With the Stones though, the cult of Mick n' Keef is far more important than the actual music. The court cases, publicity stunts, Brian Jones' death, Altamont etc all loom large over the music. The press seem to perpetuate this to such a ridiculous level - I mean who wants to hear about Altamont again and again? If you strip all this away and get back to the music it's pretty obvious that Jagger is a fairly average singer and that a lot of their material lacks the kind of excitement that you might expect it would have if you'd read about it first.
― Dr. C, Friday, 23 March 2001 01:00 (twenty-three years ago) link
― Patrick, Friday, 23 March 2001 01:00 (twenty-three years ago) link
Also I was talking more about the mythology in the music itself, the images of the lyrics (although eventually the spilled out into the real world). All those tales of debauchery eventually become stale, though Nick Kent's 'Twilight Babylon'(in The Dark Stuff) is a great read about the Stones in the 70s, very sick and amusing. Also some brilliant characterizations esp. of Mick 'n Bianca Jagger (man, did he see through them :)
― Omar, Friday, 23 March 2001 01:00 (twenty-three years ago) link
As for Rock Dreams, it's a great book but the whole Godstar decadence trip on the Stones didn't wash with me. It would have worked better for Led Zep I think. Generally though it makes the best case for classic rock and pop of any book out there - some of the images are just magnificent, capturing everything you need to know about a star in one image (the Brian Wilson one stands out).
― Tom, Friday, 23 March 2001 01:00 (twenty-three years ago) link
aside from the odd single ("under my thumb" may be my favourite), a ho-hum dud i wouldn't bother thinking about if they weren't so acclaimed. stiff and wooden rhythm section, mechanical faux-blues vocals. give me the stooges any day. "hand in glove," "handsome devil," or "what she said" are infinitely heavier, more biting, harder rocking, and more dangerous (since when is macho more threatening than effeminate?). in fact, the idea of the stones, an institution as thoroughly mainstream as kellogg's corn flakes, being threatening at all is positively hilarious.
ah well. better get back to stephin merritt and iancu dumitrescu.
― sundar subramanian, Friday, 23 March 2001 01:00 (twenty-three years ago) link
I'm prepared to throw my theory out, although since i was re-reading The Dark Stuff I noticed how Kent was fascinated by Mozzer's fear for thugs, crowds and rude violent behaviour (I put 2 and 2 together and built myself a hypothesis, nothing to serious, so I'll take those comments on the wooden rhythm section & the heavyosity of The Smiths with a pinch of salt).
― the pinefox, Friday, 23 March 2001 01:00 (twenty-three years ago) link
― Mike Bourke, Friday, 23 March 2001 01:00 (twenty-three years ago) link
― Roger Fascist, Friday, 26 July 2002 00:00 (twenty-one years ago) link
― o. nate (onate), Wednesday, 4 September 2002 13:02 (twenty-one years ago) link
― alex in mainhattan (alex63), Wednesday, 4 September 2002 13:41 (twenty-one years ago) link
― Mike (mratford), Wednesday, 4 September 2002 14:13 (twenty-one years ago) link
― Ben Williams, Wednesday, 4 September 2002 14:46 (twenty-one years ago) link
― wl, Wednesday, 4 September 2002 15:34 (twenty-one years ago) link
"Oh, I bet they'd be billionaire marrionette ghouls by now..."
― g.cannon (gcannon), Wednesday, 4 September 2002 15:50 (twenty-one years ago) link
― Yancey (ystrickler), Wednesday, 4 September 2002 16:16 (twenty-one years ago) link
― Jody Beth Rosen, Wednesday, 4 September 2002 17:02 (twenty-one years ago) link
― Yancey (ystrickler), Wednesday, 4 September 2002 17:56 (twenty-one years ago) link
― alex in mainhattan (alex63), Wednesday, 4 September 2002 17:58 (twenty-one years ago) link
― Jody Beth Rosen, Wednesday, 4 September 2002 18:01 (twenty-one years ago) link
― Burr, Wednesday, 4 September 2002 18:05 (twenty-one years ago) link
― Ben Williams, Wednesday, 4 September 2002 18:20 (twenty-one years ago) link
― Nate Patrin, Wednesday, 4 September 2002 19:39 (twenty-one years ago) link
― Nate Patrin, Wednesday, 4 September 2002 19:51 (twenty-one years ago) link
But Eminem has come along to CHANGE all that!
― Jody Beth Rosen, Wednesday, 4 September 2002 20:09 (twenty-one years ago) link
― mark s (mark s), Wednesday, 4 September 2002 20:12 (twenty-one years ago) link
― Jody Beth Rosen, Wednesday, 4 September 2002 20:41 (twenty-one years ago) link
Pretty awful, by and large.
Jody Beth - comparing a Jagger vocal and a B&S vocal seems odd - the one is operatic (i.e. meaning lies in what he does with the voice), the other theatrical (i.e. meaning lies in the relation the words and phrases have to 'natural' speech),
― Tom (Groke), Wednesday, 4 September 2002 20:50 (twenty-one years ago) link
good point...don't know how i would anwer this.
― Julio Desouza (jdesouza), Wednesday, 4 September 2002 21:09 (twenty-one years ago) link
good point...don't know how i would answer this.
Good answer, if a bit glib.
Does your taste in rock music run to the hard stuff at all? (Thinking of all the "wimp rock" stuff mentioned above.)
― wl, Wednesday, 4 September 2002 21:37 (twenty-one years ago) link
I don't think I have a "taste in rock music" anymore. I like noise and aggression in music sometimes but for me the particular form of 'rock' as The Stones et al. practised it seems to diminish the noise and aggression, straitjacket it and make it an 'attitude'. (I love attitudes and striking poses but this particular one is 35-plus years old and doesn't connect with me any more.)
That's not a hard-and-fast rule, of course - but take the Stooges, who you mentioned. I like them, but the bits of them that draw a bloodline from the Stones (Iggy as onstage 'Rock God', the extroverted attitude of Raw Power as opposed to the introversion of "No Fun"/"1969"/"Dirt") are the bits that stop me loving them. And on the G'n'R thread I suspect I'd be one of those beside-the-point people who like the band for their 'genre synthesis' (the New York Dolls, too), i.e. for their pop qualities. The Stones tracks I do like, I like for those qualities too.
― Tom (Groke), Wednesday, 4 September 2002 21:59 (twenty-one years ago) link
Doesn't seem too odd to me... both bands play variations on fairly straightahead rock music, so it's not really apples and oranges. The B&S vocal sound is pretty monotonous, though; the entire range of emotions is sung EXACTLY the same way. It's not a very creative expression of feeling.
― Jody Beth Rosen, Wednesday, 4 September 2002 22:16 (twenty-one years ago) link
― Tom (Groke), Wednesday, 4 September 2002 22:39 (twenty-one years ago) link
― wl, Wednesday, 4 September 2002 22:44 (twenty-one years ago) link
"Now let's remember the most fundamental fact of life, folks: everything good is the Beatles, everything awful and bogus and pretentious and gross and condescending is the Rolling Stones.Okay?Mainstream pop has routinely offered two paths... One is all about happy times and getting lucky and being not miserable, while the other, at its most fruitful, might lasoo you something venereal in the East Village if you yap long, loud, and boringly enough. If you're past age 23 and the latter is still your idea of fun then you probably thought Will Self's "My Idea of Fun" was too, and, pal-o-mine, all your ideas are wrong. About Everything."
- Mike McPadden in "Bubblegum Music is The Naked Truth"
― Fritz Wollner (Fritz), Wednesday, 4 September 2002 22:46 (twenty-one years ago) link
Most of Jagger's lyrics, save the occasional stutter, bear more than a passing resemblance to normal conversational speech. I can't even think of a case where this isn't so.
― Jody Beth Rosen, Wednesday, 4 September 2002 23:05 (twenty-one years ago) link
The amount of "emotion" wasn't my point (and I fucking KNEW you lot would get on my case about that, which is why I hesitated to use the word) -- it was the range of things Jagger DOES with his voice within the course of a single song, vs. Murdoch, who doesn't offer the listener that much variety.
I don't KNOW whether Jagger would cover B&S well, but to be fair, the stately Britpop of Between the Buttons and Their Satanic Majesties Request isn't really very different from B&S, is it?
― Jody Beth Rosen, Wednesday, 4 September 2002 23:13 (twenty-one years ago) link
― Clarke B., Wednesday, 4 September 2002 23:14 (twenty-one years ago) link
(Mind you I think the stately Britpop era of the Stones is staggeringly awful, loads loads worse than their 'rock' stuff (or even their disco stuff!) precisely because Mick sounds like he's having to squeeze his tongue into a corset for every song. How anyone can listen to "Lady Jane" and enjoy it is a great mystery to me.)
― Tom (Groke), Thursday, 5 September 2002 05:15 (twenty-one years ago) link
― Tom (Groke), Thursday, 5 September 2002 05:25 (twenty-one years ago) link
...just because he's sounding like he has to squeeze his tongue into a corset... it's quirky in a good way. also, it matches the harpsichord.
― willem, Thursday, 5 September 2002 07:23 (twenty-one years ago) link
A good alternative to "Lady Jane" is "Play With Fire." Similar mood, similar era, similar theme, much less mannered, much more biting.
― Ben Williams, Thursday, 5 September 2002 13:17 (twenty-one years ago) link
bubblegum is good too
it's a continuum
― mark s (mark s), Thursday, 5 September 2002 13:54 (twenty-one years ago) link
― Ben Williams, Thursday, 5 September 2002 14:03 (twenty-one years ago) link
SO THERE.
― Nate Patrin, Thursday, 5 September 2002 14:12 (twenty-one years ago) link
And yeah yeah the beatles weren't all sunshine and lollipops any more than the stones were all needles and spoons. That's a total red herring. But I think the strength in McPadden's attack isn't that he hates that The Stones are dark, it's that he hates that they are bogus and ... pretentious and condescending and, love em as I do, THEY ARE!
― Fritz Wollner (Fritz), Thursday, 5 September 2002 14:19 (twenty-one years ago) link
― Ben Williams, Thursday, 5 September 2002 14:31 (twenty-one years ago) link
As for the influence thing I guess the most obviously Stones-influenced artists I like are 70s Aerosmith, Patti Smith, and the Blue Oyster Cult. I recognize they're probably all more limited than the Stones but I like their voices or songs or beats more. They all added something else too. Zeppelin got into Stones-influenced territory sometimes but not usually on my favourite songs by them. Is "Houses Of the Holy" Stones-y? I don't know. I like "Night Flight" if that counts. On the whole, I'd probably take Zeppelin-influenced or Purple-influenced or Cream/Hendrix-influenced or even Velvets-influenced.
― sundar subramanian, Friday, 6 September 2002 15:43 (twenty-one years ago) link
I don’t think those are live vocals - for one thing, there are backing vocals but nobody else there is singing
― Piven After Midnight (The Yellow Kid), Friday, 5 August 2022 18:10 (one year ago) link
I kind of wish they'd put them on a Blu-ray like the Beatles did with 1+, but at least they're streaming.
This probably won't happen...or if it does, it'll be an Abkco release that doesn't need the Stones' approval. Given Abkco's track record of such things (like the wan Get Yer Ya-Ya's Out! box), they'll probably fuck it up somehow.
― Montgomery Burns' Jazz (Tarfumes The Escape Goat), Friday, 5 August 2022 18:11 (one year ago) link
There are extra hoots and whoops and stuff, too, that are not on the recording, so I dunno what's going on. Kind of like a Peel Session?
― Josh in Chicago, Friday, 5 August 2022 18:13 (one year ago) link
The "Miss You" clip has some visual similarities, and also uses an alternate vocal
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hic-dnps6MU
― an icon of a worried-looking, long-haired, bespectacled man (C. Grisso/McCain), Friday, 5 August 2022 18:18 (one year ago) link
Wait, I've been talking about this JJF clip, not the one unperson posted (the non-makeup/glam one)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qGd7SkdETro
― an icon of a worried-looking, long-haired, bespectacled man (C. Grisso/McCain), Friday, 5 August 2022 18:21 (one year ago) link
Bonham was so much better at sweating and almost passing out, it's not even close.
✓
― mookieproof, Friday, 5 August 2022 18:55 (one year ago) link
god, just thinking about how bonham died makes me want to throw up
― Bruce Stingbean (Karl Malone), Friday, 5 August 2022 19:08 (one year ago) link
i love the little improvisations mick throws in throughout the clip unperson posted. he's always doing that (often to the song's detriment, as their career goes on, imo) but the way he did it in the 60s was so perfect.
― Bruce Stingbean (Karl Malone), Friday, 5 August 2022 19:13 (one year ago) link
yeah (ma ma yeah?) there's also that extra high keith harmony on "all right now." or it's more pronounced or something.
― Thus Sang Freud, Friday, 5 August 2022 19:34 (one year ago) link
Charlie’s tempo acceleration on Honky Toni Women is without parallel
― calstars, Friday, 5 August 2022 19:56 (one year ago) link
“Oh, he meant to do it like that”
Abkco has just up the original 'Drag' version of the "Have You Seen Your Mother..." promo film.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HARY3-RYy90
― an icon of a worried-looking, long-haired, bespectacled man (C. Grisso/McCain), Friday, 23 September 2022 18:26 (one year ago) link
...and here's the clip that would replace it, featuring insane footage of their '66 Royal Albert Hall shows.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QVY9I0XP-g8
― an icon of a worried-looking, long-haired, bespectacled man (C. Grisso/McCain), Friday, 23 September 2022 19:06 (one year ago) link
Get a real job, Jagger … pic.twitter.com/qB6CLQ4wGt— Super 70s Sports (@Super70sSports) March 15, 2023
― an icon of a worried-looking, long-haired, bespectacled man (C. Grisso/McCain), Thursday, 16 March 2023 06:03 (one year ago) link
all this time i've been thinking they're a rock'n'roll outfit.
― Thus Sang Freud, Thursday, 16 March 2023 09:07 (one year ago) link
it's only rock'n'roll (but Mick hopes people don't think they're a rock'n'roll outfit)
― dicbo=v2-ubswizzb&hrt (stevie), Thursday, 16 March 2023 09:54 (one year ago) link
I don’t know what the heck Mick’s stylist was on, but love this iteration of the tune
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eyyoaWjVXYM
― The Triumphant Return of Bernard & Stubbs (Raymond Cummings), Sunday, 5 November 2023 17:57 (five months ago) link
He could bring back the kneepads but this time they’d be primarily preventative aids
― calstars, Sunday, 5 November 2023 18:39 (five months ago) link