The Rolling Stones
“40 years! And they've been doing 'Satisfaction' for 37 of them! And none of the versions of that song has ever sounded like Britney Spears.” – Capn Marvel
“I think I busted a button on me trousers, I hope they don’t fall down…you don’t want me TROUSERS to fall down, now, do ya?” – Mick Jagger
“*Falls into swimming pool and drowns*” – Brian Jones
Albums Reviewed:
December’s Children (And Everybody’s)
Their Satanic Majesties Request
Get Yer Ya-Ya’s Out! The Rolling Stones In Concert
There has always been something to say for consistency. For longevity. For staying together for a really, really, really long time and managing not to suck for almost all of it. And that is where the Rolling Stones come in. If the Beatles were Sandy Koufax, exhibiting overwhelming dominance for a short period of time and then abruptly stopping while still at their peak, then the Stones are Tom Seaver, consistently very good to great for a long period of time, with a few MVP-level seasons thrown in along the way. On a personal level, their highest high points, save possibly Let it Bleed, have never quite hit me as hard as, say, the Beatles or Led Zeppelin, but the sheer AMOUNT of consistently great, high-level rock and roll yumminess produced by these guys over their career never ceases to astound me. When I finish it, this will be by far the biggest page yet on this website in terms of number of reviews, yet there is not a SINGLE album I don’t like (Nope, never mind that. I’ve heard the 80’s material now). They’ve been going strong for four decades, 3/4 of the current lineup were original members of the band, and they show no signs of stopping, no matter how decrepit Keith Richards looks. The Rolling Stones ARE Rock And Roll, more than any other band (even Led Zeppelin! EVEN STYX!!!), and no self-respecting rock fan’s collection is complete without at least a copy of Hot Rocks, though I personally wouldn’t take anyone seriously unless they had the “golden foursome,” from Beggars Banquet through Exile, as well as a few others lying around. And, finally, do NOT spit on post-Exile Stones. I like them a LOT. Way more than I should, in fact. I take serious issue with the general belief that everything this band released post-Exile, bar Some Girls and Tattoo You, is mediocre bullshit, unless by “mediocre bullshit” you mean “darn good rock and roll records!”
Everyone knows the Stones’ lineup, but humor me for a minute, eh? From left to right we’ve got singer Mick Jagger (The Voice of Rock and Roll, and a superior singer to Geddy Lee, ofcourse), guitarist/experimenter/drug casualty Brian Jones (if not for him, things like Their Satanic Majesties Request might never have happened, and without his early influence, I don’t think they could have ever reached the peaks they did in the late ‘60’s/early ’70’s), drummer Charlie Watts (a.k.a. The Human Metronome), guitarist Keith Richards (who really should have been dead decades ago), and bassist Bill Wyman (who wrote “In Another Land,” which is a neat song). For a band that has gone on for FOUR DECADES, there are an astoundingly low number of lineup changes. Brian Jones got kicked out and drowned in a swimming pool in 1969, replaced by Mick Taylor, who left in the mid-seventies, replaced by Ronnie Wood, and Bill Wyman left about a decade ago. AND THAT’S IT!!! This is clearly not King Crimson. Keith Richards is much cooler than Robert Fripp.
And, onto the reviews!
England
Rating: 8
Best Song: “Walking
The Dog”
Short, snappy, and fun, The Stones’ humble little debut album here, over in a tidy thirty minutes and containing exactly one original Jagger/Richards-penned song, might just be my favorite Stones record from the period before they got off their asses and wrote more than 6 or 7 songs per record themselves (hell, I might like even more than Aftermath, too! But not Between the Buttons. That rules so hard in its fruitiness! Maybe I should bump it up to a 9…). It being 1964, and the Rolling Stones not being the Beatles, however, it was not expected that the band write many originals (thank god, because it took them 3 or 4 albums to figure out how exactly to do that), and so one of England’s best and freshest R&B cover bands were allowed to enthusiastically “do their thing,” and the results are a darn good time!
As we get later into this 1964-65 abyss of bastardized, patched-together, cover-heavy albums and such, the band’s covers show a disturbing tendency to become less and less alive, and less and less snappy (I like the adjective “snappy.” It describes the best work of the early cover band Stones extremely well.), but they were all over it here. The opening Buddy Holly cover “Not Fade Away” is under two minutes long, but I couldn’t picture it being any longer! Nice Bo Diddley-esque shuffly beat, bouncy acoustic guitars and snappy harmonica. Good times! And more good times to be had elsewhere, too. It’s not like these are random covers you haven’t heard before, either (“Route 66!” “I Just Want To Make Love To You!”), but the band is so young, fresh, idealistic, and snappy in their recording of them (I’m gonna give “props” to the rhythm section for this. The uptempo songs here absolutely book it, or at least as much as bands “booked it” in 1964) that you forget you’ve probably heard half these songs before. The token Chuck Berry cover “Carol” (later reprised in slightly inferior fashion on Get Yer Ya-Ya’s Out!) absolutely rocks my ass. “I’m a King Bee” has an absolutely killer rhythm and snappy little guitar runs in there. Great stuff.
Mick is in fine form, too. He’s got his personality down pat even at this early point, although obviously not quite up to the standards of the band’s late 60’s/early 70’s heyday. He sounds charmingly misogynistic in “I’m a King Bee,” nicely perverted in “Walking the Dog” (definitely my favorite tune here, and the only one where you can see “Brown Sugar” Mick starting to poke through) and has his full-on sex rocker voice going in “Carol.” And even though the slower tunes are obviously the weaker ones here, because he hasn’t become MICK JAGGER yet, he sounds awfully good on the bluesy slow stuff like “Honest I Do” as well. The band may not “book it,” because the song neither requires nor accepts “booking,” but he still manages to shine through.
Ofcourse,
it being 1964, the record has a handful of songs that just don’t deserve in any
way, shape, or form to be here. The
first is the only original tune on the record, “
But damn good time here, nonetheless! Short, unsubstantial, and containing exactly zero worthwhile original compositions, but so goshdarn fun and snappy! The only embarrassing moment is when the band hop off the covers bandwagon and try to write something themselves. Bad times, there. But give them time! They’ll learn how to write a convincing rocker, I think.
12 X 5 (1964)
Rating: 7
Best Song: “It’s All
Over Now”
Basically more of the same, but weaker, less snappy, less rocking, and marred by the presence of FOUR original Jagger/Richards ditties, which is still about three or four too many at this point in their career, if you axe me. The Stones don’t really try to do anything new again in album form until Aftermath anyway, so until then you just need to sit tight, look for subtle differences, wait for the original songwriting to kick in, and hope the situation doesn’t stagnate too much before the band realizes they can’t release Chuck Berry covers as singles their entire career. Yes, some isolated songs on these early albums are groundbreaking, but there’s very little to choose between the five of them. So buckle up! Let’s get boring.
OK, so, like I said, Mick and Keith wrote four songs this time. I don’t know why, but they did. The jumpy “Empty Heart” actually turns out pretty neat (good for them!), but “Good Times, Bad Times” is an instantly forgettable down-home acoustic hick blues number (literally, I had to click on the track again to remember every word of that description between “forgettable” and “blues”), “Congratulations,” a pretty worthless and wimpy slow pop number, is banal and clichéd in every sense of both words, and “Grown Up Wrong” is a sloppy mess. It took til the band’s third album to write originals that could match their covers, and their fourth to write originals that could surpass their covers. At this point, their originals get in the damn way of their covers. A bit less snappy and rocking than those on England’s Newest Hitmakers, but very nicely done nonetheless. The opener “Around and Around” is the token Chuck Berry number (gotta have one per record!), and while I prefer “Carol” both as a song and as a performance on an early patched-together Rolling Stones covers record, I still enjoy “Around and Around” fine. The real winner in the snappy rocker cover department here, though, is “It’s All Over Now,” which is snappier, poppier, sharper, and better than anything on the debut. Great Keith harmonizing in the chorus, too! I love Keith as a backup singer. He’s so sloppy, but he’s just a great counterpoint to the leering, sex-pervert Mick. Very sincere-sounding. Very nice.
The slower cover numbers are just about as hit-or-miss as those on England’s Newest as well. “Time is on My Side” is very nice, for instance, and “Confessin’ the Blues” is nicely bluesy. While I enjoy the organ tone in “If You Need Me,” though, the song itself kinda annoys me, though that might be the half-assed production on these albums (sometimes the treble is just overpowering, specifically whenever anyone picks up a harmonica, but the organ here is a bit loud as well). The one that baffles me, however, is “Under the Boardwalk,” which just sounds weird coming from the Stones. I mean, don’t get me wrong, it’s a nice song and this is an acceptable rendition, but there’s so little of the “Rolling Stones” in it. Where’s the personality? Circa-1971 Mick would dirty up this song to the point that you think the boardwalk is translucent, you’re staring up underage black girls’ dresses while standing under there, and these young, sexy, African-Americans Mick is yelling about have, ofcourse, absentmindedly (or maybe not!) left their panties at home. Here, it’s kind of…sweet. Where’s the bluesy sex R&B that this band so inherently ruled at? Poo.
The remaining tracks are another nice-but-forgettable instrumental R&B workout (“2120 South Michigan Avenue”) and a decent cover of a song CCR covers eons better a few years hence (“Susie Q”). This record is probably more stereotypical of what you might expect from this band at this time than England’s Newest, basically in that it’s not all that great. Their songwriting hasn’t begun to kick in yet, but since they were actually trying to write songs now, their covers suffer a bit, and with a few exceptions this album is just a step down from the band’s debut in all areas. Still an enjoyable piece of vintage sixties rocking goodness, but, you know, less fresh, exciting, and snappy than the debut. And I like my early Stones SNAPPY, goddammit.
The Rolling Stones, Now! (1965)
Rating: 8
Best Song: “Mona (I Need
You, Baby)”
Better! For my money the best cover-heavy record the Stones ever produced that had anything original of note on it (which, ofcourse, leaves out England’s Newest Hitmakers), I’d Rather be a Canadian, Now! finds the Stones retreating from the slightly poppier (“Congratulations”) and wussier (“Under the Boardwalk”) leanings of 12 X 5 to the blues-sex-rock style of their excellent debut, a direction yours truly definitely appreciates, because any kind of deviation from the sweaty, misogynistic norm definitely did not suit these fine young men at this point in time. We get some slow-down tracks, ofcourse (“Pain in My Heart,” for instance), but they stick to that kind of raw, rootsy blues that these guys excelled at even before they learned how to write a half-decent song themselves. And this is why I’m giving another Rolling Stones album a goddamn 8, instead of keeping the 7 train going all the way through to Aftermath.
It’s not quite as snappy and fresh as the debut, so maybe I like it a little less, but it doesn’t have any instrumental wastes of time or ass-poor originals like “Tell Me,” either, so it’s probably more consistent. Or something. It’s just a good, early rock record. The opener “Everybody Needs Somebody to Love” may be a little overlong for this period in musical history, but the band keeps a tight little groove throughout, so it’s a nice time. “Down Home Girl” is hilarious. “And every time I kiss you, girl, it tastes like pork and beans!” I don’t know quite what to think of that, but the lyrics and groove of the song set this record’s tone as probably the dirtiest-sounding of these early records. England’s Newest was just fresh and exciting and snappy, and the other three make little excursions (sometimes successful, sometimes not) into wussier material, but not here! Just song after song of early rock ‘n’ roll dirtiness. The token Chuck Berry cover (“You Can’t Catch Me”) rules, and provides the first example of another theme we see here, the independent (read: hates women and leaves them in the lurch) man. The fact that “Heart of Stone,” the first original I’ve mentioned on this page you might have heard of, comes next, and expounds on these themes, is probably no coincidence.
Not that I’m suggesting the Rolling Stones are attempting to tie their albums together with any kind of thematic unity at this point. They’re still just throwing covers and originals together in a randomly arranged mishmash. But I sense maybe they did that a little less here, because there aren’t any of the jarring differences between songs that you find on both 12 X 5 (what the fuck is “Under the Boardwalk” doing on that record, for instance? I still don’t know) and their two subsequent albums. They clearly just wanted to be dirty, rocking bluesmen for this record, and the only exception to that rule (the mediocre “Off the Hook,” which is about a damn telephone call) just shows how limited they still were in writing their own songs at this point. “Heart of Stone,” along with the kick-ass “What a Shame” (Ooo! Cool guitar solo! Ooo! Love that tinkly boogie piano in a hard blues song!) and the effective closer “Surprise, Surprise,” shows that the Stones were capable of writing originals to match their best covers by this point. “Off the Hook” shows they were only capable of writing three of them, not four, and the fact that “Mona (I Need You Baby),” an absolutely rocking cover, is my favorite song here, shows that they couldn’t yet surpass them, so they thankfully stick to four and fill out the rest of the album with infectious rocking covers like “Oh Baby (We Got a Good Thin Goin’)” and down-home slide guitar blues tracks like “Little Red Rooster,” possibly the best early cover precursor to later material like the hick tracks on Beggars Banquet and “You Gotta Move” from Sticky Fingers. Just good, dirty, bluesified covers everywhere on this record. Things you most certainly must appreciate.
It may be less snappy (and therefore slightly weaker) than England’s Newest Hitmakers, but because since this record actually has a bunch of original compositions worth shit, I’d say this might be the best place to start in your super-early young ragamuffin Rolling Stone experience. England’s Newest Hitmakers is more contagiously exciting, tight, and compact, but this one is dirtier. No longer the fresh and clean (relatively, you know, since the Rolling Stones were marketed as “dangerous” back in the day) boys on the debut, Now! shows the Stones at the peak of their early, dirty blues-rock powers, before they learned how the hell to write pop songs. A few draggy spots and a lack of sharpness compared to the debut (it’s still sharper than the other three early Stones records) make me rate the debut a teensy but higher, but, then again, I’m a Massachusetts liberal, so you probably shouldn’t trust anything I say.
Out Of Our Heads (1965)
Rating: 7
Best Song: “(I Can’t
Get No) Satisfaction”
So I just got back from seeing Alexander again. Yes, twice. I’ve seen Alexander
twice. I don’t think it sucks, and I’m here to
defend the damn thing. Yes, I know it’s
flawed. No shit it’s flawed. Oliver Stone was obviously high when he made
certain decisions, and whoever wrote every dialogue scene between Alexander and
Hephaistion should be shot. It’s also very,
very long. And you can feel the
length. Fine. I know this.
But it is bombing in an epic
way, there were about 5 people in theater tonight (the movie’s been out like a
WEEK!!), its rating on Rotten Tomatoes is like 14 goddamn percent…what the
fuck? It’s received far worse reviews
than
OK, so I really just made that rant to take up space, because I’m running out of things to say about these early Rolling Stones records. This one is noticeable because it’s the first record where the originals really come to the forefront, as they take up fully half the album, and best few songs are all original compositions. On the flipside, however, except for “Mercy Mercy,” the covers almost universally bore the crap out of me, and there’s a live track (“I’m Alright”) tossed on here for no reason that sounds more like hyperactive teenage girls screaming incoherently than an actual song. Because it was 1965 and that’s what idiot teenage girls did. They paid good money for their concert tickets, then went to see their favorite band just so they could scream so loud they COULDN’T HEAR ANY OF THE ACTUAL FUCKING MUSIC. Is it any wonder the Beatles stopped touring? Why would you want to deal with that shit, especially when you’re the best and most influential rock and roll band of all time? They probably couldn’t even hear themselves play. If my band’s third songwriter could produce “Taxman,” “Within You Without You,” “While My Guitar Gently Weeps,” and “Something,” I could give a fuck about playing live.
Goddammit, I keep getting off track. This is what happens when you type a review at 2am on a Friday night after teaching all week. God, when am I gonna sleep til tomorrow, 1? 2? Who the hell knows. A late-ass time, that’s for sure. But whatever. This is a record review website. I review records. And what strikes me about Out of Out Heads is that it seems the Stones, with their burgeoning songwriting abilities, are beginning to lose their enthusiasm for rocking with authority. Sure, “(I Can’t Get No) Satisfaction” is a complete forking masterpiece, but outside of that this record is far cleaner-sounding than Now!. Marvin Gaye’s “Hitch Hike” is boring, “That’s How Strong My Love Is” is good, but provides no new insights into the band, and Sam Cooke’s “Good Times” leaves absolutely no lasting impression on my psyche whatsoever. They even make an Otis Redding song sound uninspired (“Cry to Me”), which is hard. In the past, they’d have poured their blood and sweat into these songs and made them either giddily exciting (England’s Newest Hitmakers) or raunchily raw (Now!). Here they’re just kind of rote.
And why is that? The originals! As I said before, this record is actually half original, their best ratio thus far, and the originals far surpass the covers. Besides the obvious “Satisfaction,” “The Last Time” is another excellent guitar rocker, even though people who claim it’s better than “Satisfaction” are just desperately trying to be different. “Play With Fire” is a soft, vaguely baroque-ish, acoustic pop nugget that shows what the band was slowly turning into, and why their renditions of others’ soul, blues, and R&B songs were becoming less inspired by the minute (BECAUSE THEY DIDN’T GIVE A RAT’S ASS ANYMORE!!! They wanted to write their own songs, dammit, but since they simply had to put out an album every 5 months back then as well as listen to moronic teenage girls yell like insane cult members every night, they didn’t have time to copy A Hard Day’s Night and write an album full of ‘em). The two remaining originals at the end (the 6th was the live inaudible screamfest “I’m Alright”) are nothing special, however. Some list the bluesy “The Spider and the Fly” as an early Stones classic, but I just don’t see it. It’s a nice song! But a mite rote. And the closer “One More Try” is just kind of childish.
So it’s just another early Stones record. It’s good. Good, early, R&B and blues-derived rock music. Outside of the golden three original singles (“Satisfaction,” “The Last Time,” and “Play With Fire”) and the cover of “Mercy Mercy,” I find this one doesn’t do all that much for me, though. Perhaps it’s that, at a certain point, I get tired of listening to albums that sound so similar to each other and obviously patched-together, but who really knows? I’m glad the band is writing top-notch originals now, but the covers have fallen back behind the curve, and so nothing more than a 7 is acceptable for this fine, enjoyable little record. And Alexander doesn’t suck, goddammit.
ddickson@rice.edu writes:
You know what? I've
heard "Satisfaction" about 582,930 times now, and I
think I'm JUST beginning to appreciate its power. It must be the insane
repetition in that song. You know, after the four "and I try"s,
then they
just repeat the main riff a million times and Jagger rants forever about
something working-class. Wow. I never got the coolness of that
before. Do
any of their other early songs do that?
Well, do they? I'm just wondering.
Yeah, I agree with you, the originals kick the covers' ass and spank them a
few. "Play With Fire" and "Satisfaction" in
particular. But in me 'umble
opinion, they never really had a really spectacular album as a whole until
Exile. "Satisfaction" though. . . some songs you just have to
listen past
their "mythic" status and just appreciate for what they are.
But now the real reason I e-mailed. :) Not to offend your classic major
sensitivities, Brad, but I believe the Iliad takes the central story of all
classic literature and basically takes a shit on it. The damn thing is
basically three hundred sixty pages of mindlessness and what's left
concentrates on Achilles' bitchy little wounded pride. No Horse, no
historical context, not even letting people know that Helen was a fuckin'
phantom. Kind of like Bad Boys II, through sixty degrees of separation.
Herodotus could kick Homer's ASS in terms of classic-ity, however. He is
the Martin Scorcese to Homer's
But that's just me. I've been marked for death by the Liberal Arts League
of Rock Reviewers anyhoo, so I just thought I'd get that off my conscience.
December’s Children (And Everybody’s) (1965)
Rating: 7
Best Song: “As Tears
Go By”
Possibly the most inessential Rolling Stones album if one considers “essential” to mean “important to understanding the development of a band over time” (well, either this or Steel Wheels, because all that one tells you about the Stones’ development is “no, we still suck”), Los jovenes de Diciembre (?) is also the best example in the Rolling Stones catalog (there are FAR worse ones from other bands, I’m sure) of mid-sixties record company patchwork cash-in bullshittery, combining brand spankin’-new pop originals that have about as much R&B influence as the Bay City Rollers with covers (of wildly differing quality) that belong in early 1964, as well as a live track or two actually from 1964, as far as I know. This looks to me like the Stones’ record company was demanding a new record before the Stones were actually ready to release one. It is, even more than Out of Our Heads (because at least that one had “Satisfaction” on it), “just another early Stones record.” Isolated moments are ofcourse fantastic, and nothing on here truly reeks of anything offensive, and so the 7 train continues on, but aside from a few smacktastic singles you can get on about five other compilations, there is absolutely no reason for anyone to own this record, unless they’re an idiot with a website (and even then, they can just get it through various illegal means).
So, you want to know about songs? Sure! Why not. The opening cover “She Said Yeah” absolutely rips with fuzzed-out guitars and Mick barking like it’s 1970, but no other cover here is worth much of anything. They also stick most of them at the beginning, which I guess is an attempt (because, conversely, the originals are then placed at the end) to leave you, the listener, with the impression “wow, what darn fine songwriters these boys are turning into!” Or something. But the point of this paragraph here is that the covers, like on Out of Our Heads, are ROTE, because the band, in their newfangled desire to write some of the damn songs themselves, doesn’t give a fuck. So “You Better Move On” and “Look What You’ve Done” don’t really do anything for me, and even the token Chuck Berry song (“Talkin’ Bout You”) isn’t much to look at, because there is just no passion behind these covers at all. They even make covers 5 and 6 LIVE tracks, which, as you might expect, turn out to be, basically, a bunch of moronic teenage girls YELLING REALLY FUCKING LOUDLY while the band plays really fast. One of them is “Route 66,” which was on fucking England’s Newest Hitmakers, so now you know how deep in the vaults people were digging to flesh this bad boy out into a real, twenty-eight minute (Wow, lengthy!) record album. Why they choose to make the final track on the album a live cover of a song not on any of their previous records (“I’m Movin’ On”) is beyond me, too, but I do enjoy Keith’s “Yes, I’m mooooovin’!!!” backing vocals in there, so I guess this is my favorite of the three live tracks placed on early hodgepodge Stones records for no reason. But I doubt anyone cares about that.
Again, the emphasis is on the originals here, and they show what I’ve been telling you all along: this band doesn’t give much of a crap about dirty, sweaty roots-rock right now. They want to copy the Beatles and write nice pop songs, and this is why their covers aren’t great shakes anymore. The poppiness of the originals on this record even makes me doubt my later claim that you should treat 1967 as an anomaly in the Stones’ catalog. They were showing signs of fruitiness back in 1965. Hell, Aftermath has traces of it on there (“Lady Jane”). Maybe they felt these dual desires (fruitiness and roots-rock) tugging at them, decided to get all the fruitiness out of their system in 1967 (good year to pick for that, by the way), then hopped back on the roots-rock bandwagon in 1968? Who knows.
I don’t actually care, by the way. Just theorizing. And the originals on this record are quite good, making this the 2nd consecutive outing where the originals take the covers out behind a shed and go all Deliverance on them. Another similarity between this record and its predecessor is that there’s a pseudo “big three” of super-tasty Jagger/Richards tunes, and then another three decent but uninspired ones. The great ones here are the rocking “Get off My Cloud,” the poppy “I’m Free,” and the superb, string-laden fruitiness preview “As Tears Go By.” Of the remaining three, “The Singer Not The Song” and “Blue Turns to Grey” are boring sad-pop efforts, and “Gotta Get Away” is a weak attempt at the kind of poppy/rootsy material that would dominate Aftermath. You can really tell that this the third record of the year for the Stones, but, just like Out of Our Heads, giving it anything less than a 7 would be a disservice to the band, since a handful of tracks are still great, and not a single thing here is bad. Just rote and/or uninspired. If the band were given more than a few months between albums, maybe they could write more than three or four really good originals at a time. It’s about damn time, anyway. The Beatles put out Rubber Soul in 1965. This cover shit isn’t gonna fly much longer.
Aftermath (1966)
Rating: 8
Best Song: “High And Dry”
Hey! Now I have all the Stones’ albums, as you can probably tell from the five reviews posted above this one. So disregard any references I make from here until Tattoo You about not having a bunch of Stones records. You know me, I’m too damn lazy to rewrite anything.
OK, now that that’s out of the way, let’s get to the record at hand, shall we? Hmmm? Yes, we shall. And, lo and behold, it’s the Stones’ first album of all originals! Doobie! From reading other sites of people who actually have the early albums I don’t because they’re not poor retard college students facing unemployment in six months, I’ve gathered that this album is a real “artistic leap forward” for the band, and, from the early singles I’ve been able to hear, that sounds pretty much on the money to me! I mean, two of the most well-known songs here are “Paint it Black,” which works in all those goofy eastern sitar influences the Beatles were trying out so well, yet STILL, because the Stones were good and all, manages to be more sinister and just flat-out rocking than any other song here, and “Lady Jane,” which sounds like it’s from Victorian England or some shit. There’s like a medieval harpsichord and birds chirping, and Mick talks about a “troth,” whatever the fuck that is. It’s cool, though, if kind of pussy-ish. Definitely “artistic growth” from “Time is on My Side,” too.
“Under My Thumb” is the other song you undoubtedly know from this record, and, just like “Stupid Girl” two tracks before it, it’s basically just basic sixties pop, but with cool, layered arrangements and the kind of ridiculously misogynistic lyrics that Mick always seems to be able to get away with because he’s MICK FREAKING JAGGER, and he could get more poooooooooooon in a week than Wilt Chamberlain could get in a lifetime and then lie about in a book after the fact. But, putting those cool, sixties pop songs away for a second, what fills out the rest of this record strikes me as VERY interesting. Why, you ask? Because a lot of it’s fucking ROOTS-ROCK, man! After the singles in the first four tracks, a lot of the rest of this album sounds like a goddamn preview of Beggars Banquet or something. So basically, I think you can just treat 1967 as a complete anomaly in the Stones’ catalog. Because they just felt like being fruity.
To prove my point here, just look at track 5, “Doncha Bother Me.” It’s a fucking country acoustic/harmonica jig! Isn’t that what like half of Beggars Banquet is? And “High and Dry,” too, which for reasons completely beyond my comprehension is my favorite song on this album (and no, not “Don’t leave me HIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIGH! Don’t leave me DRYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYY!” Different song altogether. Radiohead don’t do roots-rock.). It’s just this goofy little hick-inflected country hoedown thing! And can I just say I LOVE Charlie’s hi-hat cymbal use on this song? I mean, I could do exactly what he’s doing, but it fits the song so perfectly! And there’s a fucking harmonica solo in it! And the whole thing is so stupid and throwaway-ish and goofy…AND IT’S FUCKING AWESOME!!! Does anyone else love this song so much? Am I the only one? Eh. Derf.
There are no more pieces of country acoustic/harmonica jig goodness to be found on this album, but most of what’s left does give off a neat little roots-rock-y feel, and (with one flaming exception) I really, truly enjoy every song here. Once “Think,” “Flight 505,” and “It’s not Easy” get going, it’s a little tough to distinguish them from each other, but the rootsy-fun intros are where the tastiness lies. Revel in the acoustic goodness of the intro to “Think!” Lose yourself in the country cabaret piano in the intro to “Flight 505!” Grease yourself up with pure PIG-LARD (courtesy of HUDS) because you enjoy the guitar chords that open “It’s not Easy” just that much. “I Am Waiting” actually sounds halfway in between “Lady Jane”-esque Victorian harpsichord homosexuality and “High and Dry”-esque country acoustic fun pure masculinity, but I’d definitely classify the song as “good,” “well-written,” and “better than anything by late-period Van Halen,” so I’ll give it a thumbs up, something which I will NOT do for “Going Home,” the “flaming exception” I mentioned just a little while ago. An 11-minute jam that goes nowhere! Yeah! BLOW ME! See, it’s sort of interesting for its first two or three minutes, but then it refuses to come up with any new musical ideas after these initial two or three minutes and absolutely BORES ME TO DEATH over its ridiculous length. I don’t see how anyone could possibly like this song. Anyone. People who do are just biased to like anything the Stones put out before 1970. Luckily, I’m not biased towards anything, except Nevermind and every album Led Zeppelin ever put. But that’s it, I swear. Everything else I hold biases about I hold biases against. Like rap, for instance. Did you know that all of it sucks? Well, it does.
This album’s cool, though. An all-original pre-“decline” Rolling Stones album that isn’t either a) fruity or b) brilliant. It’s just real, real good. That’s all.
Between The Buttons (1967)
Rating: 8
Best Song: “Let’s Spend The Night Together”
Hey! It’s fruity British pop! Fruity British cabaret music hall piano pop! Bitchin’! People tend to call Their Satanic Majesties Request a Sgt. Pepper-ripoff, but, if you axe me (and I know you do), this album actually sounds a LOT more like Sgt. Pepper than Satanic. And it was released BEFORE Sgt. Pepper! Does this mean the Beatles were, in fact, copying the Rolling Stones?
NO!!!!! Because they’re the frickin’ Beatles. Moron.
But let’s forget about who sounds like who and who’s ripping off who and who’s having hot, hardcore anal sex with who (or whom? I dunno. Me not good on grammar) and look at the music on this puppy. And, hey! It’s just real good 1967 fruity British pop! “Let’s Spend the Night Together” (BRILLIANT song that one is, I think I could write this entire review just on that one alone. Like the “Ba-da-da-da! Da! Da!” harmony things! Aren’t those the shit?), the unjustly forgotten minor gem “Connection,” and “Miss Amanda Jones” are the only examples of “rock” you’re gonna get here. Throughout the rest of the record, you’re gonna have to wade your way through fruity sissy poopy pop with about as much testosterone as Martha Stewart. And these songs can’t even teach you how to crochet a napkin or make illegal insider trades, either.
But the songs are good, though, so it’s OK! You all know “Ruby Tuesday,” right? To me, it’s an altogether more successful stab at something like “Lady Jane,” because it decides to pick itself up and move at a normal pace for at least part of its running time. Moving on, though, jesus, there’s a song called “She Smiled Sweetly” on here, and, good GOD, take a listen to “Cool, Calm, Collected.” It’s fucking circus music, but REALLY CATCHY circus music. The whole song is so ridiculous that it never fails to crack me up and go “damn, that’s cool!” There’s a kazoo solo. In fact, SEVERAL kazoo solos. And at the end it speeds up for absolutely no reason and eventually crashes to the earth like a circus performer who took too many uppers before a show. If you have no tolerance for the Stones doing anything but “rock and roll, dude,” you probably shouldn’t listen to this song. And you DEFINITELY shouldn’t listen to Satanic. Probably not the best idea.
As we begin to wade through side 2, “All Sold Out” has some cool guitar soloing in there, but it also has a flute soloing at the exact same time, so…yeah. Again, though, even though I’m making fun of this stuff, I’m not saying it’s bad. See, by this point, the Stones’ songwriting is just advancing by leaps and bounds, to the point there they can make albums in styles they really aren’t at home in at all and have them turn out really, really well anyway. Sure, the Stones are first and foremost a rock and roll band, but who doesn’t appreciate really, really good pop songwriting? And they’re all over it right now. It’s not Beatles-level, sure, but it’s really not that far off. “My Obsession” has a cool little drum beat and something that sounds like a distorted bass (!!!???) but probably isn’t because it’s just 1967 and I’m an idiot, and, goshdarnit, it’s so damn catchy! And the organ line and “ahhh ahhhhh ahhhh” harmonizing in “Complicated?” Who doesn’t like that? Douchebags, maybe? Yeah. Douchebags. And assplugs. Assplugs who like Creed.
Only “Let’s Spend the Night Together” really makes me cream my pants, and so hence the 8, but it’s a HIGH 8, mind you. There’s not a single weak song here. It’s just goofy, fun piano cabaret British pop poop that’s really good. “Something Happened to Me Yesterday,” for instance, is about ten times as goofy as “Yellow Submarine,” with Mick and Keith trading off vocal lines, horn sections coming in for no real reason, and weird mannered British accent speaking parts. Then the end has a whole “thank you” part to their manager over like a tuba melody or something. Whatever. See, this is what I’m talking about. Incredibly fruity British piano pop super-melodic goodness. Great (for the sixties, at least) production, too. Clear and crisp, even if getting the drums stuck in one channel or the bass in another in a given song still really annoys the crap out of someone as stupidly nitpicky as me. But ain’t no thang.
In closing, when hearing this record I am often heard to exclaim, “hooray for fruitiness!” This is my personal favorite pre-classic period Stones record, even if it’s fruity dumb British cabaret pop. I’ve given all four of these pseudo-early records identical ratings, but call this one a lil’ better than the rest. Just a lil’. It’s good. I enjoy it very much. I think you will, too. Even if Mick at no point sings about fucking black chicks.
Flowers (1967)
Rating: 8
Best Song: “Let’s Spend The Night Together”
Hey! It’s more fruitiness! Including THE FRUITIEST ALBUM COVER ALL YIME! Yeah! This one ain’t much of an actual “album,” though. Just a bunch of B-sides and singles and poo thrown together, with “Lady Jane,” “Let’s Spend the Night Together,” and “Ruby Tuesday” tossed on to fill up space and make the album more purchase-able for fucking American war-mongering right wing morons (Anyone wanna move with me to Canada? Huh? They’re nice people up there. We can ride moose together. Or “mewse,” as the Canucks pronounce it). But just because it’s a bastardized money-grubbing cash-in hodgepodge pseudo-compilation with the fruitiest album cover in the history of recorded music doesn’t mean I can’t enjoy it, right?
Right! And so I like this record just fine. Not quite as much as Between the Buttons of Fucking Pansy-Ass Piano Pop, but fine nonetheless. “Have You Seen Your Mother, Baby, Standing in the Shadow,” despite its ludicrously long title, rrrrrrrrocks more than just about anything in this handful of records, and its fuzzy intro and cool horns will wake up your Mr. Winkie just fine. And so will the Stones’ ridiculous cover of “My Girl.” Which I LOVE, by the way! No one else seems to. These people are stupid. Yeah, there’s dumb string sections and shit. So? It’s cool! Hell, I like it more than the nifty pop song “Out of Time” that comes before it, which, from its intro, I actually believe is “My Girl” every single time I listen to this record, essentially because I’m not that smart of a person. I mean, I gave Diver Down a 10. Clearly, I’m unedumacated, and, clearly, covers are not something that bothers me all that much.
The tuneage on this record is still in the fruity vein of Between the Buttons, but more varied than that record, which you might THINK would make it a better record, right? WRONG! Because the songs aren’t quite as good, though they’re still better than Trapt (“Headstrong! Fuck me in the goat-ass! Headstrong! I really suck at writing songs!”). For instance, I am a firm believer in the theory that “Take it or Leave it” is not nearly as good as the Strokes’ song of the same name and, well, not that good at all! It sounds like something the Beatles might have written in 1964, only weaker. Eh. The single (I know this because it’s on Hot Rocks!!! Hooray for deductive reasoning!!!!) “Mother’s Little Helper” is quite the fantabulous song, however, and so is the tom-tom drum thumper “Please Go Home.” The jarringly misogynistic yet LOVELY accordion thingy “Backstreet Girl” will not give your dog a lethal injection of Anthrax either, although it might try. Anything that misogynistic (for instance, me) is apt to do shit like that, right? Especially if it’s one of those fucking yippie toy poodle rat-dogs. I hate those things. Don’t you? Yeah. And Woody Allen, too. I mean, he’s kind of annoying. I saw Annie Hall tonight for this humor class I’m taking. His persona wears thin after about 30 fucking seconds. Neurotic freak.
Oh! There’s a few more songs left, I suppose, but it’s a compilation, right? So who cares? ME!!!!!!! THAT’S WHO! “Ride On, Baby” is a neat little pop-rocker with fun harpsichord-y embellellishments (that typo was ON PURPOSE!), and “Sittin’ on a Fence” is sort of country-ish, and I enjoy the acoustic guitar usage in there. I enjoy the acoustic guitar. Much more than fucking yippie toy poodle terrier pomer-fucking-anian piece of shit tiny crap chihuahah dogs that suck.
In conclusion, my dog is cool, and this is a cool album.
Fruity album cover.
Half-assed money-grubbing compilation.
But cool album.
Their Satanic Majesties Request (1967)
Rating: 8
Best Song: “She’s A Rainbow”
Showing just how little the general public knows about music (not that I know anything either, just a point of comparison), this record is generally looked upon as both “a blatant ripoff of Sgt. Pepper” and “a real shitstain.” Neither of these perceptions is accurate. As I stated earlier, Between the Buttons sounds eons more like Sgt. Pepper than this album, and, on top of that, THIS ALBUM’S REALLY GOOD! Have people actually LISTENED to it, or just peeked at the retarted album cover (I’ll give them that much) and drawn their conclusions thusly? There are good songs on this album! PLENTY of good songs! They’re dressed up in sometime-ridiculous (yet sometimes-superb) “psychedelic” trappings, with Moogs making weird sounds and some guy snoring for no reason at the end of “In Another Land” and someone asking for a joint at the beginning of “Sing This all Together (See What Happens),” but so what? It was 1967. They were a rock band in Britain. If they didn’t do a dumb psychedelic album with the band dressed up in stupid costumes on the album cover, that would have shocked people.
Seriously, this album (apart from the closer “On With the Show,” which really IS disturbingly similar to Sgt. Pepper, but no more than “Something Happened to me Yesterday” from BTB) sounds absolutely NOTHING like that super-famous Beatles album of the same year. It reminds me more of Magical Mystery Tour in its dark, fruity freakiness, but that’s still not the best point of comparison. Maybe merge Magical Mystery Tour with some early freaked-out Pink Floyd records, and that’s what you’d get here. But even THEN, it’s not really exact, and that is why you should just FUCK classifications and listen to the music, man. “Sing this all Together,” after the twenty-second intro of drunken piano chords and off-key horn blasts fades away, is just about the catchiest thing this side of WNBA fever (CATCH IT!!!!), and the three songs that follow do not disappoint either. “Citadel” (not about the military institution that trains impressionable young people to accept every order from our “Commander in Chief” as The Right Thing To Do and then go attack Turkey because their foreign minister looked at Rumsfeld the wrong way at a summit meeting) is a little odd, sure, but’s just a catchy-as-fuck pop song! Like the last few albums! Just a different arrangement! And “In Another Land” marks the songwriting debut of my man Bill “I’m the bassist” Wyman! With his lyrics treated and set to “bubble,” Bill sounds like he’s trying to drown in a kiddie pool like Brian Jones a few years later, but that harpsichord (??????) line is COOL, and I dig how Mick comes in later, because he’s clearly not about to let Bill hog the spotlight for more than a minute or two. “2000 Man” starts out as a bitchin’-as-my-fine-hoez-(*bling bling*) bouncy acoustic thingy before turning into a cool, driving organ-rocker, and “Sing This all Together (See What Happens) is an eight-minute reprise of the opening track in the form of an avant-garde noise nothing. But parts of it are real cool, so it’s still better than “Going Home,” which is just horseshit.
Side 2 ain’t as great shakes as the first, although, as a very big exception to what I just said, “She’s a Rainbow” starts it off in (I’m) TTTTTTTHHHHHHUPER (Thanks for athking!) fashion with an intro that sounds exactly like “Yellow Submarine” (hmm…maybe there is something to this whole “ripping off the Beatles” thing…), before pianos, horns, and strings lead us into one of the most flawless (and FRUITY!!!) pop songs the Stones ever penned. The record gets a little murky after that, but the only part I REALLY don’t enjoy is the second half of “Gomper,” which descends into go-nowhere avant quasi-jam bullshit. “The Lantern” and “2000 Light Years From Home” are neat as feet, however, though less “poppy” and more “subdued” (i.e. “not poppy”) than the first side and “She’s a Symbol of Gay Pride.” The former has this bell sound at the start that always makes me think I accidentally put Back in Black on, and the latter’s intro is the most avant-garde thing on the album (intentionally dissonant piano bashing!!!!! Sweet!!!!), but the bassline that follows is more like a J-Lo’s ASSline (sure, she’s an egomanial, controlling bitch who is slowly sucking the life force out of Ben Affleck…but you gotta love that ass), and the sounds Brian Jones coaxes out of his Moog are sometimes downright frightening. They’re like creepy spaceships taking off or some shit. How’d he do that? Fuck me if I know. Cool, though!
You really shouldn’t be biased against this album. It’s got some dated 1967 psychedelic goofiness, sure, but the songs are still for the most part top-notch, and the arrangements are always interesting, even if they’re sometimes a little weird. There’s no reason to think that one of the best rock and roll bands ever would suck in 1967, when they ruled so much in the years immediately afterwards. Just forget about the album cover, and give this one a try.
And do
you want to touch my monkey??????
Beggars Banquet (1968)
Rating: 9
Best Song: “Sympathy For The Devil”
As 1967, the great year of ridiculous psychedelic fruitiness, comes to a close, the Stones put away their acid for a few minutes, look around, scratch their heads, boink a groupie, look around a bit more, brush their teeth, eat a bag of Lays brand potato chips, scratch their heads again, yawn, boink another groupie, and then have a realization: “You know what we’re best at? Roots-rock! Why don’t we do some of that, eh? The Beatles are going back to rock, aren’t they? Shouldn’t we also? And let’s use smack instead of pot and LSD, too. Much better drug for weary-sounding roots-rock, that one is. Right, Brian? Brian? Hey, Charlie, where’s Brian?”
“I think he went swimming, Keith.”
“Oh, alright then.”
HA! Just kidding. That didn’t happen for another year or so, until the next album. It’s a funny story! You should ask George Starostin to tell you all about it sometime. I’ll be busy playing online South Park pinball, you clingy son of a bitch.
So,
yes. Roots-rock. Excellent stuff. See, the Stones had reached an incredibly
high level of songwriting prowess sometime around 1967, but they were too busy
wearing wizard costumes and generally being fruity to put it to good use doing
what they were best at. They’re GOOD at
piano pop. They’re GOOD at
psychedelic-ish somewhat freaky music.
But they’re PHENOMENAL at this whole roots-rock thing, and so, upon
returning to that fine style, the “classic” period begins, and, though I’m not
gonna argue that this album and the three after it are easily the band’s
peak, I will warn you that, if you’re like me, you gotta give these albums time. I really didn’t love any of them at first,
though I “got” Sticky Fingers pretty easily. Let it Bleed came next, eventually
PASSING Sticky Fingers to become il mio favorito, followed closely by
the “getting” of Exile. This one, however, took a LOOOONG time to
“get,” because I had a hard time getting my snobby New England mind around the
fact that a lot of this record is, basically, “hick
music.” Delta blues-flavored acoustic
down-home countryness is everywhere on this thing, and while it’s sort of a big
thing on Let it Bleed too, that one has this creepy, dark vibe
and much-more tightened-up production than this one,
which is just, really, “hick music.” To
be honest, I was gonna give it a disappointed 8 or so up until even a few weeks
ago, and I still think I might enjoy Black and Blue more sometimes, but I get it now.
It doesn’t matter that it’s hick music.
The Rolling Stones were AWESOME at hick music. Possibly the best band of all time at hick
music. This is GOOD hick music.
Or half of it is, because a number
of songs are either a) basic straight-ahead kick-butt country-ish rock and roll
(the phenomenal single “Street Fighting Man,” “Jigsaw Puzzle,” the mediocre
“Stray Cat Blues,” which is the worst damn song here even though everyone else
loves it. Fools, I say!) or b) “Sympathy
for the Devil,” which sounds completely unlike any song ever recorded by anyone
in the history of music and is ONE OF THE BEST ROCK AND ROLL SONGS OF ALL
TIME. There’s like eight sets of bongos
and fifteen other various percussion implements in there, the piano is
BITCHIN’, the little guitar solos are SPLURGETASTIC, and the “whoo, whoo!”
things are CREAM-WORTHY (and by “cream,” I mean “semen,” not “that band with
Eric Clapton in it who wrote ‘Sunshine of Your Love,’” though they’re OK, I
guess). This is still the song that makes it a no-doubt, STRONG 9 for me, even if I finally
get the record now. It’d be on the
border without it. Maybe the most
effective album-opener of all time.
Fuckin’ A, man. It’s GENIUS.
The reason I think I finally
understand this album now is that, apart from “Sympathy for the Devil,” the
down-home acoustic country hick tracks are actually my favorites on the record
now. “No Expectations” is a brilliantly
quiet and pretty blues number that’s probably my pick for best song here not
depicting the Devil (notice how I capitalized Devil there, yet I purposely
leave god uncapitalized whenever I mention him/her/it? Mwwwwwwwahahaha!!!!!!!) as master of high
society, and even though the douchebag that was me a few months ago might
characterize the other four hick tracks (“Dear Doctor,” “Parachute Woman,”
“Prodigal Son,” and “Parachute Woman”) as “doobly novelty tunes,” nothing could be further from the truth!
They’re NOT throwaways. The band
is deliberately going for a sort of “back-porch of some house on the
Mississippi Delta” vibe here, and they succeed perfectly. They’re all so unique! Very, very few other bands could have written
these things. I have a sneaking
suspicion that, despite its wicked pissah cool outro, other bands around this
time could have written “Stray Cat Blues” (or, for that matter, “Jigsaw
Puzzle”), but NO ONE else could have written “Dear Doctor.” I forking LOVE that song. “Oh help me!
Please doctor! I’m damaged! There’s a pain where there once was a
HEEEEAAAAAAART!” It’s songs like this
that make me wish I weren’t a preppy New England Harvard boy.
Actually, lots of things make me
wish I weren’t a preppy New England Harvard boy. For instance, my state’s governor is Mitt
Romney and my country’s president is Rufus W. Moron. Anyone want to move to Canada with me? The offer’s still open! We can still ride mewse!
Eh.
Screw it. A preppy New England
Harvard boy I am, and a preppy New England Harvard boy I will always be! So when Keith and Mick sing to the “salt of
the earth” in the super-duper closer of the same name, they’re not singing to
me! AND THIS MAKES ME SAD! I WANT MICK AND KEITH TO SING TO ME! THEY SEEM LIKE COOL DUDES! ESPECIALLY KEITH! BECAUSE HE PROBABLY SHOULD HAVE DIED 50 TIMES
BY NOW! BOOOOOOOOO!!!!!!!
Poop. And this is a really great album. If you like hick music, that is. And, if you don’t, you’ll still spooge your
pants when you hear “Sympathy for the Devil.”
Let It Bleed (1969)
Rating: 10
Best Song: “Love In Vain”
Beautiful. Definitely my favorite Stoning Rolls record, too, even if it nicks the structure of Beggars Banquet almost spot-on on a song-for-song basis (“Sympathy for the Devil” = “Gimme Shelter,” “No Expectations” = “Love in Vain,” there’s a bunch of other stuff in the middle and I’m lazy, then “Salt of the Earth” = “You Can’t Always Get What You Want”). But I don’t call it an “imitation” or a “sequel.” I think of it more as a “fine-tuning.” The ideas employed on this album are basically the same as on Beggars Banquet, but the execution is just so much cleaner, focused, realized, and unique. I STILL think “Jigsaw Puzzle” and “Stray Cat Blues” are a teensy-weensy bit generic, and, even though I LOVE the hick tracks, they’re still hick tracks, and only “No Expectations” really goes beyond that. Not so here. The rockers are all fearless and brilliant, and the “hick tracks” (except for “You Got the Silver,” which I don’t like all that much only because Keith sings lead and he can’t fucking sing worth shit, although the fact that like three different organs come in at the end sort of pushes that one beyond “hick music,” too…) don’t sound hick-ish AT ALL. They sound like The Rolling Stones, man, and NO ONE ELSE.
Can I say that I wouldn’t change a single thing about the first side? I can? OK, then. I wouldn’t change a single thing about the first side. “Gimme Shelter” isn’t QUITE the album opener “Sympathy for the Devil” was, but it’s got that same type of subtly-layered buildup that’s so expertly done you don’t even realize that there are like eighty instruments piled on top of each other by the end. You’re still waiting for the big, obvious punchline, but you don’t get it, but you’re satisfied anyway. Just a perfect piece of spooky-ass moodmaking, complete with desperate female vocals and everything, but I like “Love in Vain” even MORE, and it’s my favorite damn song on the album. It’s just a slow, acoustic Robert Johnson cover, you see, but…christ, could ANY band, at ANY time, EVER, do something like this with a damn Robert Johnson tune? It’s flabbergasting. It just leaves me stunned every damn time. It’s so absolutely perfect and beautiful and gorgeous and heartbreaking yet so fucking simple, it just shows how much the Stones had literally hijacked all them black-folks’ roots music and absolutely made it their own by this point.
Moving on, “Country Honk” is just a hick-tested, mother-approved acoustic ‘n’ fiddle rehash of the classic “Honky Tonk Women,” but I honestly like it just as much as the original (it’s just cool!), and the rockers “Live with Me” and the title track, when compared to, say, “Jigsaw Puzzle,” just BEAT IT INTO THE GROUND. The bassline in “Live with Me” is amazing, and the opening “I got…nasty habits!” line is such a frickin’ perfect, scowling sentiment. The title track has the most disgusting lyrics of any song released before 1970, I think (“Cream on me!” Again, referring to “semen,” and not “that band with Eric Clapton in it who wrote ‘White Room,’” though they’re OK, I guess), but man does the piano work in that song KICK! All the Stones’ keyboardists kick ass. Nicky Hopkins and Ian Stewart and Billy Preston and all those dudes. And not Keith Emerson. Definitely not Keith Emerson.
The second side, to me, isn’t quite as hot as the first, but that’s really only because I don’t like “You Got the Silver” too much. “Midnight Rambler” is a perfectly great song, for instance, though, again, to me, I prefer the Doors’ seven-minute tune about a serial killer that speeds up and slows down almost indiscriminately (“L.A. Woman”) a little more. There’s no denying the fact that the closing line (“I’ll stick my knife right down your throat, baby, and IT HURTS!!!”) is downright SCARY, though, even if this is, AGAIN, TO ME, the second-weakest song on the album (but more like the second-weakest song on Led Zeppelin IV is “The Battle of Evermore” or something. It’s still damn good). “Monkey Man” has the best pure guitar riff on the record (and one of the finest of Keith’s career) and is clearly better than the rockers on side 1 (which were clearly better than some of the rockers on Beggars Banquet), so, clearly, I enjoy this song very, very, very, very much. Then, finally, after all this incredible tastiness, you get fucking “You Can’t Always Get What You Want” to close it out! Yes! It’s the big, final, climactic moment you need! The rest of the album never really goes overboard, nickel-and-diming you with subtle genius, leaving you incredibly impressed but not COMPLETELY satisfied, before “You Can’t Always Get What You Want” comes in with its epic length and choirs and histrionics and sends everyone home happy. And sends Brian Jones to the morgue because he drowned in a fucking swimming pool.
In terms of records released in the sixties not by the Beatles, I’m not gonna quite rate this one #1 (Strange Days still takes the prize, I think), but #2 is nothing to scoff at, mind you. Just like the two albums that followed it, there’s not a band today that could make this record, because no bands today have the same deep love and respect for all that dang “black music” that these boys did. To make an album this convincingly real, genuine, and BRILLIANT, you have to love your influences like your children (and have the talent to improve on them, and who can improve on the Rolling Stones’ roots-rock today? The White Stripes? No matter how much “Seven Nation Army” rules my ass, if you say this, you must then blow me). “Love in Vain” BY ITSELF shows what I’m talking about. It’s one of the best songs of their career, and it’s a slow, hick-inflected Robert Johnson cover with a mandolin solo. No one else could pull that off then, and no one else can pull it off now. Just like this album.
Get Yer Ya-Ya’s Out! The Rolling
Stones In Concert (1970)
Rating: 8
Best Song: “Live With Me”
Though not as much as Mark Prindle says it is, this one’s definitely a little overrated, and far from “the greatest live rock and roll album ever” or some crock. The biggest problem I have with it is the same one that causes Prindle to not really like it at all, and that is, basically, it’s a bunch of guitar wank jams. Virtuoso Mick Taylor is now fully integrated with everyone else (oh, yeah, he replaced Brian, who was fired during the Let it Bleed sessions. Don’t think I ever mentioned that. I mentioned that Brian drowned in a swimming pool numerous times, yeah. Never mentioned how that actually came about. Mi dispiace!), and so the band gets on stage and just does their hard-charging rock and roll thaaaang for 45 minutes. It’s real good and all, ofcourse, but (and I agree with Prindle again here) so many of the songs (which are all taken from the last two albums, except for “Jumpin’ Jack Flash,” “Honky Tonk Women,” and two alright Chuck Berry covers…which is nearly half the songs. The lesson, as always, I’m an idiot. And I use too many damn parentheses.) are reduced to faceless good-time guitar jams instead of being creepy and cool and dark and interesting. I’ve never been the biggest fan of “Stray Cat Blues,” but I can safely say that the Beggars Banquet version beats this one to a pulp. And “Sympathy,” too. They got rid of all the ridiculous (awesome) percussion and transferred the piano lines to another guitar! It’s still fine, ofcourse (It’s fucking “SYMPATHY,” man!), but it can’t hold a candle to the studio version. That’s my opinion, and I’m sticking to it, con sarnet!
However, unlike Mark Prindle, my feeling that this album is just a bunch of guitar wank jams does not hinder my enjoyment of it one bit (OK, maybe one bit, but not lots of bits). It’s the Rolling Fucking Stones, man! Keith Richards and Mick Taylor on guitar! Bill Wyman on bass! Charlie Watts bashing the skins! Some horseface guy on vocals! Guitar wank jams are fine coming from these guys, and I still eat this record up plenty, even if I prefer the studio versions of five of the eight songs that aren’t Chuck Berry covers. What are the exceptions, you ask? Well, I personally think “Live With Me” annihilates the splurgetastic Let it Bleed version, even sans the cool bass intro. It forking THRASHES here, man. Ridonculous. And I like this version of “Street Fighting Man” a little more, too, just because of the guitar tone, which is orgasmically good throughout the entire record, and “Jumpin’ Jack Flash” too for the same reason. It’s just that these two are the only songs where it makes a big enough difference, because their original guitar tones seem a little pussy-ish to me.
Everything else is good. Just not quite as good as the studio versions, because they’re too wanky-jammy. “Love in Vain,” godlike though it is, doesn’t work nearly as well in this context. “Midnight Rambler” rambles a bit too much for my taste. “Honky Tonk Women” doesn’t have a cowbell anymore, so fuck it. And the Chuck Berry covers are fine. I’m glad they exist. Sure.
Many people seem to consider this record the definition of live rock and roll perfection, though. I dunno why. People think different things! Like some people actually think Dubya and his cronies are doing a good job! CRAZY, huh? Apparently, “turning the largest surplus in our country’s history into its biggest deficit of all time in three years, turning worldwide affection and sympathy into near-total international hate and disgust in TWO YEARS, and lying to the entire country repeatedly about the PRETENSES FOR STARTING A WAR” is considered “not total shit” by some people. These are also the same people who say “shame on you, Bill Clinton!” for perjuring himself to a Grand Jury. Look. OK, fine, he shouldn’t have lied to a Grand Jury, but, I mean, it was about cheating on his wife! WHO THE FUCK CARES!? And I care more that he lied to the entire American public, anyway. Shouldn’t that be a bigger deal? The entire electorate? 300 million people? Instead of a bunch of jury people? Huh? Laws, schmaws. Use some fucking common sense. And, again, lest we forget, IT WAS ABOUT WHETHER HE CHEATED ON HIS WIFE! Is that really any of our business? That he was getting BJ’s from a fat, insecure intern? Does this affect his ability to lead the country? Really, does it? And does the fact that he lied to a grand jury on top of the entire American public make it worse than lying REPEATEDLY, FOR OVER A YEAR to the entire American public about the pretenses for starting a war, in which the lives of thousands of American soldiers whose families will never see a CENT of the “Bush tax cuts” will be needlessly put at risk? Under FALSE PRETENSES???? Because he was never faced with a grand jury…this is suddenly OK? And lying about cheating on your wife is not because a jury happened to be asking the questions? I don’t get it. I don’t fucking get it. And I only bring this rant up because I was eating breakfast with a few Republican friends of mine today (yes, I have some, we just try to not talk about politics), and this is essentially the argument that one of them made. No matter the subject matter, Clinton is despicable because he lied to a Grand Jury. He never actually addressed the fact that Bush lied about why he wanted to start a useless war, because I was so disgusted after the argument he made next that I simply got up and left the dining hall rather than engage in an argument which would have consisted of me literally killing this person with my scrambled eggs. What was his next argument, you ask? Well, then, WITH A STRAIGHT FACE, he compared Lincoln’s Emancipation Proclamation and attempts to free the slaves to Bush’s invasion of Iraq. No, I’m serious. Read that again. His justification was that both Presidents were sacrificing the immediate economic health of the nation to do what was morally right. No, I’m serious. Read that again. This person is honestly my friend. He’s a good guy. But that is just about the most despicably horrendous thing I have ever heard come out of the mouth of someone I didn’t already hate. I haven’t talked to him about it. I don’t really want to. He reads this page now and again. Maybe he’ll stumble across this review. I honestly don’t give a fuck. I’m just gonna give him a silent mulligan on that one. People are free to be Republican. If that’s their thing, that’s fine, but there’s a point where EVERY person, no matter their political affiliation, has to seriously look at who’s in power and what they’re doing, put aside how long they’ve been supporting that person, and objectively consider what’s going on. If they never do this, it’s just blindly following, and THAT is what I have serious problem with. The current administration doesn’t disgust me because they’re Republican and I’m liberal. They disgust me because of what they’ve done to this country and its international reputation. If they were Democrats, I’d make the same rant and then go join the Green Party. If you don’t admit that we’re worse off now than we were three years ago (I don’t even give a fuck whether or not you think it’s Bush’s fault. Blame the Democrats. Blame Ted Kennedy. Blame the French. Blame me. Blame my dog. I DON’T CARE.), then you are a blind follower who lets the government think for him, I have no respect for you, and I never will.
Phew. OK, I’m done now. “PAINT IT BLACK, YOU DEVILS!!!”
ddickson@rice.edu writes:
We're worse off than we were
three years ago. Bush couldn't run
worth shit, let alone the free world. I lived there.
Still, this is an okay album. "Stray Cat Blues" is the best
song.
Goooooooo jailbaters!
Say. Actually, I just heard something more despicably horrendous than
that. Thomas F. Barton, of notinourname.net, in response to an Iraqi
policeman talking about how many of his colleagues expect to live short
lives:
"Don't be so sure. Benedict Arnold lived to a ripe old age."
Ohhhh Lord. Here comes controversy. Come
to think of it, I think your
friend was a little off comparing Bush's invasion of
the slaves. After all, the enslaved population of
only about 4.5 million. The Shiite population of
times as many. . .
Yeah, I voted against Bush. And he lied, the
lying bastard liar. Still, I
guess one's view of the
consider more sucky: state-sponsored terror, mass
torture, and genocide, or
car bombs, chaos, and self-determination. Actually, I know a quite a few
people around the world who would, in fact, prefer the former. These are,
of course, the same people that think techno-pop DOESN'T suck sweaty balls.
What does THAT tell us? Hmmmmm???
Sticky Fingers (1971)
Rating: 9
Best Song: “Moonlight Mile”
The Rolling Stones enter the seventies…with a VENGEANCE. Mick Taylor is now fully integrated in the studio, the band is triumphant, on a new label, at the top of their game…and yet, I can’t give this record a 10. About 2/3 of the stuff on this record is absolutely top-shelf Stones, and you can find some of their finest moments here (and, to me, the finest moment of their career), but, dagnabbit, there’s too many songs that don’t do jack-squat for me, and there’s no real “flow” to the album, the kind you might find on the two records preceding it and the one following it. It’s a splurgetastic bunch of rock and roll songs, but it’s not QUITE a splurgetastic album.
But, you see, that’s me nitpicking at what is, essentially, a high 9. When you nitpick about high 9’s, all that does is say “this band is so good that I can criticize them even when there’s very, very little to criticize.” So let’s fuck the criticism, eh? OK. Well, “Brown Sugar” is your album opener, and, see, you’ve all heard it, right? And it’s just about the perfect rock and roll song, from the riff to the chorus to the bridge to everything, right? The thing about it is, though, “Bitch” is even BETTER. A LOT better. It gets my vote for best “generic Stones rocker” the band ever wrote. From the riff to the horns (christ on a STICK, when the horns duplicate the guitar riff in the second half of the song, I’m just about in rock and roll heaven), to the way Mick growls out the lyrics. “You gotta mix it, child, you gotta fix it, but loooove…it’s a BITCH, ALRIGHT!” Perfect. Perfect. Perfect.
Oh, but we’ve got other types of stuff, too! The furious riff in the opening section to “Can’t You Hear Me Knocking” is actually my favorite Stones riff of all time, but then it morphs into like a Latin Santana jam 1/3 of the way through, and, good LORD, does it work. Taylor solos like a maniac, and it’s completely astounding. “Sway” is almost as good, too, with dramatic strings and a coda that basically amounts to Mick T. showing off his masterful guitar wankery for two minutes. But, BOY HOWDY, could he show off! Yeah.
And ballads! Ballads! You want ballads? WE’VE BOT BALLADS!! The two best of their career, for my money. The first is “Wild Horses,” which everyone has heard (if you haven’t, it’s really, really, really awesome and stuff), so I’ll skip it and move onto my favorite Rolling Stones song of all time, the closer “Moonlight Mile,” which also might be one of my 20 or so favorite songs ever (though I could probably say that about like 100 songs by now). For my money, it manages to out-beautiful “Wild Horses” and out-epic “You Can’t Always Get What You Want” at the same time. That one quiet acoustic guitar at the beginning never actually leaves the mix if you listen to this thing on headphones, but it just keeps building, with other guitars playing super-fun creative notes and lines and things, pianos, dramatic, orchestral-ish drums, and some of the most perfectly incorporated string flourishes ever heard in a rock song. Then the end of the song…I mean…yowza. “Let it go now…come on, now…yeah, let it go now…” Perfect. Perfect. Perfect.
Problem is, that’s only six of the songs, and, although they’re probably the best group of six songs this band ever stuck together on a record, they can’t save the other four from not exciting me all that much, even if there’s only one I really don’t like. “I Got the Blues” is just like a random blues song, with a sluggish tempo and annoying organ solo and everything, though I like the horns in there. They’re cool. I like “You Gotta Move” fine and all, but it’s too short and unsubstantial to be much of anything. It’s the kind of hick song that would’ve been GREAT on Beggars Banquet, but it’s not much more than “OK” here. People seem to love “Sister Morphine,” calling it like a “terrifying, harrowing song about the horrors of drug addiction.” I just call it “boring.” And “Dead Flowers” is a nice, but generic, country number. I like it fine, but there are probably thousands of songs by hundreds of artists that probably aren’t any worse. You see? This is why no 10. Six songs may be worthy of an 11 on the Spinal Tap scale (But…it goes to eleven…), but the other 4 are worth about a 7. That’s a high 9, but no 10.
Every time I listen to this album, I want to give it a 10, but, I mean, I can’t do it. There’s too many songs (4 out of 10!!!) that don’t do very much for me. The other six are the best material the Stones ever came up with, though, and I’m proud to call this my #2 Rolling Stones release. I mean, “Bitch,” man. And “Moonlight Mile”…yeah, man. Yeah…
Hot Rocks, 1964-1971 (1972)
Rating: 9
Best Song: “Sympathy For The Devil”
This is a compilation. You shouldn’t get it. The Rolling Stones aren’t the Police or U2, so you really lose a lot without the full albums, though there are some singles here that aren’t on any real records, so it’s not useless or anything. I’m just an albums man, you see. Unless you’re talking about, say, Tom Petty, where getting anything more than the Greatest Hits collection would be downright moronic.
So, what we’ve got here is two discs of Rolling Stones big hit goodness that I’m reviewing because there are actually a lot of songs (both from early albums and singles) that aren’t on any records I have. Of the first eight tracks, “Mother’s Little Helper” (which is on Flowers, which is a compilation anyway) is the only one I’ve mentioned on this page so far. Otherwise, you’re gonna get “Time is on my Side,” “Heart of Stone,” “Play with Fire,” “Satisfaction” (DUUUUUUHHHHH), “As Tears Go By,” “Get off my Cloud,” and “19th Nervous Breakdown,” all of which are fine and dandy. The last four songs on disc one are from Aftermath and BTB (Where’s Satanic!!! Where’s “She’s a Rainbow!!!!!” AHHHHHHH!!!), and disc two is most of the best album tracks from Beggars, Bleed, and Fingers, plus “Jumpin’ Jack Flash” and “Honky Tonk Women.” No “Bitch,” “Moonlight Mile,” or “Love in Vain,” though, so that’s fucktarted.
Conclusion? It’s a compilation. The songs are 10-worthy, but it’s a compilation, and I’m not trying to prove a Police-esque point here, so give it a 9. What the hey.
By the way, I also have the seventies/eighties compilation Jump Back (or, more accurately, I downloaded the four (sucky) songs from Undercover, Dirty Work, and Steel Wheels on it and just made another mp3 playlist), and I’m not gonna review it because it’s about 10 times as useless as Hot Rocks, since it doesn’t have any non-LP singles or anything on it. I’ll mention a few things about it, though. First, the non-chronological track listing is stupid. “Brown Sugar” segues into “Harlem Shuffle,” and “Undercover of the Night” ends the record. ‘Nuff said. Second, Sticky Fingers (as you should’ve figured out by now) overlaps with this and Hot Rocks, and “Brown Sugar” and “Wild Horses” are on BOTH compilations! Ha! “Bitch” is here, too, BUT THEY KEEP FORGETTING “MOONLIGHT MILE!” Bastards. I’ll give this one an 8, I think, even if I’m not reviewing it.
So put THAT in your pipe and smoke (oral sex) it!
Exile On Main St. (1972)
Rating: 9
Best Song: “Rocks Off”
Ah, Exile on Main St. The great, double-album splurge of Stonesosity that finished off the classic period and stands today as the Rolling Stones’ crowning achievement and, in fact, one of the greatest achievements in rock and roll history. Do I agree? Well…yes and no, but, if you really do wanna call this one of the best albums of all time by anyone, I’m gonna have to say “no.” Great album. Fantastic album. But Let it Bleed is still the masterpiece. #3 Stones record. Real high 9. But I always find myself getting a little bored about 3/4 of the way through (around “Just Wanna See His Face” and “Let it Loose”), and the whole thing just seems a little too samey to me. I actually find Sticky Fingers to be a lot more diverse (though that might have to do with the drastically different production jobs on the two albums). Eh. I love this record, don’t get me wrong, but I don’t bow down to worship the altar of this record, if you buff my salami.
A handful of songs (well, 3) are probably among the finest in the history of rock music, though, let alone the Stones catalog. “Tumbling Dice,” for starters, is the obvious classic off the album (and the only one that gets much airplay nowadays, though I might’ve heard “Happy” once, too), and I’ve yet to find a review of this album anywhere that doesn’t absolutely adore this song. And I’m not gonna change that. The female backup singers! “BAAAAAAAA-BY!” “Got to ROLL ME!” It truly is one of those songs that jerks you out of your seat and screams “CLASSIC!!” in your ears while you’re trying to fucking sleep off that damn hangover you got from drinking too much Goldschlager (and who is this chick next to me? Shit…is that even a chick? Man, what was I doing last night…). It’s brilliant, but I’m gonna take the road less traveled and nominate the opener “Rocks Off” as best song here, and probably one of my five favorite Stones songs EVER. I think it functions even more effectively than “Brown Sugar” as like a “macho, ass-kickin’, riff-happy opening splurge,” and it sets the tone for this album perfectly with its weary lyrics. Five or six completely not-together Micks warblingly belting out the line “I only get my rocks off while I’m sleeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeepin’!” had BETTER cause your music-pleasure-reflex to gag on itself from pure excitement, or YOU, my friend, SUCK, and the line “the sunshine bores the daylights out of me” is absolutely fucking genius, at least to me. And then there’s “Happy,” with probably my second-favorite Keith lead vocal and intoxicatingly-catchy riff. To be honest, there’s nothing that special or unique about this song. It’s just so perfectly written and constructed that I am left in awe every time I hear it. That’s all.
Also, let me say that I am NOT gonna cite the muddy-ass production on this record as a reason for its not getting a 10. I LIKE the production job. So sue me. I think the vibe and atmosphere it creates is so much better than anything a flawlessly professional production job (like on Sticky Fingers, for instance) could produce that I couldn’t imagine it any other way. All the guitars sort of blend together into a mucky mass from which you can rarely actually hear Keith’s riffs and Mick’s solos (but when you do? HOOOO!!), and Mick’s vocals are usually very multi-tracked, but, as with “Rocks Off,” the multiple tracks never match up with each other, they’re sloppy, and they’re often buried in the mix WAY beneath the guitars and pianos and horns and backup singers and everything else. These songs are busy. It’s just that this busyness has been translated terribly onto vinyl (or mp3…), so you can’t even tell how many instruments are in a given song until you listen to it on headphones like 10 times. Like I said, I honestly love it, though. It’s a perfect reflection of where the band was at this time in their career, on tax exile at Keith’s French villa, shooting up like every three hours, more exhausted than triumphant like on Sticky Fingers, and the muddled muckiness, to me, fits everything perfectly.
Largely because of the production (and also because there’s fucking 18 tracks, and who has the time? OK, I do, but I have no life, remember), it’s almost useless to discuss all the individual songs. Out of what’s left, I’d say the standouts include the fast boogie-woogie “Rip This Joint,” the sort-of obscene (but not really, considering what they’d do later) ballad “Sweet Virginia,” the catchy-as-fuck “Loving Cup” (maybe my favorite tune out of what’s left…love those horn blasts!), “Turd on the Run” (eat me, I love this song), and “All Down the Line.” Some of the songs left I don’t like so much are probably “Torn and Frayed,” “Sweet Black Angel,” and “Just Wanna See His Face” (this song sucks particularly hard), but, really, it’s so HARD to pick out the best and worst songs beyond the best three or four (and “Just Wanna See His Face,” because it sucks so hard). I’ve probably listened to this record something like fifteen times or some shit, and I still think like half of these songs sound the same. I love the muddy production, but it has its drawbacks, and when you can’t tell half of the record apart from itself because the instruments are buried together in one amorphous mass, that’s a problem.
This record has its problems, but, just like the last three (not counting Put Your Ya-Ya’s Away! No Means No!), if you’re a serious classic rock fan, you need it in your collection. It might be the ultimate “just rock and roll” record of all time, since the Stones don’t really try any epic tracks or Santana jams or anything that would distract them from showing you just how much they dig them black people’s music. I have a profound respect for this album that’s on par with my respect for Let it Bleed, but it’s samey, there’s too many songs, and it starts to bore near the end. And you’ll probably think it’s not that good when you first listen to it, too. Just ignore that, and then listen to it again.
ddickson@rice.edu writes:
Wow, what a great album.
Actually, I used to give it a 10, but I've scaled
back and decided to agree with Brad on the 9. Reason?
Some combination of
extant, but slight hookage, cool atmosphere and interplay but not quite cool
enough, and Mick Jagger's disdain for tonality. Still the Stones'
best,
though, and one of the finest examples of how to record a roots-rock classic
with little-to-no preparation and a shoestring budget. Reportedly, these
18
songs represent a mere fraction of those recorded in the sessions--SWEET.
I
wonder how many drugs they were on simultaneously at the time?
Regardless
of how many, quite an impressive set, here. I think it's because the
band,
due to emotional reasons and circumstances (income tax charges suck!), had
little choice but to hammer out songs as quickly as possible, just like the
old days, but did so after having been "schooled" in subtlety,
sophistication, and arrangemanship through their previous three albums,
particularly Sticky Fingers. Some of the tracks suck, true, but it all
blends together as WAY the fuck greater than the sum of its parts. Ironic
that little craft went into it, but it sounds MORE well-crafted
than their
other albums. You can SMELL the heroin through the speakers, you can.
Goats Head Soup (1973)
Rating: 8
Best Song: “Angie”
Underrated, and very, very interesting. And I actually started to write a review of this thing a few days ago, then thought to myself “I really don’t feel like writing any more reviews tonight, and my bed looks so comfortable,” so I went to bed. That was like four days ago. I spent the next two days on a bus. Why, you ask? The Game, my man! Harvard-Yale!! YEAHHHH!!! So all us dumb, retard bandies took the bus down to New York City (“El Picante salsa’s made in San Antonio, by folks who know what salsa’s supposed to taste like, but this stuff’s made in…New York City!” “NEW YORK CITY???????”) on Friday to do the “play some gig for old, rich retards at the Harvard Club of New York, then bum around Times Square, barge into the other Ivy League clubs and steal their nice drinking glasses” thing, but on the way our bus broke down!!!! We were stuck on the off ramp off the highway somewhere around East Bumfuck, CT for three hours waiting for a new bus, and it finally came, but the delay meant we got to New York about 20 minutes before rehearsal at 8:20, before we had even unpacked the bus or changed into our dorky band dork dorky gear. You know what that meant? No dinner! YES! So I ate dinner at midnight! But not before my stomach had eaten half of itself! The I slept on the floor of a big dining room for three hours surrounded by a lot of snoring people (although I’ve been recently informed that I too snore…yes, I’m 21, and I didn’t know this. I must do it very quietly and charmingly!), got up at 5:30, and drove back to Yale, just in time to see Harvard KICK YALE’S ASS in that unfathomably ugly piece of shit ass-stadium known as the Yale Bowl, where the seats give you splinters and the urinals in the bathrooms (which are located in separate buildings outside the stadium!) are long, metal troughs. Fucking piece of shit stadium. Home to a fucking piece of shit football team. At a fucking piece of shit college. Which is separated from the ghetto by about one block. Good times.
George W. Bush went there, too. Just thought that warranted mentioning.
OK, enough of that. This album is underrated. It’s not great, but it’s still a very good, highly enjoyable slice of really slow, draggy rock and roll that doesn’t really rock too well but is nonetheless very good and highly enjoyable. The timeless albums are over, yes, but that doesn’t mean what came after them is crap! First off, everyone seems to slag the opener “Dancing with Mr. D” because it’s stupid, overly straightforward, banal, Satan-worshipping crap. BULLPOO! Yeah, it’s stupid, overly-straightforward, banal, and Satan-worshipping, but crap? NO! More like a real neat song! Great riff there, and I personally dig the “voodoo” atmosphere to no end, even if it is kinda dumb. See, I don’t care how stupid the lyrics or atmosphere of a song are (unless they’re Sammy Hagar chauvinism or by Creed). I just care about the songwriting! And musicianship! And FUN, goddammit! I’m an easy man to please. I’m very happy right now, just listening to Goats Head Soup, eating Pringles, and not doing any work, thereby condemning myself to an absolutely hellish week and a half after Thanksgiving, when I have like 8,000 papers (OK, three…) due at more or less the same time. Don’t go to Harvard, folks. You won’t have any fun. Unless you date a Wellesley girl. They’re cool.
OK, moving on, as I’ve said before, this album is very, very interesting, and is probably the last time they try to do something that isn’t either a) blatantly commercial or b) just fucking goofing off. It’s weird, muddled, sort of spooky-pop. Not very rocking, except for “Heartbreaker,” “Silver Train,” and the absolutely disgusting (yet awesome! My second-favorite song here!) “Star Star” (or “Starfucker”), and none of these “rock” nearly as much as, say, “Bitch” or “Rocks Off” or any of their furiously great adrenaline rushes of the past few years. But even though nothing has all that much energy, I still think the band’s songwriting is at an extremely high level here, the arrangements are cool and interesting, and, even though there’s not a single orgasmic tune to be found, I like everything here except the Keith-sung (FUCKDAMMIT, KEITH CAN’T FUCKING SING!!!!!!!!! I’ll take this back in a few reviews, yeah. But, for now, KEITH CAN’T FUCKING SING!!!!!!) melodically useless ballad “Coming Down Again,” the only enjoyable part of which is the multiple-saxophone solo near the end.
The rest is cool, though! The hit single “Angie” is my favorite here, even though it obviously can’t touch the roughly analogous “Wild Horses” or something for the true ballad deliciousness. “Winter” is the third ballad, and it’s more analogous to “Moonlight Mile” than “Wild Horses,” with epic length (for the Stones, I mean, 6 minutes) and atmosphere and string flourishes and long guitar solo and everything. A little meandering for my tastes, but nevertheless enjoyable. “100 Years Ago” shows its worth through superb Stevie Wonder-ish clavinet usage, a completely abrupt mid-song change (“laaaaaaaazy bones!”), and some wah-wah buttsexness from Mick Taylor at the end. Then “Hide Your Love” actually sounds like it could be a nice, second half throwaway track on Exile and “Can You Hear the Music” is one Brian Jones Moog solo away from being on Satanic.
Perfectly fine album, this one is. It’s a little slow and bogged down and un-Stones-y, but the songs are still really good, even if they’re not really, really, really, really good. A very interesting, muddy, early-70’s pop album. Don’t scoff at it, I say! But scoff at the album cover. It sorta sucks ass.
It’s Only Rock ‘n’ Roll (1974)
Rating: 8
Best Song: “Fingerprint File”
Still underrated, even if I’ll admit that this record is pretty much where the Stones stop trying to do anything interesting. Generic ballads and rockers, a few filler-novelty tunes, and (the only real chance they take, actually) a super-funky doobly fest of awesomeness at the end that would make Curtis Mayfield jealous. But, even though they probably put true effort into like half of these songs (maybe), they’re still GOOD! This is just about the ultimate “auto-pilot” album I’ve ever heard. When a band can just coast on image and production and have an album turn out this fun and enjoyable nonetheless, THAT, my friends, is a talented band. As a point of comparison, U2 has been coasting for about a decade now, and they haven’t produced anything as good as this, a third-tier random mid-70’s Stones album that no one gives a crap about, since The Joshua Tree. My point? U2, despite what Al keeps telling me in every email he sends from England, is just NOT THAT GOOD. Sorry, Bono.
Actually, no. I fucking hate Bono. How about “sorry, The Edge” instead. He’s cool.
Moving on, I basically think that this album has been put down as it has (I think I might be rating it higher than any other web reviewer, not that I can recall the ratings of more than 3 or 4 of them) is that these damn people listen to music too objectively! WRONG! Music is subjective. You either like it or you don’t. If an album is groundbreaking and influential but I hate it, I’m gonna rate it low, and if an album is dumb and retarted but I like it, I’m gonna rate it high, dig? The signs of decline are here, though, as now two of the three ballads, “Till the Next Goodbye” and “If You Really Want to be My Friend,” don’t really do much for me, although they’re both clearly superior to “Coming Down Again.” In that calculation, by the way, I’m counting “Time Waits for No One” as a ballad, even if it ends with a six-hour Mick Taylor guitar solo and probably isn’t actually a ballad. It’s slow and melancholy and pretty, though. So, sure, it’s a ballad. What the fork.
The rockers are where this album kicks, though. They probably wrote the opener, “If You Can’t Rock Me,” in like 10 minutes, but it’s cool! Good riff, good melody. Strangely midtempo, and, again, not an earth-shattering experience, but perfectly good. And the cover of “Ain’t Too Proud to Beg?” Why does everyone keep shitting on this? Because it’s a cover? FORK YOU IN THE PORKHOLE! It’s fun! One of my favorite tunes here. They stay real close to the original, sure, but Jagger’s a hoot in it, it’s got some neat, funky, non-cheesy mid-seventies keyboard action, and it’s just a good-ol’ rockin’ good time! What’s wrong with that??? Those who slag this track need to grab a Bud, watch some football, and listen to Diver Down.
Looking to side 2, I have to say I’m a big fan of the pseudo-reggae (but not really) “Luxury,” and this time it’s all Jagger. His vocals are GREAT on this song. Funny! I can’t even figure out if he’s trying to do a Jamaican accent or what, but I enjoy it a whooole lot. “I’m workin’ so hard! I’m workin’ for dee com-pa-ny! I’m workin’ so hard! To keep you in dee lu-xu-ry!” Neat! And “Dance Little Sister,” too. Another cool song, if completely substanceless. I believe it has no lyrics other than the title repeated 200 times, but the riff is cool and it’s catchy, so whats the problem? I dunno. People being snobs, I guess. And I wanna take a stand on “Short and Curlies,” too, the little two-minute novelty filler piano track. I suppose that much of the ire comes from that line “she’s got you byyyyyyy the balls!” That and the fact that the song has as much depth as Donald Rumsfeld has morals. But, fuck it all, I like it. It’s like a bouncy cabaret lounge piano pop nothing, but, hell, when was the last time the Stones wrote a truly bad song that wasn’t a ballad? OK, Exile, but there are like 8,000 songs on that album, so that doesn’t count. Besides that, I’d vote for sometime in the sixties. The band’s on auto-pilot, sure, but they still know exactly what they’re doing, and if they want to be half-assed about it, that’s their thing, as long as they write good enough songs.
There are a few moments where it’s clear they really were trying here, though, as the title track and “Fingerprint File,” possibly the funkiest song I’ve ever heard by anyone, are both BOIG-time classics and better than anything on Goats Head Soup (“Time Waits for No One” also clearly shows massive expenditure of effort, by the way, but how long can you really listen to Mick Taylor solo, huh?). The title track isn’t anything special. It’s just catchy as balls, has a flawless structure, and is a truly deserving mid-seventies hit single. “Fingerprint File,” though? Hoooo-doggy. Now we’re talking. For a bunch of honky white guys, the Stones can be downright funky when they want to, and this song shows it better than anything, from the guitars to the awesome bassline to the various keyboards and whatever else. Even the spoken Mick vocals at the end are a perfect fit, like the song should be in a soundtrack to some blaxploitation movie like Superfly or Shaft. How cool.
Just like the last one, this one gets slagged as “random” and “mediocre” and “a child molester like that odd white woman Michael Jackson,” and the All Music Guide gave it three stars and all, but you really shouldn’t slag it. It’s generic, yeah, but it’s so well-written! Auto-pilot, schmauto-pilot. Let them write their fun rock songs and enjoy it. Don’t ask for another Let it Bleed. Brian Jones had been dead for like five years now, and he’s the only one that gave a crap about experimenting in the first place. Who was gonna play the sitar? Keith? I wouldn’t think so, unless by “play the sitar,” you mean “inject lots of hard drugs.”
Black And Blue (1976)
Rating: 9
Best Song: “Hand Of Fate”
SUPREMELY underrated, definitely my favorite post-Exile Stones record, and, essentially, just the band goofing off for forty minutes while they audition new guitarists. See, Mick Taylor left because the other Mick and Keith wouldn’t give him a bigger piece of the songwriting pie (HA! FAT CHANCE!), so this album is “The Great Guitarist Audition,” and guitarists shuffle in and out and play on various songs with little rhyme or reason. Eventual new lead guitarist Ronnie Wood (who looks more like a Rolling Stone than anyone, even Keith Richards, and had to get the job, really, simply from the appearance factor) plays on “Cherry Oh Baby” and “Hey, Negrita,” but look at these other names! Wayne Perkins and Harvey (not Howie) Mandel! I actually don’t even know who these guys are, so, um…yeah. I heard Jeff Beck had a few auditions, though! I’ve heard of him! Yay for me!
The great thing about this album is, because it’s mostly a bunch of goof-off tracks that they probably decided later to piece together and release as an album, much of this record sounds nothing like “generic Stones,” which, although (at least for this decade) I like generic Stones, is real neat. There’s two rockers and two ballads here, but at least one of the rockers is just one riff and like one melody line repeated for four and a half minutes with a super-spoogetastic guitar solo by that Wayne Perkins guy tossed in for no other reason besides it’s really, really good (although that riff and melody line are AWESOME, and thus “Hand of Fate” is one of the catchiest songs the Stones ever wrote and my favorite tune here! Bitchin’!), but the other half of the record is what I would affectionately call “random shit.” But WHAT random shit! “Hot Stuff” is a five-minute mindless disco groove that goes nowhere but refuses to not make you shake your ass to the expert musicianship employed throughout (yeah, that’s it…), and the album never stops ruling throughout!
Examples, you ask? Sure, why not. It’s 2:15am right now, but I don’t have class until the afternoon tomorrow, so I can humor you. “Cherry Oh Baby” is yet another song that everyone shits on and I wanna spend a few sentences defending. It’s reggae! Real reggae! Goofy organ lines and everything! Vocal lines that go “oooooeeeoeoooeeeeeee!!!!!” and all that. I LOVE this song. And “Hey, Negrita,” too, the only random groove track that spends five minutes going nowhere (which is like half the album, remember) where I can’t place exactly what kind of groove it is. Kicks ASS, though. Probably the first example of that vintage Keith and Ronnie trade-off riffing technique that’s still great even though I would prefer actual riffs like the one in “Bitch,” something I sure as hell won’t find in the lounge-jazz send-up “Melody,” which, although it doesn’t grab in the same way as a lot of the other songs here, is still an eminently entertaining really good time. And it sounds like the fucking house band at an upscale jazz bar where everyone acts very hip and smokes expensive cigarettes. I might wager that it’s the most “un-Stones”-sounding song they’ve ever done. And, either “ofcourse” or “shockingly,” depending on your view of the Stones’ stylistic range, it doesn’t suck.
The three songs I haven’t mentioned thus far are much closer to real, fully-developed songs, but I don’t really like them quite as much as the random stupid grooves that go nowhere (BUT, DUDE, WHAT AWESOME GROOVES!!!!). First off, though, I’ll certainly buy the seven-minute epic ballad “Memory Motel,” putting away the weird, cheesy choice of keyboards and throwing my full support behind Keith’s (OH MY GOD!! KEITH CAN SING!!!!) “She got a miiiiiiiind of her ooooowwwwwn, and she uuuuuuuuse it well” vocal interlude thing, which is probably the best moment on the album. I’m not gonna buy the other ballad “Fool to Cry,” however, the only weak track here, even though it’s not really bad. Just kind of dumb without being cool enough to overcome it. The closing rocker “Crazy Mama” is pretty cool, though, if a little generic compared with the rest of the album. No better or worse than the dumb filler tracks on It’s Only Rock and Roll, though, and I like those fine, eh?
Between Charlie, Bill, and Keith, the Stones might be better than any other band I can think of at simply carrying on a really cool groove, and this record proves that better than anything else they’ve released. It’s also the most pure fun you can have with a Stones album, and probably their most diverse (albeit in an unintentional, goof-off-ish, and scattershot way). The Stones try out new guitarists by fucking around for a bit, patch together the results, and wind up with a minor classic. Vivan Los Stones!
Some Girls (1978)
Rating: 8
Best Song: “Shattered”
Overrated, but only by a little bit, and probably the closest of the roughly 8,000 8’s on this page to that coveted 9 status. This record also marks the first (and, really, last) time since Exile that the Stones are truly hip, or at least something close to it. Goats Head Soup and It’s Only Rock and Roll are fine records, but they’re both kinda stupid, though in different ways, and Black and Blue is just a bunch of dumb grooves. Seeing that, because of these last three records, they had long lost their “hip” status, Mick (Keith doesn’t give a crap about being cool, but Mick craves it) directs the band to try out all those new-fangled late-seventies thingamajiggers like “disco” and “punk” and “there isn’t a third one, just those two,” cranking out probably their most critically-respected record since the classic days, and my second-favorite since then (fucking morons, wake up and smell the Black and Blue!).
Honestly, though, I don’t much buy the whole “the Stones make disco and punk their own” opinion that’s been splurged all over this record. “Miss You” is the most well-developed disco song they’ve ever done, yeah, but I actually prefer “Hot Stuff,” even if it was, again, a dumb groove that didn’t go anywhere. I think the song’s a little subdued! Good song, no doubt, but one of the Stones’ more overrated, I think, and, to be honest, when looking at just the first seven tracks, I don’t see anything to separate this album from the first two post-Exile records. I don’t really like the Temptations cover “Just My Imagination (Running Away With Me),” and nothing else of the first seven strikes me as “great.” Just “very good” in a Goats Head Soup way. The two punk tunes, for instance, “Lies” and “Respectable.” They aren’t really “punk.” They’re just “fast.” Keith and Ronnie are too fucking talented to play three-chord Ramones punk tunes. They spend the whole song doing the whole “Keith and Ronnie telepathic riffing tradeoff thing” that they’ve perfected, and the only things to make you think the songs are “punk” are the speed and the shitty lead guitar solos (Ronnie’s no Mick Taylor).
Hmm…what else have we got? Well, the title track is so brilliantly misogynistic that I love it, and it’s probably my favorite of the first seven tunes here. “Black girls just wanna get fucked all night. I don’t have that much jam!” HA! If you don’t like it, eat me. Sometimes it’s not the lyrics, it’s the delivery. Mick can say the most ridiculously sexist things in the world and come out sounding OK. Sammy Hagar can’t, because he’s a loser. See how it works? And Mick can go follow this crap up with something like the so-country-it’s-great “Far Away Eyes,” with slide guitars, faux-southern accents, and an atmosphere straight out of Nashville, and then follow THAT up with “When the Whip Comes Down,” which is one of those songs where you know intuitively that it’s about something nasty, yet you can’t pinpoint exactly what it is. Because he’s Mick Jagger and he can.
Still, although I like those first seven songs fine, the last three are where this record earns its milk money to me (going from barely an 8 to almost a 9 in the process…yet still retaining the same rating, damn my utterly inflexible rating system!). “Before They Make Me Run” is the only Stones song I can think off the top of my head that’s HELPED by Keith’s warbly vocals, and there’s no way the tune could have been as good as it is with Mick singing it. Great riff at the beginning, and the chorus (“I’m gonna walk before they make me run!”) is SO FORKING CATCHY you’ll be humming it for days. The hook is so great that Keith’s melodically retarted singing can’t fuck it up, and, due to its overwhelmingly charming sloppiness, it actually makes it HOOKIER! Following this, we’ve got “Beast of Burden,” the Stones’ best ballad since “Wild Horses” for my money (unless you count “Tumbling Dice” as a ballad…I don’t). The whole “pretty pretty…pretty pretty girl!” part is probably the album’s best moment, or at least second behind that insane guitar tone in “Shattered,” definitely my favorite song here and probably my favorite Stones song since Exile. God, I LOVE that guitar tone! The hell is it? They use it on a few other songs here (like the title track), but this is the only one where the basically take this farged-up, phased-out guitar tone and build an entire song around it. The lyrics aren’t even sung, they’re sort of half-rapped, half-yelled, half-FUCK YOU, THERE CAN’T BE THREE HALVES, and the song just sort of grooves along like the best Black and Blue tracks. “Laughter, joy, and loneliness, and sex and sex and sex and SEX!” “Uh!…shadooby…shattered shattered.” Brilliant! And the bridge part with the guitar solo and handclaps and everything? Yes! I know I said this in the last review, but nobody can take one silly groove and milk it for four or five minutes like the Stones. NOBODY.
Damn good album we’ve got here. It’s not much better than the albums that surround it (and it’s not even as good as Black and Blue! Dammit, when will people recognize the brilliance of Black and Blue!!!!!!!!!), but that has more to do with people underrating those records than overrating this one. And that’s all I have to say about that, because I’m going home for Thanksgiving break in a few hours, I’m tired, and the last few reviews haven’t really been all that inspired. I’m TIRED, man! Busy, busy times these are. But don’t you worry, I’m gonna go burn Emotional Rescue and Tattoo You off my computer now so I can review them over break and post all this stuff right after I get back! Not that you can be comforted by this promise, because this review isn’t getting posted until after Thanksgiving with everything else. I just figure that, if I have any loyal readers out there who can read my thoughts, I might as well do them a favor. I think that’s rather considerate of me, don’t you?
I think I need another cough drop. I just hacked up something, and it moved across the floor, looked up at me, and gave me the finger. That’s probably not so good.
Emotional Rescue (1980)
Rating: 6
Best Song: “Emotional Rescue”
I was gonna write these last two reviews over Thanksgiving Break, but it didn’t happen. I had a good break, too. Good people, good food, good times had by all. Never got around to doing these reviews, though. Why? I dunno (no, I do, but I’m not telling you). Oh well. I’d be more sad about it if this record didn’t suck so much ass.
Kidding! This record doesn’t suck ass at all. It’s definitely the weakest Stones record that I’m reviewing in this, my original Stones page posting (man, I need to hear Dirty Work! My life will not be complete until I hear Dirty Work!!!!!! I just love “Harlem Shuffle” so much!!!!!!!!!!!!! MUST…HEAR…DIRTY…WORK!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!), but it’s not bad. Just “not good.” It’s also one of those proverbial “gets worse with repeated listens” records. Like, how some records are sort of dense, and it takes a bunch of listens to flesh out all the layers and depth and crap? This is the exact opposite of that. It’s fun and enjoyable and cool on first listen, but eventually it turns out that this record has about as much depth as your average mid-nineties U2 album (Look at me! I’m taking shots at U2! Send me more hate mail! MUST…RECEIVE…HATE…MAIL!!!!). And “Where the Boys Go” is fucking terrible, but we’ll get to that.
First off, I’d like to offer a defense of “Dance (Pt. 1),” which has been called “the first ever totally insipid Stones’ track” by a certain George S. who shall remain nameless (hint: he’s Russian) and is actually one of my favorite songs on the album. It’s just fun! The horns are a goof, the percussion breaks are a great, dancing good time, and the song is just a big ol’ ball of FUN. I also quite like “Summer Romance,” another tune that gets no respect and has been called “atrocious” by a certain John M. who shall remain nameless (hint: he likes Selling England By the Pound way, way, way, way, way too much). The vintage Keith/Ronnie guitar interplay is as good on this track as it is anywhere else, the lead soloing is great stuff, and it’s really not “punk” at all, even less so than the “punk” numbers from Some Girls Like To Fuck Mick All Night. It’s just fast. And I like it. But I have really crappy taste, so perhaps you should listen to someone who uses big words (which I could do, ofcourse, being a Harvard student (*snooty laugh*), but I instead choose to act like a Ritalin-deprived retard most of the time, because I swear this whole persona is a put-on. I’m actually a well-spoken, cultured young man who doesn’t think Led Zeppelin is the greatest band of all time. I swear.)
OK, enough of that parenthesis. It’s time to tell you all why there’s only a 6 up there despite my affection for this record’s first two tracks (as well as the slippery-funky falsetto title track and the catchy “She’s So Cold,” which are the only univerally-respected classics here, and whose quality I will not dispute), and that is because nothing else here besides those four tunes (oh, and Keith’s closing “All About You,” which is purty!) is that good. A number of the tunes start out alright, actually, but then go absolutely nowhere during their running time, and, since they’re not like super-bitchin’ Black and Blue grooves, they just end up annoying me. “Send it to Me” is a catchy reggae number that goes nowhere and really starts to chafe my pickle when Mick begins belting out all the different races of poon I should send to him. “Let me Go” is a nice-enough pseudo-driving rocker that goes nowhere and doesn’t really have much of a melody (except that “let meee goooooooooo” line, which is sung terribly). “Indian Girl” tries to be “Far Away Eyes” from the last record, but is very, very boring. Which is often a problem.
And the other two tunes here BLOOOWWWWWWW. First, the Stones never attempted a real hardcore blues tune in their ’68-’72 prime, so why would they try one now, when they’re putting out half-assed imitations of Some Girls? It makes no sense to me, and so “Down in a Hole” is a bad, bad song that’s bad, although, as a hardcore blues jam, it sounds like fucking “Dazed and Confused” when placed next to the excruciating “Where the Boys Go,” the only song where, for my money, the Stones really, truly tried to “go punk,” and do it in a Sex Pistols-esque way. Mick is doing this sneering punk Johnny Rotten accent thing throughout the whole song, the guitar “riffing” is terrible, and the girls’ answering “Where the girls all go!” chorus is just fucking retarted, and I can’t believe anyone ever thought it was a good idea.
This album’s really not that bad, and it’s not the pathetic pile of shit that many make it out to be, but it’s not good either. It’s just “eh.” A handful of pretty solid songs, but no real top-level Stones classics, a few mediocrities, a pile of shit, and a HUGE pile of shit. Weak. Clearly half-assed. But OK. Or something.
Tattoo You (1981)
Rating: 8
Best Song: “Start Me Up”
“Overrated, but only by a little bit,” just like Some of them Girls over there are Cute. And it’s also an outtakes collection! Which is something I personally can’t believe, because, I mean, that mean’s they’d been sitting on “Start Me Up” for YEARS! And “Waiting on a Friend,” which is by FAR their best post-classic period ballad! God, I love those songs. There are honestly great tunes all throughout this record, and I would like it as much as Some Girls (i.e. a “high 8”), if not for one thing which drops this album down to the “low 8” range (again demonstrating how truly inadequate my rating system is). And that is, not surprisingly, the sequencing. An all-rocker side? Fine! Sign me up! An all-ballad side! NO! BORING! BAD! *YAAAWWWWWWWWWWWWWN*
Actually, four out of the five ballads on the ballad side are at least good, but can anyone really sit through that entire thing without falling asleep? I sure can’t, and I LIKE the songs! “Worried About You” and “Tops” are very nice, “Heaven” is almost experimental pseudo-new age music and really, really cool, and, although “No Use in Crying” is generic and crappy, “Waiting on a Friend” is indescribably beautiful, and actually sounds just as heartfelt as “Wild Horses” or something, even though, you know, it’s probably not. The eight-minute sax solo at the end is a genius addition, by the way. This tune is usually the only thing, despite the quality of most of the rest of the side, that keeps me sitting through side 2. I just can’t wait for this song to come on! It’s so pretty!
But enough
of the ballad side. Let us move onto the
rocker side! It actually comes first,
too, so now you’re all mixed up, aren’t you?
Ha! Well, “Start me Up” is “Start
me Up” is “Start me Up,” and to begin to talk about it would imply you might
not have actually heard it, which would just make both of us look stupid,
wouldn’t it? Besides that tune, side 1
of this record probably provides the best, most consistent 20-minute slab of good
ol’ rock and roll since Exile.
“Hang Fire” is a good, fast, rock and roll song that really isn’t much
better than “Summer Romance” (another jab at those who hate that song), and the
only reason it is better is the “doooooooooo doo doo doo” vocal parts,
which are forking great stuff. “Slave”
is probably the 3rd-best tune here, and possibly the downright funkiest
thing the Stones put to vinyl since “Fingerprint File.” It has no lyrics beyond the line “don’t wanna
be your slave!” and some spoken word stuff, yeah. But it has a cowbell! AND an old-school organ! AND saxophone solo! That’s FUNKY!!!!! Fuck, the song rules. “Little T&A” is the best Keith-sung
rocker not called “Before They Make Me Run” (although its competition for that
prestigious award consists of like three other songs). “Black Limousine” is a cool sorta-blues
thing. “Neighbors” is a much
better stab at punk than “Where the Boys Go.”
And the second side is a bunch of ballads, and who wants to listen to
ballads? Besides pussies, I mean.
Good record, this one is, and
it really does show the quality of the Stones, since they were able to put out
such consistently solid albums (in my highly misguided opinion!) for decade or
so before it, then pluck out some outtakes and make an album of this
quality. Good stuff, I say. Good album cover, too. And someone please shoot the
sequencer. If the songs weren’t so good,
he could’ve seriously fucked this thing up.
Fuckmunch.
Undercover (1983)
Rating: 5
Best Song: “She Was
Hot”
And so begins the short, but nevertheless morbidly depressing, era of Rolling Stoned Suckitude. If you want to start it earlier, then that’s fine. Most people consider Emotional Rescue a vile shitstain on the earth and gobs worse than this record, and, considering Tattoo You was a hodgepodge of old outtakes and the band probably only wrote like 2 or 3 new songs for the damn thing, feel pretty comfortable starting the suckitude then. However, I don’t mind Emotional Rescue, and feel that going “oh, it’s an outtakes release, it doesn’t count” is cheating. So I place the dawn of suckitude here. Please stay away from the next three records. Oh, sure, this one may have a few things to enjoy, but if you find anything on this album that can stack up to even “Emotional Rescue,” I’ll stop considering Tom DeLay a morally corrupt stain on this planet, and the next two are just such depressingly bad piles of manure that they might taint your opinion of the Rolling Stones forever. So, please, stay away.
OK, so the 5 I’ve slapped onto this one means it’s just “depressingly poor and mediocre” instead of true, odoriferous shit, but I still stand by my opinion that Stones fans that aren’t completist psychotics with their own websites should not put forth any effort to locate it. You just don’t wanna hear this music coming from these guys, even if this one itself isn’t awful, and actually enjoyable in places. What places, you ask? Well, for instance, the record starts off surprisingly strong, with the driving bass-groove rockathon of “Undercover of the Night,” which contains some of the most creative use of electronic percussion not found on an archive release King Crimson live record (ofcourse, I didn’t like this song at all when it was surrounded by “Bitch” and “It’s Only Rock ‘n’ Roll” on Jump Back, so what does that say, huh? And…aw, fuck it, it’s a good time), and the good-time, traditional Stones sex-rocker “She Was Hot,” definitely my favorite cut on the album, but it then nosedives into not-good-at-all quality that vacillates between mildly enjoyable but objectively crap music to actual piles of stinking crap that probably come from an elephant or something. The following “Tie You Up (The Pain of Love)” is just slow and rote and boring and bad, and the half-decent part at the end where the producer turns the reverb on Charlie’s kit up to 1,000,000 while Mick yells “SOMEBODY TIE ME UUUPPPP!!!!” can’t make the song anywhere near decent.
Plus, making a clever segway from the filthy title of the song I just mentioned, the lyrics and themes of this album are often disgusting. Look at the cover! Look at the fucking cover! The naked chick on there looks like a goddamn rape victim. Now, I know the band evolved from dark, subtle tales of nastiness to “Black girls just wanna fuck all night!” years ago, but this is unquestionably the peak (or, depending on your opinion, nadir) of their “we’re the nastiest, filthiest, dirtiest motherfuckers ever” period, with the album-specific peak (or, depending on your opinion, Nader) of this being the goofy, overlong, plastic-sounding (but sorta perversely enjoyable in spite of itself) mess that is “Too Much Blood,” especially Mick’s “cool” monologues about his Jeffrey Dahmer-esque friends. Bullshit, I say. Lyrics about brutally killing one’s girlfriend set to fake-sounding 80’s horn blasts and computerized dub beats are NOT why I listen to the Rolling Stones, even if those aforementioned dub influences do work pretty well on the effective “Feel On Baby,” one of the record’s relative highlights.
I like Keith’s generic fast rocker, “Wanna Hold You,” too, which, along with “Feel On Baby” and the two tunes mentioned at the beginning of this review, provides the album with a decently strong first half (except “Tie You Up,” which is still fucking terrible). I know “Wanna Hold You” stupid, but I like it because it might have the only hummable melody on the entire album, and at this point Mick was coming off as an annoying jackass more often than the all-powerful vocal GOD OF ROCK that he is, whereas Keith’s voice has always basically sounded the same. The song is fun! Nothing I’ve mentioned so far would be a highlight on any Stones record up to this point, but compared to the dungheaps that come after this album, a lot of these songs actually are quite fun, although the 2nd half can’t keep up the decent-ness and continues to make clear this album’s problems: it’s weird as fuck (where did all this electro-drum, dub, and fake 80’s plastic funk crap come from?), the lyrics are piss-poor, and Mick is turning into an annoying douche. Of the remaining songs, “Too Tough” and “All the Way Down” (I wonder what that’s supposed to mean…) are defiantly mediocre, and “Pretty Beat Up” and the closer “All the Way Down” (which directly lifts the riff from “Soul Survivor,” the closer to Exile, but somehow changes it just enough to make it terrible) just suck all sorts of ass.
Blerf. The things that makes this record tolerable, and actually enjoyable when compared to this band’s next two albums, are a handful of fun songs and a willingness to experiment that won’t be found again for something like 15 years. Yes, the Stones are not good at what they’re experimenting in (is an electro-dub track in the top, like, 100 Stones songs of anyone?), and the songwriting hasn’t been there for five years, but the fact that I sense a little effort to try something new makes this album poor, but not insipid (the lyrics, however, are insipid). I’m sure they tried all these new things because Mick is a commercial-whore hipster prick and all, but they make the record interesting in its badness, and occasionally create decent songs out of nothing (for instance, “Feel On Baby,” which really has no business being any good). This album is still fucking poor, however. I’m only defending it because things get much, much worse.
Dirty Work (1986)
Rating: 3
Best Song: “Had It
With You”
Oh good god. If Undercover doesn’t turn your misguided notions of the Stones’ infallibility to shit, this one will. And of this one doesn’t, you need to get your ears checked. This aptly titled pile of guano is a quarter-assed (not even half-assed) joke that simply should not have happened, considering the fact that Keith and Mick were just about ready to kill each other by this point and Mick actively tries to sabotage the damn thing half the time. Many of the tunes, to the untrained listener, have the skeleton of a generically good Rolling Stones song (so much so that I just thought this record was “mediocre” when I first listened to it…but FUCK was I wrong…), since not even in this poor a state would the Stones lower themselves down to the depths of the “Hey! Let’s do everything on instantly-dateable, emotionless synthesizers!” mid-80’s (Keith’s guitars still have the same tone, Charlie stays away from over-reverbing his snare drum…well, most of the time), but closer inspection reveals that there is absolutely nothing on this record any human being ever needs to hear again. The playing is dirt-poor. The singing is a joke. There are no melodies. Everyone is wearing hideous neon suits on an album cover obviously designed to tell the consumer not to buy this piece of shit. Just bad news all around.
In terms of song quality, I can divide this album pretty evenly into two halves: “mediocre” and “the worst songs I’ve ever heard in my life.” I’d give the mediocre half something like a 4 and the other half a 1, so I think an overall rating of 3 is about right. And I think I’ll start with the simply poor half first, just so I can build up a little more bile for the rest. OK? Good. The opener “One Hit (To the Body),” for about 15 seconds, actually makes you think this album will not suck. It has a pretty clever intro, with a little acoustic plucking and bass drum kicking effectively overdubbed by the only half-memorable guitar part Keith plays on the whole album, but alas! The song turns into a bland, unmemorable rocker with unnecessary keyboard and female backup singer embellishments, and the sad thing is it’s probably the best generic Stones rocker on the album, and my 2nd-favorite tune here! Yikes! I’ve found myself humming the chorus a few times, I’ll admit, which probably gives it the title of “best melody” also. Ick! Then three of the remaining mediocre tunes, not coincidentally, have just about no creative input from Mick whatsoever (Because he gave about 100 more shits about his fucking solo career than recording a Rolling Stones album at this point. I mean, do you know anyone who owns a Mick Jagger solo album? ANYONE??? Fuck it all). Two of these songs, the ugly keyboard piece of mediocrity that is “Harlem Shuffle,” and the half-assed, Keith-sung dub boredom track “Too Rude,” are COVERS, and the third is the generic, slow Keith-ballad that closes out every record the Stones have released since 1986 (Yes, all four of them), “Sleep Tonight.” I tolerate all of these songs…barely, and I actually like the boogie throwaway “Had it With You,” which would be the worst song outside of “Just Wanna See His Face” (which sucks ass!) on Exile, and in the grand scheme of things is pretty unremarkable, but, stuck near the end of this godforsaken pile of shit, is like an oasis where the Stones have temporarily remembered what good music is supposed to sound like. Charlie’s actually putting in effort! There’s harmonicas and saxes (sort-of…)! The guitars rock and boogie (sort-of…)! Sure, there’s a 10-second bridge stuck in the middle that’s just about completely retarted, but the song is OK! Finally, I guess I could throw the title track into the mediocre half, but whatever. It sucks balls, too.
The remaining tracks are absolute eyesores on this planet. You know what they sound like? Vomit. Like the musical equivalent of puke, mainly because Mick purposely makes them terrible by making it sound like he’s vomiting on the microphone himself (he actually does this all album, but, you know, there are degrees of vomit singing, and the tunes left are like a 5-hour projectile-spew as opposed to a little bit of tainted fish). “Back to Zero” and “Winning Ugly” are some of the ugliest examples of half-assed, bullshit mid-80’s keyboard swill I’ve ever had the misfortune of listening to, and the final two rockers are even worse. At the height of its badness, this record sounds like a combination of Charlie’s playing the drums like a retarted invalid, Mick’s vomiting up a hairball the size of Algeria, and Keith’s and Ron’s simply not giving a shit and bashing out the first ass-poor chords that come into their head without considering whether they constitute catchy riffs or completely useless crap. Please, listen to “Fight” and tell me anyone put any effort into recording this heap of bullshit. And then listen to “Hold Back,” by far the lowest point of this giant skidmark all over the Rolling Stones’ legacy, and tell me it’s not among the worst songs ever recorded. It sounds like every band member recorded a random part, then they threw them all together on one track just for shits. Mick is doing nothing but vomiting all over the thing (he’s not even changing notes! Just one note of vomit!), Keith and Ron are obviously not listening to anything he’s doing, and Charlie forgot to turn off the “reverb” knob on his drum kit, making the sound of his completely fake 80’s snare engulf everything in sight. And what about Bill, you ask? Well, Bill I couldn’t give a shit about.
This album is just a total suck-job in all areas. From songwriting to playing to production, nothing is done well. Could it be worse? Oh, sure. Plenty. If every song sounded like “Hold Back,” it’d get the first 1 in this site’s history without a second thought from me. However, it is, without a doubt, the lowest point in the 40-year career of this by-now immortal band. When the best chunk of music by far is 30 seconds of afterthought boogie piano tacked onto the end as a dedication to recently deceased keyboardist Ian Stewart, you know an album is bad. When the best song by far is a decent, but generic boogie nothing that wouldn’t even stand out on Undercover, you know an album is bad. Just revolting awfulness all around, enough to make me question why I bothered to write this much when I could’ve just said “it sucks ass.”
Steel Wheels (1989)
Rating: 4
Best Song: “Sad Sad
Sad”
Comeback album? What? Huh? No, they still suck, just in a less offensive way than the last one. Whereas Undercover showed a confused and creatively-spent band trying new ideas they probably should have left alone, and Ass-Poor Work showed a band that either a) had completely forgotten how to make music that sounds good to anyone or b) simply did not give a shit about doing so, Don’t Steal My Meals on Wheels, Douche! shows a band that gives a shit about record sales, but precious little else. This album is just soooooooooooooo daaaaaaaaaaaaamn geneeeeeeeeeeeeeeeric that it makes me sick. As a whole, it doesn’t actively suck in the way that Dirty Work did, but it’s still a far cry from the quality of even Undercover, let alone anything else the band has released. There is not a SINGLE song I can say I would specifically recommend, not even on the level of “Had it With You,” which, remember, IS ON DIRTY WORK. The suckitude continues.
If you want
something that’s at least decent, you can
find it, but you won’t find much more than that. The opening rocker “Sad Sad Sad” is alright,
and just about the only thing here that gets my toe tapping. The singles “Mixed Emotions” and “Rock and a
Whatever, I guess “Terrifying” is sorta neat in its “spooky” vibe, but the song doesn’t go anywhere, and neither does Keith’s half-decent rocker “Can’t Be Seen,” but at least they don’t want to make me kill someone. So much of this album is just “there.” The band just plays half-assed late-80’s MOR imitations of all the types of songs they used to know how to write well, like the wimpy country ballad “Blinded By Love” (which reminds of me fucking “Indian Girl” from Emotional Rescue) and the ultimately useless dark boogie “Break the Spell,” which would probably remind me of something specific if it was, you know, any good. You’ve got your lighter-waving love ballad (“Almost Hear You Sigh”), your generic closing Keith ballad (“Slipping Away,” which is actually decent), your atrocious piles of shit that should probably be on Dirty Work (“Hold on to Your Hat” and “Hearts For Sale,” the latter of which has contains the worst Mick vomit-singing on the album), and it’s all so fucking useless and generic and not entertaining in the LEAST. Hell, you’ve even got the Stones’ attempting their first eastern-tinged psychedelic platter since the sixties, “Continental Drift,” but apparently not remembering that “eastern-tinged” does not mean “add vaguely Indian-sounding chords, ask your generic MOR backup singers to pretend it’s a Bollywood movie shoot, sing ridiculous lyrics like ‘love comes…at the speeeeeeed of liiiiight!’, and indiscriminately speed up and down with no rhyme or reason,” and as a result they shit out the worst song in their entire catalog (Yes, my friends, WORSE than “Hold Back”).
Whatever (when I start two consecutive paragraphs with this word, you know you’ve got problems). After listening to Dirty Work, hearing the opening chords of “Sad Sad Sad” feels like a revelation for a minute or two, but you quickly realize that the Stones, in 1989, still sucked ass. This is one of those albums where, by track 3 or 4, you’re already glancing at your watch thinking “how much longer IS this damn thing?” Then you look at the playlist window, realize it’s over 50 minutes long (GAH! Damn CD age…), and just start cursing yourself. Except for “Contintental Drift,” which I am simply unable to listen to all the way through, this album doesn’t give me a rash like the worst moments of Dirty Work, but I still get very little enjoyment from listening to it. The eighties are by FAR the worst decade (thus far) for commercial music, and I hate to say that they swallowed the Rolling Stones whole. Thank god they’re over. I’m gonna go listen to Let it Bleed now. You should, too.
Voodoo Lounge (1994)
Rating: 7
Best Song: “Love Is
Strong”
So the Stones sucked ass in the eighties. There was some pretty raunchy stuff emanating from the boys back then, as I’ve elucidated to you all in very poor writing. But, I mean, it was the eighties. How many classic rock “dinosaurs” didn’t suck ass in the eighties? The Beatles did the smartest thing they could have possibly done when they broke up in 1970. They eighties were just a rancid, unnecessary decade. Everyone dressed like idiots and listened to horrendous music. Reagan was president. Just bad times all around. But they ended shortly after Steel Wheels got shat out on the record-buying public to compete with Ratt and Cinderella for the top of the charts, and the nineties have had a funny effect on really old rock and roll bands. In general, they’ve made them go back to their roots, remember why they were great bands in the first place, and release perfectly enjoyable albums which, while not on par with their best work, were still welcome changes of pace from their eighties atrocities (the exception being U2, who, by being good in the eighties, embarrassing themselves in the nineties, and rebounding/going backward in the zeros, were and are a decade behind the curve). Being the ultimate classic rock and roll band, it should then stand as no surprise that the Stones follow this pattern. While Steel Wheels showed a band trying to return to their roots, but combining this with instantly dateable late-eighties production and LOUDLY SUCKING, Voodoo Lounge is surprisingly successful, considering it had been 13 years since their last good album (Tattoo You) and 16 years since their last good album of material that wasn’t just a wholesale vault-cleaning (Some Girls). Yes, it’s a little overlong (It’s 1994! How could an album not have twenty minutes of unnecessary crap on it to pad it out to an hour?), and yes, it brings nothing new to the Stones’ table, but I for one don’t care. For the first time in far too long, it is, without qualification, good music.
As if to hammer you with the fact that “WE
DON’T SUCK ANYMORE!!!”, the band sticks the album’s three strongest rockers all
right at the start. One, two, three. Boom.
Just like that. And I appreciate
it! I’d forgotten the band knew how to
write an effective straight-ahead rocker!
I’ve been getting by on “She Was Hot,” which is alright but not anything exceptional, since the days of Tattoo You, but no more. “Love is Strong” is just a very effective
moody Stones rocker, with Mick actually putting effort into his singing (He sounds great throughout the album! He’s not vomiting anymore! Hee!), effective and thought-out guitar interplay (Listen to that shit! Man,
that’s some creative stuff…), and some cool harmonica work. It’s not AWESOME, but its unequivocally good, as are the two faster rockers that
follow it, “You Got Me Rocking” and “Sparks Will Fly” (which is hilarious
because Mick sings “Ohhhhh I wanna FUCK YOUR SWEET ASS!”). The songs are retro to the nth degree, but
that’s the whole point. The band is attempting to recapture past
glories, and being blatant about it,
but also doing it well. Following the
opening rocker trio of yumminess, “The Worst” is a country-western ballad with
Keith vocals and a fiddle and “New Faces” is the kind of fruity harpsichord
homosexuality track the band hasn’t attempted since 1966. But they’re both good
songs! They may sound exactly like songs
they’ve done before, but would you prefer that or “Rock and a
OK, so it’s a sixty-minute rock album released in the mid-nineties. How much you wanna bet the second half pales in comparison to the first? Well, DUH. I quite like the track directly after the first five I’ve already mentioned, “Moon is Up,” which, in its sparse, atmospheric boogie, presents probably the only time the band tries anything musically daring here…but, see, now I’ve still only mentioned tracks 1-6…and there are fifteen songs on here. Get the point? So turn your expectations down after the first 25 minutes or so and you should be OK. “Brand New Car” is a clever, funky little rocker (take a wild guess what it’s about…hint: it’s not actually about a car), but a number of the songs near the end of the record just fall flat. “Sweethearts Together” is mediocre. “Blinded By Rainbows” doesn’t really work at all as a ballad (I like “Out of Tears,” though), “Baby Break it Down” is just about useless, and “Thru and Thru” isn’t much of an improvement on Keith’s earlier attempts at balladry. Sure, “Sweethearts Together” is a sweet little ditty, albeit a sweet little ditty FOR PUSSIES, and “Mean Disposition” is, um, thoroughly mediocre as the album’s post-closer afterthought, but not offensive, but the idiocy that is “Suck on the Jugular” just grinds this album to a screeching halt with about twenty minutes to go. It’s trying to be “hip,” nineties funk/R&B or something, and while they would actually succeed while working with similar ideas the next time out, right here Charlie’s completely clichéd beat, Keith’s completely clichéd guitar playing, and Mick’s accidentally slipping a tape from the Steel Wheels sessions into the vocal track make the tune pretty much atrocious. This song is just a waste of talent.
And yet I digress. One total shitstain is better than an album full of ‘em, so just skip past it when you’re playing the record. I’m just glad they’re trying to make good music again, after trying to make overslick bullshit that sounds like good music on Steel Wheels and not trying to do anything but suck on Dirty Work. So they’re not dead yet! They just look like they are. Because they’re old.
Oh, and Bill’s not playing bass anymore. He left sometime between Steel Wheels and this. Who’s playing instead? I’ve got no idea! Go me.
Bridges To Babylon
Rating: 7
Best Song: “Flip The
Switch”
Hey! They’re still not dead! And what’s great about this one is that the boys are trying to incorporate modern soul/hip-hop/R&B trends into their sound…in 1997…and at, like, 98 years old…and sounding good doing it. Shit, they get the fucking Dust Brothers to come in and produce! And Mick tries to rap a couple of times! And they go for a dark, creepy, R&B more often than flat-out ass-kicking. But, somehow, it comes out sounding good! I often think I like this record more than Voodoo Lounge (it certainly doesn’t have anything as soul-corrodingly awful as “Suck on the Jugular”), but it’s quite a tough decision, and I’m most comfortable calling them about even. And the most astounding thing about the album is that, considering the advanced age these men are at now, they are able, once, to absolutely KICK FUCKING ASS, producing what is easily their best rocker since “Start Me Up” in the opener “Flip the Switch” (Three straight opening rockers as best tunes! Coincidence? No! Mick Jagger is a commercial whore who needs Keith around to temper his blatant whorish tendencies and keep the music firmly grounded in solid rock and roll? Yes!). I’m not kidding when I say this track fucking thrashes (well, not literally, it’s not thrash metal, but it rocks hard!). I can’t remember when Charlie played so fast on a song that wasn’t trying to imitate punk rock (probably sometime on Exile, I’d wager), and Keith’s riff is brilliant. You hear me? THIRTY-TWO YEARS after writing the riff to “(I Can’t Get No) Satisfaction,” Keith is still writing brilliant riffs. Sure, he went about ten or fifteen years without writing one there, but he should have been dead LONG before that, so it’s OK! And I hear some absolutely kick-ass boogie Exile-ish saxophone in there, too. And the way Mick growls the “flip the switch!!!” line is just fantastic. I love this song.
And no, nothing else is near as good (except maybe Keith’s piano ‘n’ horn reggae nothing “You Don’t Have to Mean it,” which is just so cute I adore it to death). The single, if I remember correctly, was “Anybody Seen My Baby?”, the most overt example of this “dark hip-hop/R&B” vibe the album has. There’s even what sounds like a guest rapper! Unless that’s Mick, in which case they Pro Tools’ed his voice to hell, didn’t they? It’s a nice song, and I do enjoy the chorus, but this album’s “Boo! Too commercial! Too Mick!” detractors tend to point to this track as an embarrassment, and I can see where they might be coming from. Too bad they’re wrong, eh? But the song is not great, just pretty good. While nothing on Voodoo Lounge was as good as “Flip the Switch,” that record also had like 5 or 6 songs that were just one little notch down from it, whereas there’s not too much on this album that comes too close. “Gunface” is one of your best bets, with that cool fuzzy synth in the chorus and funky percussion breakdown in the middle (I also like how it segues into “You Don’t Have to Mean it”), and the rockers are generally of good quality, from “Too Tight” to “Out of Control” (which isn’t really a rocker, but it’s got a big guitar chorus and it’s cool, so bear with me here, people) to “Saint of Me” to “Lowdown,” although “Lowdown” has quite possibly the most idiotic, banal lyrics Mick has ever written (a sixty-year old, inconceivably rich, Caucasian British man singing “yo, gimme the lowdown!” just sounds ridiculous). Strong, effective songs all around, with little production touches and modern effects and moods and crap that Voodoo Lounge didn’t have. You know, Mick acting dark, some funky wah-wah and keyboard flourishes, chord sequences that aren’t ripped off wholesale from something on Sticky Fingers or Exile, stuff like that.
The problems on the record lie elsewhere, specifically the ballads, which, for the most part, are bad, bad news. While hiring the Dust Brothers and adding hip little non-intrusive R&B/hip-hop touches may make the rockers interesting, many of this band’s best ballads lie firmly in the country sphere. I’m speaking, ofcourse, of “Wild Horses,” “Moonlight Mile,” and all the similar tunes they spawned. What are the guys that produced Odelay gonna do with that set of skills? They only know how to make good roots music “hip-hop tinged” and/or “ironic,” don’t they? So we have problems, and neither “Always Suffering” nor “Already Over Me” nor Keith’s “Thief in the Night” are much of anything to write home about. “Thief in the Night” even tries to be experimental, but it just comes out incredibly fucking boring. The lone non-ballad misstep is this album’s equivalent of “Suck on the Jugular,” “Might as Well Get Juiced,” which is some kind of dark techno music I don’t approve of the Stones’ doing at all. It’s far better than “Suck on the Jugular” in that it remains an intriguing experiment that doesn’t work very well as opposed to a lamely pandering suck-job (it is not commercial sounding), but still doesn’t have much to grab onto.
The album
finishes on a
So, two winners in a row! Well, two 7’s, in any case. Does that mean two winners? If this were the Beatles, no, but considering both the decade of poop the Stones hoisted on us before these records and the age of the principals involved, I’m gonna consider 7’s winners. Neither one is a low 7, in any case. Both very, very solid in the 7 sphere. I’ve heard they’re busy writing/producing some more new material, too (well…once, in passing, from a DJ on a classic rock station that feeds out of southern Connecticut but I receive on the North Shore (Tonight on FOX!!!) of Long Island here). Could a new album be in the works? It’s been eight goddamn years, so there better be, right? I know, they’re 186 years old, I shouldn’t expect that much, but they’ve produced two surprisingly effective records their last two times out, and I’d like to see if they can keep it up.
God, that’s no way to close a review, is it? Especially the last one on a page with like twenty-five reviews on it. Hmmm…OK, how about this?
Two months ago, the Red Sox won their first World Series in 86 years. Before that, in the ALCS, they completed the greatest comeback in baseball history, coming from 3-0 down to win a 7-game series against the YANKEES, the 2004 version of whom is now known as the pulling the biggest choke ever seen in baseball.
There, that’s better.
A Bigger Bang (2005)
Rating: 8
Best Song: “Infamy”
I just realized that I close my review of Bridges to Babylon with a random citation of the Sox’ ALCS/World Series triumph, and I should be posting this review here something like an hour before the Sox and Yanks start their 3-game Holy War at Fenway for the AL East title. Coincidence? Or omen? I’ll know which it is before most people read this review anyway, I guess.
Anyhoo, to the album at hand. I actually debated for a little while whether
I was gonna join the chorus of people calling this thing the best Stones album
since Tattoo You and easily the most
consistent set of classic rock ‘n’ roll goodness they’ve put out in 25 years,
or whether I was gonna be the guy that spoils the party, calls it overrated,
and gives it like a 6 or something. I
honestly had no idea. Not a single track
on here grabbed me like the best moments on the Stones’ last two albums. No “Love is Strong” or “You Got Me Rocking”
or “Gunface,” and certainly no “Flip
the Switch,” which continues to have no competition whatsoever as the best
Stones track since “Start Me Up.” So at
no point listening to this thing did I ever get that “Fuck YES! The fucking STONES, BABY!!!!!” feeling that those tracks gave me. But then I realized something: while there
wasn’t an all-time classic Stones track to be found, you know how many bad, or
even mediocre tracks, there
were? None! Zero. Zilch. Nada. Tom DeLay’s morals. This record is nearly the same length as Exile On
Anyone looking for a return to the Stones of Exile or even Black and Blue and Some Girls will be sorely disappointed here. However, fans looking for a return to the Stones’ not sucking and/or being commercial whores will be very excited, since this is probably the first album since Some Girls that finds the Stones completely comfortable with who they are and confident in their abilities to bring the ROCK (leaving out Tattoo You because a) it’s an outtakes compilation and b) the whole “hard side, soft side” thing is functionally retarted). I have little to say about many of these tracks that will provide great enlightenment into their sound except to ask you all to remember the telepathic guitar riffing trade-off doohickey tastiness that was all over records like Some Girls and Tattoo You and has been noticeably absent since. Remember that? It’s back! Totally righteous. The opener and lead single “Rough Justice” may not be the most melodic thing in the world and may contain the idiotic line “I know you still got that animal attraction for me!”, but listen to the guitar riffing! It totally sounds like one of the faster tracks on Some Girls. That’s what you should compare this stuff to. The Mythical Al claims it sounds like It’s Only Rock and Roll, and while I will agree in principle with his “basic rock and roll done very well but not spectacularly” logic, the guitars sound too different! The faster tracks on Some Girls and Tattoo You are where you want to look to find similarities. Because I said so.
Oh, but don’t think that’s the only kind of song we’ve got here. While a fuckload of the tracks here are “Rough Justice”-sounding dirty songs with lots of energy, fast Charlie drums, and kick-ass double-guitar tradeoff riffing, there are some other elements in the stew (and there better be, with the 16 tracks here clocking in at over an hour). Keith has two tracks, for instance, and to that I say huzzah! I’ve always liked lazy Keith ballad tracks. Even on shit-fests like Steel Wheels, the times the band took a few Valium and let Keith sing about being lonely always provided nice moments. “This Place is Empty” is pretty much a stereotypical Keith ballad, all raspy croaking and melancholy tempos and such, but the closing “Infamy” and its treated guitar belching sounds and pseudo-disco drum kicks are fascinating and fantastic! So much so that it’s my favorite song on the album. Tasty harmonica, too! It’s the only song here that sounds like something new for the Stones, which is tough to do since they’ve been recording and touring for like 75 years. The standard Stones ballads like “Streets of Love” are tastefully done as well. Just good stuff all around, like the hardcore slide-guitar blues track “Back of My Hand” that sounds so much like an outtake from Beggars Banquet I can’t believe these old bags wrote it so recently. And the token middle finger to Bush and everyone else you’ve all heard about through the grapevine, “Sweet Neo-Con,” is suitably sleazy as well. I won’t delve into the lyrics. Everyone knows they rhyme “hypocrite” with “crock of shit” and drop references to Halliburton and all that. Let me just say that the “Myyyyyyyy sweeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeet Neeeeeeeeeeee-oooooooohhhhh Cooooooooooooon” chorus sounds nasty. VERY well-done. The kind of moody, sleazy shit that Mick was completely unable to pull off 20 years ago because he was all into his vomit-singing, but now his voice is back with force, and his vocals here, as well as on the rest of the record, are fantastic. It’s not like the Stones are back at their songwriting peak, but the guitars sound interesting and fun, the drumming is superb, and Mick’s voice is as good as ever. In short, everything is back as it should be.
I don’t think I’ll listen to this album at all once I’m done reviewing it, but I can say with a high degree of certainty that the Stones, my friends, are back. They give a shit, they’re not trying to be whores, and they’re just writing the music that comes naturally to them. It rocks hard, it’s fun, it’s catchy, the ballads are nice, the rootsy tracks are authentic…what more could you want from a new Stones album? Just good stuff all around. Not that I’m gonna drop a grand to see them live when I could go see Green Day for 40 bucks, but, you know, “The Stones, man…”