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

*Dirty Work

post-'exile' rolling stones POLL (studio albums)

i'm with the ilx consensus...

Love "Heartbreaker" -- or rather, "Doo Doo Doo Doo Doo (Heartbreaker)" -- and "Angie." The rest makes me shout at them to wake the fuck up.

The tour was apparently ok, though; that Brussels show the released is nuts, and Taylor's completely raging.

*they released

Worth it for "Star Star" alone. As great a throwaway smutty Stones punk joke as "Summer Romance" or "Claudine" with a great ridiculous Jagger vocal in an "southern" accent so eccentric and invented it's practically its own dialect. You-ah-stah-fuckah-stah-fuckah-stah.

i'm on the record with my unabashed love for winter. star star's a hoot too. i'd put it on par with emotional rescue and a step up from black and blue and dirty work.

def would be A Return To Form if it came after "only rock'n'roll" and "black and blue" [ignoring for a moment the obvious personnel changes]

relistening to Star Star now: if they picked up the tempo gave it some Some Girls sharpness (like Respectable maybe) and shaved a minute off it, it would be blistering. As is, it's a fun deep cut to sing along to in the car.

I enjoy this album a lot: 'Dancing With Mr. D', '100 Years Ago' (love the way it switches through multiple sections), 'Heartbreaker' (those horns!), 'Angie' (of course), and 'Star Star' all being my personal highlights. Love the general vibe of 'Can You Hear The Music Too'. Some of the slower-paced ballads on this could do with a bit of editing, but otherwise no complaints.

this was one of the last stones records i got around to and, having heard so many "underrated" claims over the years, was expecting something decent. but aside from a couple of songs i find most of the album tuneless and boring. it sounds like a collection of half-assed and underwritten b-sides.

'Coming Down Again' sounds like it would fit snugly on George Harrison's Extra Texture. It kinda has the same "so laid back it sounds like the artist couldn't give a fuck" vibe to it. Thing is, though, I think it's better than anything off that Harrison LP, apart from 1 or 2 tracks.

It does need at least about a minute and a half to two minutes shaved off it, though.

Love it. Maybe it was the junkie excess at the time it was made but sonically it hits some - I dunno - nice sleazy, funky marks along the way.

That's one of the reasons I like the record so much: the vibe. Stones albums have always been an honest reflection of the general mood of the band at the time, and it's something that can't help but show through in the playing.

'Hide Your Love' is definitely my least favourite thing here, though.

I love 100 Years Ago.

yeah "100 years ago" is my favorite track.

i always figured people didn't like this because it feels like it set the template for subsequent shitty stones records, even though it itself is not shitty

angie rules btw

horrible album cover, only to be surpassed in short order by it's only rock n roll.

awww i like guy peellaert. i think bowie heard they were using peellaert and got him to do diamond dogs and get it out first(?)

diamond dogs is a good cover.

true, much better than IOR&R

Great album

if they picked up the tempo gave it some Some Girls sharpness (like Respectable maybe) and shaved a minute off it, it would be blistering.

How about shaving off 30 seconds and having Joan Jett sing it?

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5ll6oCWiH7g

Every lyric website has this for the 2nd verse:

Honey, honey, call me on the telephone
I know you're movin' out to Hollywood
With your can of tasty foam

"With your can of tasty foam"?! That can't possibly be right, is it? I always thought it was "Where you can taste the bone."

Side 2 is essentially perfect, and how often can you say that about a record?
I'll go with underrated-shocking to see Xgau prefer It's Only Rock N Roll.

Nostormo, if you haven't heard the Brussels Affair yet, it's tremendous.

Bought it as a kid around the time it came out, lost or destroyed that copy, bought it again a few years ago at a record show. "Coming Down Again" is the only song I have on my hard drive.

there's a lack of arresting instrumental interplay on a bunch of songs on this record. a lot of it just seems flat-footed, which is weird since sticky fingers and exile are such great groove records.

it's still probably better than it's only rock and roll.

That's about right. Although the other one does have "Time Waits For No One," "Fingerprint File" and the cod but catchy reggae of "Luxury."

they kind of sound like (again) flat-footed rolling stones imitators on parts of both LPs. like, oh yeah that def sounds like mick & keith but some essential part of the genetic code is missing.

of course, it's been mostly missing for nearly 30 years by now, too, but in the context of the 1970s...

relistening to Star Star now: if they picked up the tempo gave it some Some Girls sharpness (like Respectable maybe) and shaved a minute off it,

Every single song on this album needs (at least) a minute shaved of it, the thing is 47 minutes minutes long ferchrissakes. Could do with losing the strings too. Nice gtr solo on 'Winter'. There isn't really anything (musically) surprising on this apart from 'Can You Hear the Music' and I'm no great fan of that track.

I'm giving this a spin again tonight, and yes, I do truly believe that this record is underrated as a consequence of coming off the back of three of their most astounding records. While it's not a flawless record ('Hide Your Love' is the weak link here, for me) it's not an out-and-out stinker either, and the band would go on to make far, far, far worse records than this IMO. It's easily one of my favourite records they made post-Exile, some beautiful songs on this.

It's underrated because it's called Goat's Head Soup.

oh man, Angie always brings the chills. i don't think it's even one of the Stones' best 50 songs. but still. maybe the tension it generates is due to Jagger's diction being sort of uncomfortable to listen to.

GHS is the next box set. 4 discs, 3 'unheard songs', out in September, further deets to come

Single: "Criss Cross" Funky!

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kSpGnZmGWBk

:D

there’s an old ilm post about black and blue that’s like “its a 70s stones album, we’re good here”, like.. a given 70s stones album may not be on the level of Sticky Fingers, but it’s the 70s stones and just hearing those guys play, recorded in that good ole 70s style, is a fuckin treat.

unlike, say, this album.

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.

imagine what Amanda went through

Coincidentally enough, the first two Elton John albums I bought were Madman Across the Water and Rock of the Westies (which must have been his latest at the time). Talk about a study in contrasts.

I suppose you could add Aerosmith's Draw the Line

"Draw the Line was untogether because we weren't a cohesive unit anymore," guitarist Joe Perry admitted in the Stephen Davis band memoir Walk This Way. "We were drug addicts dabbling in music, rather than musicians dabbling in drugs.

Aerosmith had a run of two great albums--well, okay, two great albums and one almost great album. Admittedly, the two were great fucking albums, but it's been 46 years now.

I would argue that every Aerosmith album from the debut through Rock in a Hard Place is at least worth hearing, nothing they've done since has even risen to the level of mediocrity, and some of it is among the worst music ever recorded in English.

Aerosmith was great until they signed with Geffen
Though I would love to hear mid 70s version of “elevator,” that song is great even it *sounds* like sh1t

Sped up and roughed up around the edges, that tune would kick

Rats in the Elevator

Yes!

There's Glitter In Me Cocaine!

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iOUetwr3h04

Love Charlie's "This Fuckin' Guy Over Here..." reaction cutaways.

^^Which is basically Charlie in all their '70s promos.

End of Prince's magical run (relatively) would be Lovesexy, right?
Also Grateful Dead Wake of the Flood

Love that video. (Love most of the Stones' proto-music videos from the '70s.) Mick Jagger looks like someone's aunt in a lip-sync contest. Mick Taylor looks 14. Bill Wyman looks like he's in Black Sabbath. Charlie Watts looks like he wants to throat-punch everyone else. Keith is...present.

"Hand of Fate" is a banger as well.

I'm a afraid Keith is going to spray teeth everywhere every time he steps up to the microphone.

Is Wake of the Flood considered a disappointment?

I’m listening to this for the first time because of this thread.

What do you think?

He's probably still asleep.

xp With Prince it depends how you think about it. His sales basically declined, album to album, from Purple Rain through Lovesexy, with the cover nude basically cementing the "Prince is Weird" mainstream narrative. His commercial fortunes then actually improved with Batman and Diamonds & Pearls, before another tumble. Artistically it's arguable but I'd venture that many Prince fans think his godlike run definitely includes Lovesexy; if it had a different cover I think fewer people would consider it a falloff.

In Europe he did better during the late '80s than in America, and look at his album hits in England after that.

I like Elton John, but he's mostly a singles artist to me - beyond a handful of deep cuts, the only albums I really enjoy as albums are Honky Chateau, Goodbye Yellow Brick Road and Rock of the Westies. I want to say "Sorry Seems to Be the Hardest Word" may be the last memorable single of his "classic" run, even though I don't get the impression many fans like the album it came from. (I don't.)

Prince is a little more complicated because he kind of rebounded a few times, but as a massive Prince fan, I collected "everything" from his self-titled second album all the way to The Truth. (I do have "Soft and Wet" and the title track from For You on a homemade compilation.) But except for The Gold Experience, things were kind of uneven from Lovesexy to the end of that period. He was so prolific that with some pruning those years could've had some rock solid consistency, but you had stuff like Tony M being the weak link in the NPG, soundtracks like Batman and Graffiti Bridge that weren't going to be major works given how they came together, a three-hour album that had at best 90 minutes of great music, etc...

That's a lot of Elton John to love, actually.

It’s pretty good, particular Side B.

xp Except for a few big omissions, I thought To Be Continued was an excellent box set and somewhat underrated - it's almost a perfect Elton John collection, and that's four CD's packed to the brim. Sounds modest compared to the gargantuan sets released now, but for a consistently top shelf career retrospective, four CD's is a lot.

I just realized I misread "That's" as "There's" hah...yes, guilty as charged!

Is Wake of the Flood considered a disappointment?

The release fared better on the pop charts than their previous studio album (1970's American Beauty), reaching No. 18.[7]

it's worth it for "winter" & "coming down again" & most of the rest is ok.
lots of people (critics, anyway) say "listen to the music" & "dancing with mr d" are rotten, right? i like both those. "angie" is very bad tho, turn off the radio time.

When the guitar riff first appears by itself in the opening of "Dancing with Mr. D," it's pretty awesome. The lyrics get a lot flak, but they were kind of hard to make out - I didn't even know what Jagger was singing until I read a lyric sheet.

"Winter" is pretty nice - I think Glyn Johns loves that track more than anything else on the album - and Billy Preston is especially good on "Coming Down Again."

Been digging on this cover. It's such a stomper. Sorry back to the soup...

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dYvYrN6sxaA

Heartbreaker is some legit 70s funk. Maybe it's the lyrics but you know that Jagger was trying to get Superfly as f on that tune. It sounds like it should be in some lost NY exploitation crime movie with Robert Blake and Roy Schieder. It would be the theme to the 70s @ Satriale's

Roy Schieder as a young uncle Junior. That would kick ass.

Billy Preston is especially good on "Coming Down Again."

...so good he steals the credit from Nicky Hopkins!

Jesus, I mixed it up with "100 Years Ago" (which ALSO has Hopkins, but I'm thinking specifically of Preston on the clavinet).

HIDIN IN A CORNER IN NU YORK SITTY
LOOKIN DOWN A 44 IN WEST VIRGINNY

"Winter" is a jam.

Sometimes I wanna wrap my coat around ya

other times I worry you'll stain it

"Winter" is a jam.

I don’t hear the half magic in “winter” that I do in the other two