pastiches – apparently it’s Mick Taylor on bass here (that required some post-listening Binging to discover) and he’s amazing. The spoken-work lines over the outro might not have been the wisest move but at least they’re trying something different and mostly landing it. This is, for the most part, a really great album closer. In Conclusion: It’s Only Rock And Roll is, let’s be clear from the outset, a minor work. It lacks the obvious greatness of Exile, and – one important song we’ll discuss in more detail further down excepted – it’s not the sound of a band stretching themselves. The opening number, “If You Can’t Rock Me” is extremely, unusually aggressive in its demands for sex, but outside of that, this is a comfortable album, for the most part prepared to do the sort of things the band enjoy doing without any great sense of urgency. Well, the first side is anyway. “Ain’t Too Proud To Beg” is a solid, entertaining cover version, “It’s Only Rock And Roll (But I Like It)” gives the album it’s big smash single, and “Till The Next Goodbye” and “Time Waits For No One” are both solid entries into the Rolling Stones ballad back catalogue (the latter slightly better than the former). All this works fine – even the aggressiveness of the opening track, if uncharacteristic, at least stands as definitive stamp to get things going while the rest of the first side allows things to settle down into a comfortable groove. If “It’s Only Rock and Roll (But I Like It)” stands out on the first side – and it does, regardless of single status – it’s because Jagger has a clear-eyed view of what he wants to say and delivers on that with wit and humour and it makes the song incredibly engaging. Side One is entertaining, relaxed and easy to fall for. It might seem a little old-fashioned to discuss an album in terms of its sides but this time out it’s a constructive approach, because Side Two is where things somewhat fall apart and that sense of coherence dissipates. “Luxury” is straightforwardly terrible in a way the Stones almost never are, but even putting aside the relative merits of it, the song has nothing in common with the rest of the album at all. It’s completely orphaned, an inappropriate start to the second side of the album with nothing to do with what either came before it or what comes after it. This isn’t even something that re-sequencing the album could fix – it’s just not a song that really belongs here. That it’s followed by the four-square, straightforward “Dance Little Sister” perhaps doesn’t help, but then again that song’s got its own problems too. It’s a rare Stones song that doesn’t allowed the fun the band are having to come across, but “Dance Little Sister” is that rare exception. It’s clearly going after the same style and energy as any number of mid-50’s rockers, but it just doesn’t work – everyone’s doing their own thing and it never clicks into the groove that might make it come together. It’s not a disaster, it just sounds like everyone recorded their bits in different parts of the world and it had to be assembled in a studio somewhere, lacking that vital creative spark that might have been there had everyone been in the same room. At least that would be an excuse – yet it’s not the case, so maybe a more experienced hand in the production booth would have helped. This – and indeed the entire album – is produced by Mick Jagger and Keith Richards, and it’s on songs like this that their relative inexperience shows. Oh they’ve done some production work before, most notably on Exile, but it’s hard to imagine Jimmy Miller would have allowed a song like this to stand as is. He’d have found a way to bring this together, to make it spark, rather than it just lying there as half a dozen musicians co-incidentally all playing the same song (compare and contrast with the way Miller was able to bring “Midnight Rambler” into focus, while still allowing it to be very loose). It’s easy to imagine there’s a great take of this song somewhere – and “Dance Little Sister” could easily be the Stones’ “Beginning To See The Light” by the Velvet Underground which shoots for the same thing, but actually scores – but if there is it must still be in the vaults somewhere because this isn’t it. And after all that we have more than six minutes of “If You Really Want To Be My Friend” before the album can even get close to getting back on track – and fun though it is, if a song as short and disposable “Short And Curlies” is the song to right the ship then something isn’t going according to plan. And then we have “Fingerprint File”. “Fingerprint File” is by far the most fascinating song on the album, because it’s the one where the band are clearly putting in the most effort and the results are, for the most part, spectacular. Sure, “It’s Only Rock And Roll (But I Like It)” can lay claim to real effort, but the circumstances of its recording (a jam, basically, featuring a bunch of people, not just the Stones) mark it out as somewhat different. “Fingerprint File” is all Stones, and it’s the one song where, stripped of their usual genre defences of country, honky-tonk or blues, really sees them forcing themselves into a new direction. There’s some really skilled musicianship going on here, and Jagger’s found something to write about lyrically that feels like it’s breaking new territory for him. Paranoid 70’s thrillers don’t seem like an obvious fit for the Stones, but it works perfectly here, whether drawing from fiction, the Watergate break-in of just a couple of years earlier or something else, but Jagger’s really able to work with the material and gives it an edge. This is the sound of a band who really want to do something new, and want to make it work. The lazy, sloppy nature of the second side is shrugged off in one song and we get to see what this side should have been – disciplined, focussed and terrifically inventive. Yes, the whispered closing is a bit corny, and occasionally even unintentionally funny, but it’s a very minor mistake in what is otherwise an absolute stand-out song. Despite that absolutely powerhouse ending though, the minor, low-key nature of It’s Only Rock And Roll in the final analysis almost ends up being this album’s saving grace. For all that the second side badly loses the momentum the first side built up it never actually becomes bad (“Luxury” aside, obviously), it just can’t find the same focus the first side had. But that first side is almost uniformly strong, even while rarely straying into anything original. But that familiarity, that low-key charm, allows It’s Only Rock And Roll to bypass at least some critical parts of the brain and becomes something to simply enjoy – not challenging, but perfectly entertaining. The second side works to undermine this, but the last two songs do manage to turn things around, and “Fingerprint File” gives hope for the future by showing the Stones are still capable of doing more than simply falling back on the clichés of their own genre trappings to do something properly inventive. The album cover portrays the band as rock deities, descending into a temple while surrounded by adoring women casting themselves at the feet of these musical gods. It’s Only Rock And Roll is not the album to support that level of hubris. But it is an album that, at least, manages to live up to the promise of its title track. Never quite special enough to stand out, yet still more enjoyable than its predecessor, this album is, if nothing else, only rock and roll. And I like it. How Much Of This Album Can Be Cut?Just the one song this time out, an it will surprise nobody that it’s “Luxury”, which is absolutely terrible. This is a thin line to walk – if you’re going to do genre exercises you need to be very careful about how to do them, and this… isn’t. Adopting a fake Jamaican accept and complaining about working for “da company” to “keep you from de povert-eeee” would have sounded crass back then, never mind now. It’s not like the Stones are the only band to make this mistake – just have a listen to The Kinks’s “Apeman” and wonder what they were thinking (though at least that song’s actually about something). But putting aside that, the song itself is completely uninspired – there’s no energy to it, there’s no sense that anyone recording it gives a damn, and the guitars sound like bees stuck in a tin can, badly mixed and thoroughly unconvincing. Musically this is a flimsy song with nothing to add and everything to take away, so off it goes. Ten songs, one dud – that’s a simple 10%. 2019 Cringe Factor 2019 Observations: “She’s got you by the balls”, huh? Well we may as well start there! Yes, “Short And Curlies” is the obvious cringe place to begin, being as it’s about a woman who has neutered her man by grabbing him by the nuts and is apparently taking the song’s protagonist for all he’s worth (“she crashed your car / she spend your money”). This is, it seems, “too bad”. Riiiight. It’s not exactly #metoo, is it? Jagger plays this as cheekily as possible, and is clearly singing with a big grin on his face and none of this is meant to be taken seriously (naming the song after pubic hair pretty much guarantees that), but whether the song manages to overcome the inherent sexism of the lyric is very much up for question. Obviously this is intentionally immature, but it’s frustrating in a way because the grown-up nature of something like “Till The Next Goodbye” shows that Jagger doesn’t need to fall back on these kinds of juvenile provocations. Still quite a fun song though. I don’t want to talk about “Luxury” and more than I already have but yeah, if you want cringe, listening to a white guy do a Jamaican accent is gonna be right up there. Pass it off as the band being in love with reggae all you like, it doesn’t mean they can pull it off. Missus. What Else Happened Musically In 1974? Noted Prole favourite Abba win the Eurovision song contest, catapulting them from obscurity to success in one simple move with the barnstorming “Waterloo”. Cher divorces Sonny Bono after ten years, and the Ramones play their very first gig. Speaking of gigs, a scant one year after announcing his retirement from touring Bowie’s back out on the road again, this time hawking the weird-ass concept album Diamond Dogs (the artist who did the cover for that album – the famous dog dick one – also did the cover for It’s Only Rock And Roll). Sparks release the awesome Kimono My House and Bachman Turner Overdrive release the profoundly silly “You Ain’t Seen Nothing Yet”. Kraftwerk’s totemic Autobahn hoves into view towards the end of the year, as does Ringo Starr’s best solo album, Goodnight Vienna (not a hotly contested award, this). Patti Smith records “Hey Joe”, which means punk can’t be far off, and the Walrus Of Love himself, Barry White, gets married to Glodean James. In memorandum this year? The Stooges, The Moody Blues and King Crimson all called it quits in 1974. Best Track: “It’s Only Rock And Roll (But I Like It)” is the inevitable answer, but with a special merit award going to “Fingerprint File”. Worst Track: “Luxury”, obviously. Number Of Songs Added To My Rolling Stones Playlist: 2 “Time Waits For No One” and “Fingerprint File” Album Rankings: 1. Let It Bleed2. Exile On Main St3. It’s Only Rock And Roll4. Sticky Fingers5. Goat’s Head Soup
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Dellarigg
AV Clubber
This is a public service announcement - with guitars
Posts: 7,499
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Post by Dellarigg on Jun 9, 2019 11:13:27 GMT -5
For whatever reason, this album doesn't quite catch for me. No matter how many times I've heard it (not that many, to be honest), when I see the tracklist, I have to stop and work out which one is Till The Next Goodbye and which one is Time Waits For No One. Short and Curlies I can seriously do without, and yeah, Luxury isn't much good either (here's another one for the Englishmen singing in cod-Jamaican accents file: Eric Clapton! I'm sure the Clapton naysayers will be won over by this). Dance Little Sister should be half as long as it is. But the title track is great, and I've come round a lot lately on their funk numbers (and funk in general), so Fingerprint File now strikes me as a really solid closer; nice that the next album picks up where this one left off, too.
One problem might be that the original plan was to have a side of new songs and a side of soul covers. Ain't Too Proud To Beg was the sole survivor, obviously, though apparently there's a version of Drift Away floating around the internet, and Just My Imagination was tackled a few years later. I don't know how close to their deadline this concept was abandoned, but it sounds like they were scrabbling for songs and Keith was in no condition to mine inspiration quickly.
And this marks a farewell to Mick Taylor. Accounts as to why differ: perhaps he was tired of his contributions not meriting a credit; perhaps he thought the band was about to expire; perhaps he was exhausted, the way the Stones and their lifestyles exhausted anyone who stuck around too long. Still, a shame.
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Post by Prole Hole on Jun 9, 2019 14:04:46 GMT -5
I'm not really sorry to see Taylor go. He's integrated better on the last couple of albums, but I don't think he's been of great benefit really. He's obvious an extraordinary guitar player, but I don't get the feeling he's really adding all that much. I'm not saying this is Taylor's fault - it's not like Jagger and Richards are the most openly collaborative pair in the world - but he's never quite become a part of the band, somehow. Fine, but next.
As for the album not quite clicking - yup, totally get that. There's only so much to get excited about here. I do think the energy, or vibe at least, is a little more coherent than GHS, which is currently languishing at the bottom of the rankings pile, just - but it would be a brave human that wanted to argue that this was a vital piece of work.
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Post by pairesta on Jun 10, 2019 9:20:39 GMT -5
It's Only Rock and Roll is a big dumb fun album by the Stones. Yes, not essential as their previous works, but they can just drop something like "If You Can't Rock Me" so effortlessly at this point. It's probably a bit too ballad heavy: Time Waits for No One and Til The Next Time we Say Goodbye back-to-back like that does neither song any favors, even if they're both quite good (although it does take me a bit of thinking to remember which is which, especially when you throw in "Winter" from the previous album).
The real hook to this is that Jagger seems like he's having a blast. Whenever I hear "If You Can't Rock Me", god-damn it's such a dumb song ("Now who's that black girl with the bright blue haaaaair/Now don't you know that it's rude to staaaare"), objectively I shouldn't like it, but Jagger just sells the hell out of it.
And nowhere on the album is that more evident than "Fingerprint File". He's just all over the place on that song, nudging you, whispering in your ear, dropping druggie bon mots, coke sniffs, and pearls of paranoid wisdom. I love the spoken word outro. I first listened to this album with my Stones-fanatic college roommate; neither of us had heard it before and he bought the vinyl record to give a spin. When we heard "Fingerprint File" for the first time, we couldn't stop laughing. ("Good night. Sleep tight. . . . ow!") Classic Mick. This is a stealth favorite Stones song and worth the price of admission for the entire album.
I am sad to see Taylor go; the Taylor era represents the peak of the Stones creative output, however much or little he contributed to it, and with him leaving they'd never again hit those heights.
For everything he brought to the band, in the couple books I read on them back in the day, very little was said about him. He always operated on the periphery of the band, with little light shed on his place with them, or how he interacted with Mick and Keith or what role he played in these classic albums. The accounts I've read of his exit basically describe it as him "running for his life" from the excesses of that lifestyle.
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Post by Prole Hole on Jul 28, 2019 15:50:47 GMT -5
Black and Blue (1976) Last time we had a minor but pleasant enough album that certainly filled forty-five minutes, but in a low-key, far-from-essential sort of way. Will Black And Blue find the fire back in the band? If I’m To Be A Camera: “We’ve given up”. Pre-existing Prejudices: Apart from that ugly-ass cover I don’t know anything about this album. I don’t recognise any of the song names nor do I recall the album being mentioned as an absolute classic or a miserable stinker. In fact, prior to this project, I doubt I was even aware that it existed. Let’s go in blind! Songs: “Hot Stuff” It’s not hot, and its barely stuff. One meandering, repetitious riff fails to capture what makes funk work, and Jagger isn’t invested enough to land the swagger that’s needed to succeed. Someone’s found their wah-wah pedal, which is nice. Sure, Charlie can keep a beat, and Bill Wyman is trying (with limited success) to find a funky bass, though it’s not massively convincing. It all just wanders along until it doesn’t. Listless, and a poor choice of opening number. Pretty unimpressive. “Hand Of Fate” Clockwork Rolling Stones number. Straightforward, bog-standard Richards riff and Jagger sounds like he’s practically doing a Jagger impression. The riff isn’t something that hasn’t been done better a dozen times before, and Richards isn’t really landing much in the way of guitar solos. There’s potential here (maybe it’s a great live number?) but it’s too listless to convince in any way. Nice shift to brushes on the cymbals towards the end by Charlie, but really, this could be any song by any band. There’s absolutely nothing about this that demands it’s a Rolling Stones song. The Dandy Warhols inescapable “Bohemian Like You” sounds more authentically Stones than this does. “Cherry Oh Baby” Jesus. White guy reggae. Fuck. Off. Yes, I know it’s a cover. It can still fuck right off. “Memory Motel” Paint-by-numbers Stones ballad. It’s quite interesting to hear Jagger and Richards share a lead vocal on a song at least, that’s something, but again, this has been done better a good half-dozen times just on this review project alone. Once more I find myself reaching for the world “listless” – this is just going through the motions. The fact the song is over seven minutes doesn’t do it any favours, its never really develops into a “Hey Jude” style sing-along, it mostly sounds like the band simply forgot to stop. Charlie’s clearly out of inspiration – a real rarity – the, “she’s going a mind of her own / and she uses it well” is presumably meant to suggest a strong independent woman but just sounds patronising. Again maybe this works live, with the audience having a bunch of cigarette lighters in the air, but the album version is just largely dull. (Side 2) “Hey Negrita” We’re orbiting Planet Funk again, and for once skipping off the atmosphere of not-sucking, which makes a nice change. Certainly Jagger’s singing about sex again, but at least this song has a theme, which is more than “Hot Stuff”. Decent enough groove, though the instrumental breakdown about a third of the way through is conspicuously lacking in ideas. The song survives and picks up again though. Ronnie Wood’s doing some solid guitar stuff, Charlie’s got some good work going on, Jagger’s got a little strut… if this isn’t stunning, it’s still miles better than absolutely anything else we’ve come across thus far on this desolate album. Nice “Aladdin Sane”-style jazz piano at the end. “Melody” Mick Jagger is not a convincing lounge lizard, nor the Stones a convincing lounge band. But, though this doesn’t quite work, at least it feels like everyone is trying. Jagger’s voice and delivery are nearly-but-not-quite there, but the smoky, 1940’s vibe at last shows some ambition, miles away from the rote funk or rock the rest of this album is infested with. Some great Billy Preston piano goes a long way to redeeming this, and the unexpected brass towards the end give things real life. If this is a fail, it is at least an ambitious fail, and that’s not nothing. “Fool To Cry” Eh. “Crazy Mama” Status Quo must be really annoyed that the Stones are covering one of their songs. *checks credits* Oh. Turns out this was written by Jagger/Richards not Rossi or Parfitt. Who knew? Plodding tub rock that, yet again, could have been written by anyone. Its lone redeeming feature is that it herald’s the end of this complete waste of space. In Conclusion: Well, that was quite the exercise in pointlessness. As you may have gathered by now, Black And Blue is an expression of absolutely nothing. It exists for no reason, has no creativity, arrives to fill a product gap and nothing more. and it entirely achieves that. Were it not that the Stones have their own record label at this point in their career, you would assume that this was the Contractual Obligation Album, an excuse for the band to turn up and knock out a dozen who-cares tracks so they could move on to something else. But obviously that’s not the case. So what accounts for this listlessness? Honestly, I neither know nor care. The apathy that Black And Blue is drenched in is contagious. As a reviewer, this album gives you nowhere to go because so little effort has been put into the creative process that it’s very hard to find anything to analyse. The album cover is a dead giveaway – previously we’ve had a cheeky pun (OF COCK), a pretentious pantheon, a collage, a surreal sculpture. What do we have here? Mick Jagger in slightly too much lipstick, Keith Richards squinting in from the right, and the other band members just standing around. There’s no creativity, no interest, just Jagger staring vacantly into the middle-distance. Still, at least it’s a cover that accurately captures the content. There’s nothing here to talk about. What are you supposed to say about a track like “Crazy Mama”? There are 18-year-olds that could have managed that in Daddy’s basement. “Hot Stuff”, the album opener, should grab you by the throat and get you engaged, yet it’s a wispy piece of nothing. “Fool To Cry” is just a lazy stream of clichés. The Sex Pistols are howling against the Establishment, The New York Dolls have come and gone, The Clash are at Hammersmith Palais, and we’re supposed to give a shit about “Hand Of Fate”? Long gone are the days of “Gimme Shelter”, when this band actually had something to say about the world. Even something as straightforward as “It’s Only Rock And Roll (But I Like It)” felt like it had more to say than the entirety of this album put together (and a better riff than anything on this album to boot). Nobody expects the Stones at this point in their career to be tuned in to cultural trends like punk or glam (another genre that largely passed the band by), but the sheer irrelevance displayed here is incredibly disheartening. Going through the motions provides, sadly, no motion at all. Nothing quite makes the case for the irrelevancy of the Rolling Stones like Black And Blue. And that’s it. I have nothing else to say about this album. How Much Of This Album Can Be Cut?All of it. This is so utterly pointless. 100%2019 Cringe Factor / 2019 Observations: N/A Well, there’s fucking white guy reggae, because apparently some people just don’t know how to learn a lesson. I mean, obviously it’s fucking terrible. But beyond that, there’s really nothing from a 2019 perspective that seems either cringe-inducing or worth observing and commenting on, so I’m returning to my original statement. N/A. What Else Happened Musically In 1976? Perennial bargain-bin favourite and music punchline Frampton Comes Alive! is released, but don’t be fooled – this album sold a shedload. On which note, The Eagles: Their Greatest Hits is loosed upon the world and goes on to become the biggest selling record of the 20th Century in America. Seriously, even Thriller couldn’t hold it at bay. The Ramones release the inventively-titled Ramones and Paul McCartney scores a sadly-indelible hit with the saccharine-drenched “Silly Love Songs”, taken from the punishingly average Wings At The Speed Of Sound. Tina decides she’s had enough of Ike and files for divorce, and George Harrison makes legal history by being found guilty of “subconscious plagiarism” for “My Sweet Lord”. The Sex Pistols sign to EMI – that can only go well – and towards the end of the year release the era-defining “Anarchy In The UK”, the best punk single in history bar one (sorry, The Clash, but it’s “God Save The Queen”). Stevie Wonder gives us the absolutely essential Songs In The Key Of Life, and the late, great Tom Petty debuts with Tom Petty And The Heartbreakers. A fan of mawkish redemption stories held together by terrible music? Oh look, it’s Barbara Streisand and Kris Kristofferson’s unstoppable juggernaut A Star Is Born! Still, at least the end of the year gives us Blondie’s first album, so that’s something (a rather excellent something, in fact). Best Track: You know, I’m going to go with “Melody”. “Hey Negrita” is probably better overall, but I really admire the ambition behind “Melody”, even if it doesn’t come off, whereas “Hey Negrita” is good, but… easy. So yeah. “Melody”. Worst Track: “Cherry Oh Baby”, perhaps unsurprisingly. Number Of Songs Added To My Rolling Stones Playlist: For the first time, a big fat zero. Album Rankings: 1. Let It Bleed2. Exile On Main St3. It’s Only Rock And Roll4. Sticky Fingers5. Goat’s Head Soup6. Black And Blue
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Dellarigg
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Post by Dellarigg on Jul 29, 2019 4:05:56 GMT -5
Oh dear.
Well, I wouldn't claim this album went from zero to hero, but I will say it's the one that's grown most in my estimations, to the point where I got it on vinyl earlier this year (albeit second hand, for an outlay of £7). There's no rescuing Cherry Oh Baby, granted, but the others I don't mind at all - and Hot Stuff I've come to really like, think it's one of their best funk tracks. Keith was totally checked out, Mick Taylor had gone and they were auditioning replacement guitarists on most if not all tracks, so I suppose it's the definition of transitional. Obviously, this is not a rousing defence of it, but I prefer it to It's Only Rock n' Roll and play it quite a lot.
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Post by Prole Hole on Jul 29, 2019 5:28:13 GMT -5
Oh dear. Well, I wouldn't claim this album went from zero to hero, but I will say it's the one that's grown most in my estimations, to the point where I got it on vinyl earlier this year (albeit second hand, for an outlay of £7). There's no rescuing Cherry Oh Baby, granted, but the others I don't mind at all - and Hot Stuff I've come to really like, think it's one of their best funk tracks. Keith was totally checked out, Mick Taylor had gone and they were auditioning replacement guitarists on most if not all tracks, so I suppose it's the definition of transitional. Obviously, this is not a rousing defence of it, but I prefer it to It's Only Rock n' Roll and play it quite a lot. I'll be candid, funk is not my favourite genre by some distance, but I just can't understand getting worked up about "Hot Stuff". Even the Stones have turned out better funk songs prior to this album so just measuring it against their own material this feels inadequate. You can absolutely tell that Keith is checked out - the only interesting guitar work here is done by Ronnie Wood - I've been harsh about Taylor over these reviews but maybe he really did add something worthwhile because without him here there's absolutely something lacking. It's Only Rock And Roll I can understand not being hot on, it's very minor, but certainly there are tracks there stronger than anything on Black And Blue, though let's be honest, neither are really worth getting het up over. Ill be interested to see if Some Girls continues this decline - I hope not.
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Dellarigg
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Post by Dellarigg on Jul 29, 2019 6:02:17 GMT -5
Oh dear. Well, I wouldn't claim this album went from zero to hero, but I will say it's the one that's grown most in my estimations, to the point where I got it on vinyl earlier this year (albeit second hand, for an outlay of £7). There's no rescuing Cherry Oh Baby, granted, but the others I don't mind at all - and Hot Stuff I've come to really like, think it's one of their best funk tracks. Keith was totally checked out, Mick Taylor had gone and they were auditioning replacement guitarists on most if not all tracks, so I suppose it's the definition of transitional. Obviously, this is not a rousing defence of it, but I prefer it to It's Only Rock n' Roll and play it quite a lot. I'll be candid, funk is not my favourite genre by some distance, but I just can't understand getting worked up about "Hot Stuff". Even the Stones have turned out better funk songs prior to this album so just measuring it against their own material this feels inadequate. You can absolutely tell that Keith is checked out - the only interesting guitar work here is done by Ronnie Wood - I've been harsh about Taylor over these reviews but maybe he really did add something worthwhile because without him here there's absolutely something lacking. It's Only Rock And Roll I can understand not being hot on, it's very minor, but certainly there are tracks there stronger than anything on Black And Blue, though let's be honest, neither are really worth getting het up over. Ill be interested to see if Some Girls continues this decline - I hope not. I've only come round to funk in the last couple of years myself, so with the zeal of a convert I might be more forgiving of relatively weak stuff than I should be. Also, I'm just generally more forgiving of the Stones - if you were covering their 80s output, I'd still be finding loads of things to enjoy. I can't think of a single Stones album that I don't like. (The general view of Some Girls is that it's an almighty return to form and almost stands comparison with their best work. I'd personally have it hovering just outside the big four.)
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Post by Prole Hole on Jul 30, 2019 2:14:33 GMT -5
I hope the general view holds true.
80's Stones will definitely be beyond the scope of this project, but I'm still considering looping round and doing a bonus post for Beggars Banquet. I'll see how I feel at the time. Thanks to move-related shenanigans it's taken me long enough to get back to this.
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ayatollahcm
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Post by ayatollahcm on Jul 30, 2019 3:12:56 GMT -5
I hope the general view holds true. 80's Stones will definitely be beyond the scope of this project, but I'm still considering looping round and doing a bonus post for Beggars Banquet. I'll see how I feel at the time. Thanks to move-related shenanigans it's taken me long enough to get back to this. I support this, as well as you closing out this column with a post on Tattoo You, which came out in '81, but is essentially an Odds n' Sods of their 70s output. I'm sure I brought this up elsewhere in the thread.
Although, if you really wanna go crazy, you can always backtrack and do a post on Metamorphosis, the Stones odds n' sods that came out in '75, but features tracks recorded between '64-'70. It's a real hodgepodge mindfuck that includes their baroque era, their blues era, and their hard-rock drugs era, and makes absolutely no sense.
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Dellarigg
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Post by Dellarigg on Jul 30, 2019 3:19:43 GMT -5
I hope the general view holds true. 80's Stones will definitely be beyond the scope of this project, but I'm still considering looping round and doing a bonus post for Beggars Banquet. I'll see how I feel at the time. Thanks to move-related shenanigans it's taken me long enough to get back to this. If you wanted to be wholly - perhaps insanely - completist, I would think about Tattoo You as well. Though it came out in 1981, it's assembled from off-cuts recorded throughout the 70s. See which tracks were left off Black and Blue! Us Stones fans can't wait for the day when the vaults are opened, the way Dylan and Springsteen have opened theirs. According to Keith, there's heaps of stuff.
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Dellarigg
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Post by Dellarigg on Jul 30, 2019 3:21:12 GMT -5
I hope the general view holds true. 80's Stones will definitely be beyond the scope of this project, but I'm still considering looping round and doing a bonus post for Beggars Banquet. I'll see how I feel at the time. Thanks to move-related shenanigans it's taken me long enough to get back to this. I support this, as well as you closing out this column with a post on Tattoo You, which came out in '81, but is essentially an Odds n' Sods of their 70s output. I'm sure I brought this up elsewhere in the thread.
Although, if you really wanna go crazy, you can always backtrack and do a post on Metamorphosis, the Stones odds n' sods that came out in '75, but features tracks recorded between '64-'70. It's a real hodgepodge mindfuck that includes their baroque era, their blues era, and their hard-rock drugs era, and makes absolutely no sense.
Beat me to it. Though I wouldn't go so far as to include Metamorphosis.
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Post by Prole Hole on Jul 30, 2019 4:28:01 GMT -5
I hope the general view holds true. 80's Stones will definitely be beyond the scope of this project, but I'm still considering looping round and doing a bonus post for Beggars Banquet. I'll see how I feel at the time. Thanks to move-related shenanigans it's taken me long enough to get back to this. I support this, as well as you closing out this column with a post on Tattoo You, which came out in '81, but is essentially an Odds n' Sods of their 70s output. I'm sure I brought this up elsewhere in the thread.
Although, if you really wanna go crazy, you can always backtrack and do a post on Metamorphosis, the Stones odds n' sods that came out in '75, but features tracks recorded between '64-'70. It's a real hodgepodge mindfuck that includes their baroque era, their blues era, and their hard-rock drugs era, and makes absolutely no sense.
Thanks for the advise everyone! No promises at this stage, but I will try to at the very least write "And In Conclusion" to the column when the time comes, in exactly the way I failed to do with R.E.M. (I'm also taking suggestions as to what to cover next. I'm considering Wings, because why not? But options are open).
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Post by pairesta on Jul 30, 2019 5:28:23 GMT -5
When I went through my Stones Phase I pretty much concentrated on the same era as this project, going a couple years further at either end. I more or less got the albums in order. When it came to Black and Blue, though, I was in a quandary. I couldn't find it. A co-worker at the time was watching me work through this catalogue and had said something to the effect of "Let me know when you get to Black and Blue. That should be interesting." So that comment, combined with the un-find-ability of the album, made me get obsessed with it. I'd set out and just scour all the CD shops I could find. Finally I found it at a Best Buy, at the very back of the Rolling Stones selection, only one copy. I rushed home and put it on.
I had pretty much the same reaction as Prole. Just . . . what the hell is this? Like I said last time, It's Only Rock and Roll certainly isn't part of their Masterpiece Era, but it's a lot of fun. To go from that to this? And people bag on Goat's Head Soup? THIS is the drop in their catalogue.
I gave it another listen the next day. Nope. I promptly went to a used CD store and offloaded my copy. So Black and Blue was in my CD collection for all of 48 hours.
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