Rolling Stones' Goats Head Soup - is it underrated because it came after Exile?

https://www.theguardian.com/music/2020/jul/09/rolling-stones-jimmy-page-led-zeppelin-lost-song-scarlet

First physical release of The Brussels Affair too.

Brussels Affair fucking rules

yes and with all due respect so does this record

love the new track, a totally unexpected treat !

new-to-me anyway

GHS is not as good as the three previous records (what is?), but it's still good imo. It's weirder and moodier (and better) than It's Only Rock 'N'Roll, which should have "(So Why Bother)" appended to its title.

that album has some good shit too! the stones!

that was a hundred years ago!

Wau love this video!

"Criss Cross" has been on YouTube for a while and it SHOULD have made the album so no surprise it's finally getting a release. I'll probably pass on this one - there's at best an EP's worth of studio-recorded music that I'd want to listen to again - but if you like the album, it looks to be a pretty good set. (And "Brussels Affair" is really good - I have both the official download and the King Biscuit Flour Hour bootleg which has different performances of certain songs, and they're all enjoyable.)

i enjoy the alternate GHS sequence that was proffered on the poll thread here: Rolling Stones mid 70s Poll (post-Exile, pre-Some Girls)

starting w/ mid-tempo in media res contemplative folkish-rock "100 years ago" is a good call and brings to mind "moondance" starting with "and it stoned me"

call me lazy bones

i enjoy the alternate GHS sequence that was proffered on the poll thread here: Rolling Stones mid 70s Poll (post-Exile, pre-Some Girls)
I would've kept "Starf*cker." There's only three tracks on the album that I like listening to, and that was one of them.

this isn't the first legit physical release of brussels affair, but the earlier one is pretty dear:

https://www.discogs.com/The-Rolling-Stones-The-Brussels-Affair/release/6193040

When was Cocksucker Blues in the timeline? Around the making of this album? They should've done a DVD with this box.

^^It was filmed on the Exile tour, and fwiw there are a handful of clips from it in the Stones In Exile doc.

Criss Cross is really fun!

"Criss Cross" is groovy, fun and sounds good but there's not much of a song imo.
It's a bit like a jam version of "All Down The Line".

As much as I'd love to have that live material, no way in hell am I paying $150 for it. I'll settle for the $20 version so I can get the "new" songs.

i enjoy the alternate GHS sequence that was proffered on the poll thread here: Rolling Stones mid 70s Poll (post-Exile, pre-Some Girls)

― brimstead, Thursday, July 9, 2020 6:32 PM (yesterday) bookmarkflaglink

I would've kept "Starf*cker." There's only three tracks on the album that I like listening to, and that was one of them.

― birdistheword, Thursday, July 9, 2020 7:02 PM (yesterday) bookmarkflaglink

Glad people are still enjoying my mix, haha. The reason I axed Starfucker is because I think it's just too much of a pastiche, i.e. 'we need a rocker to end with', and it foreshadows the retread feeling I get from IORR. Same thing with 'Silver Train', which to me is just 'All Down the Line V2', and 'Dancing with Mr. D'. I do think the album in general is a bit of a drop from Exile, but I think it's because Exile is them reaching the endpoint of continuing along the same musical path, and Goat's is an attempt to change, which is admirable even if it's not always successful.

"Starf*cker" feels more like one of the key forerunners to SOME GIRLS for me whereas IORR generally feels much more conventional. Stuff like "Shattered" or "Respectable" were supposedly the Stones taking on or drawing inspiration from punk, but whichever it may be, it sounds like they used "Starf*cker" as a conceptual starting point to create those tracks.

Anyway, I'm not really a fan of IORR, it feels too ordinary and conventional to be anything close to a great album, but there's at least four keepers on there (including their best reggae song, "Luxury") and the Temptations cover isn't bad (their previous Motown covers like "My Girl" were terrible, so much that this may be their best Motown cover ever).

“Make a million for de Texan, twenty dolla me”

I'm not the biggest fan of some of the faster Some Girls/Emotional Rescue songs, but I can see what you mean with Starfucker as a predecessor, fair enough. I agree that My Girl is terrible, and Ain't Too Proud is much better in comparison, haha.

‘Fingerprint File’ is great...mind you I love ‘Hot Stuff’...

I love punky Stones, I can't stand Slurred Stones.

I had Goat's Head Soup when I was, I don't know, 12 or 13--it was among the albums I junked when I started collecting for real a couple of years later (meaning I started to treat what I bought with care). "Criss Cross" sounds pretty good; don't remember much about the rest of the album beyond "Angie."

Cover art doesn’t do the music any favors

Yes--just godawful cover art.

Another new song - "Scarlet" with Jimmy Page on guitar. Not bad. At least as good as stuff they released at the time.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Fl0COtEG-TM

Like the music, especially the guitar sounds. Lyric is severely underwritten.

I've always felt "Goat's Head Soup" sounded like the shambling, drugged-out, loose and impulsive album I'd always heard "Exile" described as.

Shambling, drugged-out, loose and boring.

dang "Dancing With Mr D" is a stupid song...but I like it.

Basically I don’t really care for the Stones after Exile but this album is particularly boring indeed. It has no groove and is very badly recorded/mixed. I prefer It’s Only RocknRoll which is average but still more alive and fun (especially « Fingerprint File »).

That Page collab is cool though. Sounds better than anything on the album !

this is a top 5 stones record for me, i just can't understand why people fail to comprehend its genius

also the cover art is awesome

it's also a really cool and weird thing to name a record

The first three tracks are the best, after which it's lazy without compensatory rewards, "Star Star" and "Winter" (decent "Moonlight Mile" rip) excepted.

"Scarlet" is a beautiful mess. That Page tone...sweet.

Love GHS.

"Winter" is easily my favourite song from their post-Exile/preSome Girls interzone.

It's the best song on this album by a million miles.

another song for which Mick Taylor likely deserved writing credit

Comin Down Again encapsulates the album for me...and it feels like it's as long as an LP itself

Yes, that song is a chore to sit through. I said it upthread, every single song on the album is at least one minute longer than it needs to be.

yeah, that funk outro on "100 Years Ago" is ghastly and portended worse to come

The problem (with the Stones' mid-70s albums), which I was ignorant of for a long time, was studio musicians and sidemen taking over the band. The real problem with those albums was the band was led astray by brilliant players like Billy Preston. We'd start off a typical Stones track and Billy would start playing something so fuckin' good musically that we'd get sidetracked and end up with a compromised track. THAT made the difference.

- Keith Richards, 1983

What does Keef think of “Moonlight Mile”, then? Or really, does he see Mick Taylor as such a sideman?

He claimed to have come up with part of the closing riff on that, even though he didn't bother playing on the final recording - this is from a 71 Rolling Stone interview:

The only thing in Sticky Fingers I don't have anything to do with is "Moonlight Mile," 'cause I wasn't there when they did it. It was great to hear that because I was very out of it by the end of the album and it was like listening, really listening. It was really nice. We were all surprised at the way that album fell together. Sticky Fingers – it pulled itself together [...] I thought I wasn't on "Moonlight Mile" but the last riff everybody gets into playing is a riff I'd been playing on earlier tapes before I dropped out

Mick Jagger has always said he wrote at least the intro on acoustic, and I read a Taylor interview somewhere about him arranging the string parts, so there's a definite grey area.

So literally the only way you can get the Brussels Affair show now is on this upcoming, $150 box set? Jesus.

The version that came out on CD 8 or 9 years ago, apparently paired with a super deluxe version of the Marquee Club release is going for insanely high three figure amounts now and I can't find it streaming or available to download anywhere either. Hell, I can't even find an active link to the bootleg download.

Sorry, to clarify, I guess it was originally released as some weird exclusive only box set itself 8 or 9 years ago, then later repackaged in Japan with the Marquee set. Either way, both are long OOP and going for absolutely insane prices.

"Silver Train" was an Exile leftover, mix & all. The "She laughed and took my money" song.

That's "Hide Your Love"

― Halfway there but for you,

yes, that's it!