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

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.

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.

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