Via Currency Lad at Troppo comes this site dedicated to reviewing Rolling Stones albums. Can't agree "they’re quite brilliant", but some are alright.
Rather than review the site myself I sought the opinion of Sunburnt Country's foremost sensible Stones fan, Leaping Larry L, who writes:
Well I thought Dr Bong did a pretty good job with the 80s stuff, could not buy a clue on the post-Golden Era 70s stuff, and my feeling on the 68-72 golden era was that I've not got enough years left on the planet to waste any of them sitting down with a white-board, a CD player and people like this explaining why great music is great to them.
He's right about "Beggars Banquet", basically. No-one else rates "Ya-Yas" as highly as Germany's #1 funny-cigarette consumer does. It's the only official live album from their best period, has a few really good tracks, but is very stiff next to any other live stuff from the good period. "Let It Bleed" is over-rated as good as it is. He doesn't get "Exile". Just doesn't get it at all.
Can't understand the enthusiasm for the weak-kneed half-hearted 60s pop-tune stuff. Hardcore Stones fans go nuts for it, but I thought it was mostly written from hunger and recorded worse. I don't put this anywhere near their best music.
A lot of this rams right into perspective when you have a look at what other albums by other bands he rates highly. He considers "Animals" by Pink Floyd and a couple of albums by the hilarious German heavy metal band Accept to be among the greatest of all time.
At that point you know any opinion he did get right had to be a happy accident of the drug-cocktail the stinky old hippie happened to be on on the day in question. The punishment for that sort of alternative to having taste should be to listen to "Animals" the rest of his life.
Last week on the radio I heard a Rocks Off sting, which gave me a zing up the spine, but really, I haven't listened to a Stones album for the sake of it, in about 15 years.
For the record my first favourite Stones album was Ya-Yas in 1977, followed by Some Girls in 1978, Let It Bleed in 1979, Aftermath in 1980 and Exile from 1981 onwards. At various times I've played heaps of Sticky, Beggars, The Rolling Stones, Love You Live and It's Only Rock & Roll. But like I wrote above, I haven't listened to them out of choice for ages now. What's more, they were shit when I saw them in concert at the Lavertory.
That's not to say they weren't, at various stages, my favourite band. They were. I own every album up to Tattoo You including bootlegs and Decca 'get even' reissues and read all the books, bios and magazine articles. Somewhere around the mid eighties, though, their status as my enduring favourite band was overtaken by The Beatles, The Kinks and The Who.
If you think I've suddenly lost my grip or gone all fuddy in the duddy, don't blame me, blame the booze. Or rather, lack of it. Rock & roll music is shit when you don't drink.
I agree; it is not the music, it is you.
Posted by: Amanda | 21 March 2007 at 11:34
"Rock & roll music is shit when you don't drink."
IT IS NOT!
It is perfect for doing housework to.
and The Stones are a monument more than they are a band.
Let It Bleed is my favourite, whatever leaping Larry thinks.
Posted by: Go Away! Please. | 21 March 2007 at 12:12
... and Jagger and Watts are just the biggest cricket mavens. that counts too.
Posted by: Go Away! Please. | 21 March 2007 at 12:15
It's shit even when you do drink, Tony.
Posted by: Scott Wickstein | 21 March 2007 at 15:44
Amazing how bands were able to pump out a classic album EVERY YEAR
Nowadays...
Posted by: chrisl | 21 March 2007 at 19:11
Dirty Work - criminally underrated again.
Posted by: Adam 1.0 | 22 March 2007 at 09:46
Nice blog Tony, now I at least know what its al about, Paul (trivia)
Posted by: Paul | 22 March 2007 at 15:32
Somehow, No Security managed to get a semi-decent review. That album is the most diabolical abomination ever recorded. Piss poor everything from start to finish. I even felt embarrassed for the old cunts. They could have phoned in something better than that tripe.
Posted by: Russell Allen | 22 March 2007 at 20:28
I always felt "Fingerprint File" was a very underrated track. Great bassline. And "Some little jerk in the FBI, keeping papers on me six feet high". Jagger always had a good eye and ear for the little telling snapshot.
And there's some good cruising music on Goat's Head Soup like '100 Years Ago'. Plus I'll always have soft spot for 'Black and Blue' and 'Some Girls' as they were part of the soundtrack to the explosion in my puberty factory.
And there's odd good tracks since then like 'Continental Drift', 'Heaven' and 'Undercover'.
But that period from Beggars Banquet to Exiles is da bomb.
But then again you may wish to take my views with a line of salt as I was once in a band that did a semi-techno/funk/what the fuck version of "2000 Light Years".
My best Stones anecdote. A New York music publishing company placed our "2000 LY" version with 'The Sopranos'. Champers all round until the Stones organisation demanded a US$20,000 licensing fee and the Sopranos production company said fuggedaboutit. I had no idea the Stones were so short of cash until then.
Still I'll forgive 'em much for that unique woody yet electric production sound on Beggars Banquet.
Posted by: Nabakov | 23 March 2007 at 10:42
For me the Stones will always be Tony Sanchez's grubby drug and sex fiends, but who could play great music nevertheless.
Everything since about 1975 has reeked of "let's fuck around with this and see how it turns out."
Posted by: Tony.T | 23 March 2007 at 14:53
I don't agree, Tony, respectfully.
One of the reasons I thought the reviews were outstanding was that the writer was sufficiently hard-core to be able to dispel the hackneyed myth of the Stones producing nothing good after Exile. Hell, Toryhere always used to argue on my blog that their last great work was Between the Buttons. Puh-lease! BUT Starostin is also bitchy-critical - as only a true Stones fan can be - about the band's less inspiring moments. Yes, Love You Live, for example, sucked in places - Keith was narcotically AWOL and Mick's mumbling of "Jumpin Jaa Flaa, itza ga ga ga, wooh! Jumpin Jaa Flaa" is annoying. ('Mannish Boy' and 'Crackin' Up' are cool, though). I don't have much fondness for Emotional Rescue but it's not bad at all as a thematic sequel to Some Girls. (It was Saturday Night Fever to Girls' Grease).
Adding a few pre-Exile references to amplify the point, albums like Satanic and Black and Blue alike demonstrated that the Stones were always up for anything and - more often than not - they got the zeitgeist and rendered it in classic form, even when this was a divergence from their staple guitar-bluesy thang. '2000 Light Years From Home' is one of the great psychedelic numbers ever; '100 Years Ago' (good spot, Nab) is a beautiful remorseful/contemplative lyrics-'n-wah-wah piece that evokes 1970s spiritual hangover (as did the stupidly underestimated Goats in toto). I'd rate Some Girls and Tattoo You as bona fide classics. 'Miss You' may be the greatest rock-disco groove of the era. Less well-known tracks like the sublime 'Heaven' (song one of Tattoo's chill-out side), 'Far Away Eyes', 'Under Cover' and 'Continental Drift' (featuring the old Jajouka gang) show-case the creative, inter-disciplinary genius of the Twins (and friends) well into the 1980s. I've read fans saying they got into the Stones after hearing Steel Wheels in the late 1980s or Voodoo Lounge in the 90s. Yes, there'a quality bell-curve that afflicts all bands but most of what the post-Exile cynics regard as crap is actually better than a lot of bands' best-evers.
/rant
Posted by: C.L. | 23 March 2007 at 22:46
I actually only referenced one pre-Exile album there but you get my point. To wit, whether it's the early Chuck Berry 'Carol' era, the wall-of-soundish stuff, the psychodelia, the big production numbers like 'Salt of The Earth' and 'Can't Always Get What You Want', the guitar ballads like 'No Expectations', 'Angie' and 'Wild Horses', menacing rockers, anthemic classics of their own stylistic invention, reggae, disco, country rock, punk etc - they gave everything a red-hot go and even if it takes 10 years to be acknowledged, they've always been producing a lot of great songs.
Posted by: C.L. | 23 March 2007 at 23:11
I'm a bit of a purist, and I think the Stones' best music was when Brian Jones was with them. Paint it Black, Little Red Rooster, Out of Time all have Brian Jones all over them. Beggars' Banquet was tops (in spite of Brian's near absence), Sticky Fingers was okay. Anything after that, including Exile on Main Street, is just noisy noodling going nowhere. Would anyone listen to them more than once, let alone review them?
This has changed after about thirty years, with Bigger Bang -- a great album, with Mick in fine (and different) voice, and Keef's vocals are an absolute revelation.
If you've ignored the Stones for 3 decades, get a copy of this and listen hard.
Posted by: Professor Rosseforp | 09 April 2007 at 07:12
Oops. I completely forgot to answer CL's comments. Thanks for bumping it back to the surface, Prof. I'll attend to it once the footy is finished.
(Proper footy, that is.)
Posted by: Tony.T | 09 April 2007 at 12:50
Come on CL, you've really got the "old time" rock'n'roll virus haven't you? The Stones are stuck in the blues rock style, where songs are simple and the lyrics banal, macho posturing. At best this is music for westies, all top-end and soggy bass. They aren't even particularly good musicians. A flashy yet superficial guitar solo and your critical faculties go to water.
What the punks and the new-wavers did (and the glam-rockers before them) was to introduce youth, exuberanc and new rhtymic patterns, not to mention a two-finger salute at the dinosaurs of the 70s.
Posted by: Toryhere | 28 June 2007 at 14:58
The last episode of season 6 of the Sopranos makes magic use of Moonlight Mile.
In fact, it prompted me to stick on Sticky and see how it was standing up these days. Not too shabby, as it happens, but I'm unlikely to play it again this decade.
That often happens with the Stones. I see a show, hear a track, play the record, once, then put it back into hibernation.
Great band, great memories.
Posted by: Tony T. | 28 June 2007 at 15:48