Rolling Stones: Classic or Dud

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.

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).

"Oh, I bet they'd be billionaire marrionette ghouls by now..."

But Eminem has come along to CHANGE all that!

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),

good point...don't know how i would anwer this.

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.)

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.

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.

"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"

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.

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?

(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.)

...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.

A good alternative to "Lady Jane" is "Play With Fire." Similar mood, similar era, similar theme, much less mannered, much more biting.

bubblegum is good too

it's a continuum

SO THERE.

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!

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.

a late comment: I think there's more cross-pollenization than borrowing going on there: Dylan had certainly listened to "Aftermath" more than once by the time he made "Blood on the Tracks," say

Do you think Dylan stole anything from the Stones?

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

Bonham was so much better at sweating and almost passing out, it's not even close.

✓

god, just thinking about how bonham died makes me want to throw up

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.

yeah (ma ma yeah?) there's also that extra high keith harmony on "all right now." or it's more pronounced or something.

Charlie’s tempo acceleration on Honky Toni Women is without parallel

“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

...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

Get a real job, Jagger … pic.twitter.com/qB6CLQ4wGt

— Super 70s Sports (@Super70sSports) March 15, 2023

all this time i've been thinking they're a rock'n'roll outfit.

it's only rock'n'roll (but Mick hopes people don't think they're a rock'n'roll outfit)

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

He could bring back the kneepads but this time they’d be primarily preventative aids