Aftermath and Between the Buttons

(Although it's my least favorite of that group of five, so I don't miss it on the U.S. version I'm used to.)

send up the karl malone signal!!

anyway i was listening to “my obsession” and the vamp they hit near the end with the falsetto “ooh, babaaay”s and that riff just churning woozily along feels so ghostly and perpetual and weirdly modern to me. a dreamy moment of platonically perfect rock. the remaining stones should turn it into an NFT lol

There's something "try-hard" about Between the Buttons after the confidence of Aftermath, everything on the second side feels forced to me, both the whimsy and the frenzy.

FP

I hated Between the Buttons the first time I heard it, and I get the impression the British press hasn't been so kind to it throughout the years, but I love it now. FWIW, the mono mix of the UK version is the one that got me into it - something about the stereo mixes feels too thin and diffuse because they're so damn wide. (Bob Ludwig even tried to narrow them for the 2002 remasters.) The album's a beautiful little pop gem, especially the quieter numbers like "Backstreet Girl," and Wes Anderson really made a perfect choice in featuring the album in his third film because it captures all the shades of his work very well.

man oh man I love Keith’s vocals in “something happened to me yesterday”

"If You Let Me" from Metamorphosis, apparently recorded in early 66, would have been a worthy addition to Aftermath if it didn't sound so close to "I Am Waiting". It would have been good enough for Flowers, anyway.

Flowers is such a weird release. In the UK, it would be redundant or worthless crap burying one gem unavailable elsewhere, but in the US it was "essential."

There's something "try-hard" about Between the Buttons after the confidence of Aftermath, everything on the second side feels forced to me, both the whimsy and the frenzy.

Interesting, I think have almost the opposite impression. I was very into Between the Buttons as a kid, and I just went back to it and found everything about the way I experienced it as a kid there waiting for me, preserved in amber. (I can tell I haven't listened to it much as an adult, because I got to "Who's Been Sleeping Here?" and thought, oh, this is the one where the CD skips. Then I remembered that I have Spotify now and that CD got stolen when I was fifteen.) I remember I found the first three songs affected and difficult to like in different ways, so it felt like those first three songs were a sort of slow on-ramp to the album. Like, I listened to them, but once "Connection" kicked in it was like, "okay, here we go, this is where it gets really good."

I was very into "All Sold Out" as a kid; I think it had to do with how rhythmic Jagger's vocals are, how much he emphasizes the meter of the lyrics, and also (this is something I like about the album in general) how perfectly the lyrics fit together and how little they actually mean. It's like Jagger at this stage of his life has a brain filled with impeccably scanning, vaguely insulting, slightly affected snappy lines and they just flow out effortlessly, no actual thinking required.

I missed
the point of your doing it
your mind
has just jumped a track
I took
a bit different view of it
you sold me out and that's that

It sounds great. It's almost, but not quite, meaningless. And he could probably do this all day. There's something about that ease and confidence that I found very appealing as a kid and still do.

To be honest I don't care for Between the Buttons as a whole, but the track "Please Go Home" stands above the rest as something interesting. It points toward an avenue the Stones could have taken but never did - basically, psychedelic Bo Diddley. And I think this was slightly in advance of Bo Diddley himself going psychedelic, on tracks such as "I'm High Again."

Great post Lily!!

Urm… my copy of Between The Buttons doesn’t have a song called “Please Go Home”??

Is that supposed to refer to “Going Home” on Aftermath?

"Please Go Home" is on the UK version of BtB only

...and eventually appeared in the US on Flowers

I love BTB.

...it's too bad ABKCO didn't just append the singles (and "Ride On, Baby") to the UK albums, it would give us the best of both worlds on a single disc, but that would be atypically consumer friendly coming from them. (FWIW, I also prefer the mono mixes for both albums.)

Turns out, they're legally bound to keep the original album configurations as-is (whether it's the U.S. or U.K. version) per the infamous contract that got them ownership of the Stones catalog in exchange for severing their ties to the group.

Speaking of ABKCO, has anyone read the Allen Klein bio?

Love this version.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OA2loJAO-xo

(I might have said this before on ILM but I recommend Harry Nilsson checking out this part of Bobby Darin's career.)

LOL ... I recommend Harry Nilsson fans checking out this part of Bobby Darin's career. I reckon Harry was already familiar with Bobby Darin.