Rolling Stones: Classic or Dud

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?

Does anyone know anything about the Rolling Stones remasters? I have a few of them - the cool digipack setup with great looking artwork and everything - but I just saw them in the store today and now they're all in shitty looking jewel cases with "DSD remasters" written down the side. Are there any differences between them, and are the digipack versions still available?

The digipacks are dual layer SACD/CD hybrids. Normal CD players will play the CD layer. Players that can handle SACD will play the SACD layer. I recently got an Oppo, a player which can seemingly play almost anything you put into it, and the SACD Stones are kind of mind blowing. I suspect the normal jewel case versions don't have the SACD layer. I don't know if the digipacks are still in print, but I'm sure you can get them if you look around.

!!!!!

rolling stones - miss you (morgan geist edit)

woah thats really good! and i usually hate shit like that.

chaki otm, it begins in this inauspicious way, but then, boom

I was listening to Out of Our Heads tonight. I never realized how directly the Velvets ripped off "Hitch Hike" on "There She Goes Again". I know that's not a Stones original, so I'm not sure if Lou Reed was lifting the riff from the original or if the Stones played it differently and that's what he ripped off. Anyhoo.

He ripped off the Stones' cover of the Marvin Gaye song, yeah.

ffs

yeah gff, it's a weird remix and maybe sort of redundant-sounding at first, but i think geist really just tweaked it a little and made it flow a little better. i think i just like how he adds that bass line during the spoken bit.

Man, I love Morgan Geist.

"He ripped off the Stones' cover of the Marvin Gaye song, yeah."

Nah, he ripped off the original.

i honestly didn't think you could make Miss You sound any better. morgan geist has done it again.

i gotta admit, that's a pretty solid remix

A++ bump

Larry Levan should have played it.

All positive comments on Geist remix OTM.
I just made a mixtape with the original at the beginning and the Geist remix at the end. Perfect bookends.

HA HA, YOU GUYS.

Universal will reissue 14 remastered albums from The Rolling Stones catalog this year.

The titles, spanning from 1971 to 2005, will be released in the U.K. on CD and as downloads in three separate batches in May, June and July. A special collector's box to hold all 14 albums will also be available.

"The Rolling Stones redefined music," says Universal Music Group International executive VP Max Hole. "By making these iconic albums available again — and retaining the essence of the original track listings and sleeve design — we believe that music fans will rediscover just why they are the world's greatest rock 'n' roll band."

A special version of the Stones' 1972 Exile On Main St. album is also apparently being planned, but no details have been announced about its release.

North American release dates for the reissues haven't been disclosed.

Here are the release dates for the Stones' reissues:

May 4:
Sticky Fingers
Goats Head Soup
It's Only Rock 'N' Roll
Black And Blue

June 8:
Some Girls
Emotional Rescue
Tattoo You
Undercover

July 13:
Dirty Work
Steel Wheels
Voodoo Lounge
Bridges To Babylon
A Bigger Bang

Amazon now has the first batch on-line released May 5 in America:

Sticky Fingers [ORIGINAL RECORDING REMASTERED]
The Rolling Stones (Artist)

List Price: $13.98

This title will be released on May 5, 2009.
Pre-order now!

Andrew Loog Oldham's early life as part of the Swinging Sixties set to be turned into an HBO series.

http://www.variety.com/article/VR1118007324.html?categoryid=14&cs=1

I need to rant. I made the ridiculous mistake of picking up a used copy of Robert Greenfield's 'Exile on Main Street: A Season In Hell With the Rolling Stones". I remember seeing it when it came out and thinking hmm, I ought to read that one. Bollocks. It's paining me to finish this piece of...whatever it is. Makes an excellent case for starting a "hot mess" genre. Ridiculous pandering cliches and TOO MANY BLOODY ADJECTIVES, and whatever scant 'events' are strung together with the drivel that I presume he calls 'writing'. I'm so annoyed by it now that just seeing the book on my nightstand puts me in a bad mood.
Blarg.

not read his exile book, but his book on the 1972 (?) US tour is about the best music book i've ever read

That's the crazy thing. I really really REALLY don't get what happened between the tour bio and this. It's like they were written by two different people.

but wasn't the tour book written in the 70s? and wasn't the exile book penned recently? i mean, compare and contrast 'exile' with, say, 'a bigger bang' or whatever the last stones lp was called... disappointed that it sounds like a stinker tho, because that 72 tour book is just great.

I got copies of the ABKCO 'Let It Bleed' and 'Beggars Banquet' vinyl reissues and the cd of 'Sticky Fingers. I'm blown away by how fresh these recordings sound. The vinyl issues especially. I'm sure I read somewhere that the vinyl cuts originate from the same mix as the SACD copies released. I downloaded FLAC's of the regular ABKCO non hybrid CD issues of 'Beggars Banquet' and 'Let it Bleed' for some comparison. On 'Sympathy for the Devil' the spikey lead guitar solo the sound on the CD is quite harsh and cutting but on the vinyl the solo's sound more balanced and better placed within the mix.

I was interested to read this;
"In August 2002, ABKCO Records reissued Beggars Banquet as a newly remastered LP and SACD/CD hybrid disk. This release corrected an important flaw in the original album by restoring each song to its proper, slightly faster speed. Due to an error in the mastering, Beggars Banquet was heard for over thirty years at a slower speed than it was recorded. This had the effect of altering not only the tempo of each song, but the song's key as well. These differences were subtle but important, and the remastered version is about 30 seconds shorter than the original release."

Either way the remastering on the 3 I've heard so far is revelatory. Up there with the recent Beatles reissues.