point me in the direction of the really good rolling stones album that's not 'exile on main street'

Not sure about the effort part, but those early LPs are as solid as the Beatles and Who ones you mention, to my ears (and as the other chuck said, with no more filler than many later, allegedly "solid" albums) (not that consistency is a great way to judge albums, anyway.)

I guess there are different philosophies of grading albums. For instance, do you grade like the SAT test and subtract for wrong answers, thereby penalizing guesses, or do you just give credit for the right answers and ignore the misfires? I tend to think that with the advent of CDs (and MP3 players) bad tracks are much less of a handicap to an album, because they're easier to skip.

There's a difference, though, between thinking that some tracks on albums are just bad and thinking that they were created when the band were still thinking that it was okay to do filler tracks. I don't think that the Beatles bought into the idea of filler tracks from the beginning, but not so sure about the Stones. Not to say that they were bad offenders at all. The Kinks were probably worse, right?

Why? Mediocre tracks are mediocre tracks; who cares how they got there?

That's why I say the Stones were originally a singles band. I don't care how great an album 12x5 or Out of Our Heads is; I just care about the fact that there are some songs on there that I might want to play.

I actually don't think those tracks are bad, I see them as filler because they feel so offhand. A country lark version of a hit and a bit of Stones schtick, respectively. They feel exactly like product to me. Superior product, maybe, but product nonetheless.

And again, what exactly does intent have to do with making an album better, and what does slapped out product have to do with making them worse? Albums are just a bunch of songs, Tim. Lots of times when bands strive consciously to make them conceptual units, that makes them *less* entertaining. To me this seems completely obvious, and not just with the Stones. Paul Revere and the Raiders made better albums than Pink Floyd or the Grateful Dead ever will, in my book.

To quote Frank Kogan again, in the CD era, all albums are EPs.

And but so hold on now... Would that imply that e.g. Gimme Shelter isn't "product"?

Plus bridge on Monkey Man > bridge over troubled water

Nothing. Didn't say it did. Just pointing out that I didn't see those songs on Let It Bleed as being "filler" in the same way that tracks on early Stones albums feel like filler.

"and what does slapped out product have to do with making them worse?"

I'm not making some black and white statement about it. Some slapped out product can be great. Obviously, a lot of slapped out product created as filler for early rock and roll albums was not.

"Albums are just a bunch of songs, Tim. Lots of times when bands strive consciously to make them conceptual units, that makes them *less* entertaining."

Yeah, I'm not talking about "conceptual unit" albums. I don't think of Please Please Me or With the Beatles as conceptual unit albums. I do think of them, however, as solid programs of songs.

er, not you tim!

>they simply won't let their music do what the Rolling Stones would do. I'm not sure how best to convey what I mean, but notice the lyrics to "Brown Sugar": "Gold Coast slave ship bound for cotton fields/Sold in a market down in New Orleans/Scarred old slaver knows he's doin' all right/Hear him whip the women just around midnight." And that sadistic slaver inhabits and contaminates every sex act in the rest of the song. And this stoking the fire, pulling the rug, yanking up the floorboards, is just what Brooks & Dunn won't do, with either their sound or the words. Not that they're required to, any more than the Stones were required to reincarnate Howlin' Wolf. I'm just pointing out what's missing, where the real barrier is. And hell yeah, sorry for wimping out, they should cross the barrier, or someone should, 'cause if they or Montgomery Gentry or some other performers of that caliber don't cross it (this feeling of mine colored by the fact that Toby's horse-vomit song cited earlier, which came within a hair's breadth of endorsing lynching, lived high on the charts), the genre will continue to be a fake moral, fake rowdy, bullshit lie. (But not an uninteresting one.)<

Yes and no! It's fun to take the piss out of the band, and its self-important critics. Do you know how many bar fights I've almost started defending Emotional Rescue and Dirty Work over fucking Let it Bleed and shit?

Edd, I'm buying drinks tonight.

i vote sticky fingers. but even then, just like all the other albums in their purple patch, you have to put up with the mawkish/sentimental/somewhat unlistenable fillerish ballads and downhome country-blues tributes that arent as good as the rock tracks next to them. exile is good in that its so consistent but its highpoints dont stick out immediately like with the others. but then i dont really think the stones are an albums band either, for the most part. hot rocks 1 is my fave album of theirs.

Of the earliest albums, Now! is great. Their version of "Mona" kills.

I like Goat's Head Soup better than Exile.