Exile on Main St.

am reminded of that Python sketch with eric idle going on about brits abroad moaning of the absence of watney's red barrel

playing it late and I got as far as All Down the Line before my daughters sent me to bed

― an incoherent crustacean (MatthewK), Saturday, November 30, 2019 5:21 AM (one year ago)

last night, after getting my daughter ready for bed, I left my phone sitting on her dresser with this album playing... I dozed off in the armchair to "Casino Boogie" and woke up in an empty room to "Let it Loose." good little nap :)

btw, there are some hot takes of a few of these songs on the Ladies and Gentlemen 1972 tour album (...plus a bunch of other songs that are not from Exile, and thus less notable).

Yeah, I just watched that film a few days ago. (Sadly the BD seems to have fallen OOP!) One of my favorite concert films. Granted the filmmaking isn't particularly special, the sound is a little muddy and the detail and focus in the picture isn't great (it's not a brightly lit stage like in the Some Girls: Texas '78 film), but the picture and sound quality is still a more than adequate - like if it was a bootleg it would be stupendous. It simply captures great performances from arguably the greatest Stones tour.

Anyone ever notice that 2:32 into "Exile" someone audibly sniffs into the microphone? Seems fitting giving it's the start of this album.

Er, into "Rocks Off."

joe's got a cough, sounds kinda rough

and "loving cup," man, still a mystery how it gets from point a to point b. there's a point early on where keith's rhythm anticipates the horn charts. i think that's the key.

― Thus Sang Freud, Wednesday, April 17, 2019 4:55 PM

OK, I hear this now (I didn't get it before)

People are always debating what a single LP White Album would look like, but I don’t see much discussion of Exile. Let’s say it’s 1972, and you’re the label rep who has been tasked with reducing Exile to a single record. What goes on your version?

despite all three being great I could lose the songs after All Down the Line. I don’t suppose that’s going to make it a single record though

Rocks Off
Rip This Joint
Tumbling Dice
Happy
Sweet Virginia
Loving Cup

All Down the Line
Ventilator Blues
Let It Loose
Shine a Light
Soul Survivor

‘People took so many drugs, they forgot they played on it’ – stars on Exile on Main St, the Rolling Stones’ sprawling masterpiece

https://www.theguardian.com/music/2022/may/09/drugs-exile-on-main-st-rolling-stones-sprawling-masterpiece-50-rocks-off-cote-dazur

Rocks Off
Shake Your Hips
Tumbling Dice
Torn and Frayed
Loving Cup

Happy
Sweet Virginia
All Down the Line
Let It Loose
Shine a Light
Soul Survivor

if you take the full set of situations in which a musician really doesn't remember playing on a recording (for example, david bowie and a lot of station to station, i think?), i wonder what percentage of them fall on the Better than average recording side and how many on the Worse.

trick question. if you don't remember playing on a recording that sucks, either no one will tell you about it later, or they will and you won't believe it.

Supposedly Alice Cooper can't remember making about three of his early 80s albums.

Side one
1. Rocks Off
2. Rip This Joint
3. Shake Your Hips
4. Casino Boogie
5. Sweet Virginia

Side two
1. Happy
2. All Down The Line
3. Stop Breaking Down
4. Sweet Black Angel
5. Ventilator Blues
6. I Just Want To See His Face

I think this record would lose a lot of the balance between weird murk and pop if you trimmed it more than a few songs. Side three after Happy is what makes the album really strange and more than just a long Stones record; I love the way Let It Loose builds up out of the uncomfortable swirl of See His Face. The other thing about it is there is a lot less difference here between the really polished and studio-sweetened stuff and the half-written stuff. It really does all kind of blend together way more than their other records since and maybe including Aftermath. So I say just lose Torn and Frayed and Stop Breaking Down and call it good. If you need to make it no longer than Aftermath, I guess you could go 14 tracks, and also lose Casino Boogie and Soul Survivor.

On the other hand, Goats Head should have been a double with all the weird reject songs they'd been sitting on sprinkled around it Physical Graffiti-style, songs like Traveling Man and the stuff from side two of Metamorphosis. I wouldn't mind Angie so much if it segued into Cocksucker Blues.

People are always debating what a single LP White Album would look like, but I don’t see much discussion of Exile

because there's a *ton* of filler/bullshit on the white album and almost none on exile

Sounds about right.

Ironically a lot of shorter Stones albums have way more filler/bullshit on them than Exile.

So I say just lose Torn and Frayed and Stop Breaking Down and call it good.

I could live without Stop Breaking Down but Torn and Frayed??? The song that came on the radio the other day and prompted me to soliloquize to my indifferent children about the greatness of this album? Madness.

otm

Yeah torn & frayed is great. I love how he says “BORdellooos”

"Casino Boogie" is the one song that I would absolutely keep no matter what else stayed or went.

I like Torn a lot, but it happens to be like my 15th favorite song on the record. The lines about Codeine are great, the lines about letting the music save you are not really my cuppa tea. I think Happy was recorded before the rest of the album. Maybe we can squeeze Torn and Frayed in if we make Happy a non-lp single that came out before the album.

Happy was recorded at Nellcote, vocals at Sunset Sound. Earliest song on the album might be Let it Loose (backing track purportedly recorded during the Let It Bleed sessions in early 69).

"Lovin' Cup" was Let It Bleed-era too--Stanley Booth mentioned they ran through it at Muscle Shoals (but didn't record it)--and supposedly "Shine A Light" was started back in '67.

"Torn and Frayed" is an essential part of the soul of the album imo. it could have ended up annoying and self-pitying in a "Walk of Life"/"Sultans of Swing" kind of way, and it is kind of the album describing itself, but the fact that it's so obviously Mick singing about Keith saves it and makes it beautiful. And the "Joe's got a cough" verse is as succinct and pithy a summary of the opioid epidemic as you can get, a quarter-century early.

Songs I could live with losing from the album are Stop Breaking Down and Soul Survivor. If I had to take out more, maybe Shake Your Hips and Turd on the Run as well, but that's pushing it.

People are always debating what a single LP White Album would look like, but I don’t see much discussion of Exile

because it RULES

which of your children would you kill to create a perfect family

A question I've mulled

NOT

"Lovin' Cup" was Let It Bleed-era too--Stanley Booth mentioned they ran through it at Muscle Shoals (but didn't record it)--and supposedly "Shine A Light" was started back in '67.

― an icon of a worried-looking, long-haired, bespectacled man (C. Grisso/McCain), Tuesday, May 10, 2022 9:29 PM

Very true, but I didn't mention those two as the versions on Exile were done later at Olympic/Nellcote, whereas Let it Loose is apparently the same recording from back then.

“Torn and Frayed” is pivotal (to Exile, to the Stones, to the ‘70s).

And the filler on Exile is no more filler than that of the white album. It’s not filler (at least, not in the sense that, say, 1/4th of Tales From Topographic Oceans is) (by design, as Atlantic told Yes they wouldn’t release a 3-sided album); to paraphrase Kirk Hammet (‘s take on the uneven-at-best 2112), it’s all part of the journey.

plug in, flush out and fire the fuckin' feed

having just listened to torn and frayed i can only suspect that mig is secretly LJ, who is legendary for his horrible taste

I never ever understand people who want to trim double albums. Indulgence -- wading around -- is the point.

Songs I could live with losing from the album are Stop Breaking Down and Soul Survivor. If I had to take out more, maybe Shake Your Hips and Turd on the Run as well, but that's pushing it.

― Lily Dale, T

Love the latter: a masterpiece without exertion. Will keep "Stop..." on the strength of Jagger's electric rhythm work, which will get more prominent on later albums.

xp nominate this for an Alfred Tenet

can 100% understand thought experiments about removing rocky raccoon and honey pie from the white album listening experience - especially in pre-CD era

there are definite weaker moments but looking at the tracklist total that's no slight. i could never have a version of this album where "ventilator blues" didn't go into "i just want to see his face."

I never ever understand people who want to trim double albums. Indulgence -- wading around -- is the point.

a million times this

xp nominate this for an Alfred Tenet

― mookieproof,

is there a private list

"Stop Breaking Down" would be the worst song on a Foghat record. I wonder if Jagger wanted it on the record as a sign they could play without Keith, but this wasn't a very persuasive example.

The only Rolling Stones album with no skippable tracks for me is Beggars Banquet, and I'm being indulgent towards "Salt of the Earth".

ah ! Beggars is their "imperial" era album that I like the least.
As for Exile, yeah, difficult to cut it down to a single album without losing A LOT of its strength.
There's not a track I dislike.
By far my favourite album of theirs.

FTR, I agree with y’all, but this assignment / thought experiment was specific (Let’s say it’s 1972, and you’re the label rep…).

eheh ok. But then would you rather ruin a work of art for the future generations... or be fired as a label rep ! ;)
anyway, if some tracks HAD to be cut, among the "big" ones, I must say I was never as fond of "All Down The Line" as many people are (I like it and get how catchy/effective it is of course).

I wonder if Jagger wanted it on the record as a sign they could play without Keith

I'd argue that "Sway" and "Moonlight Mile" already answered that question definitively in the affirmative.

sitting here playing around with a playlist of all the tracks, making a sort of Rust Never Sleeps acoustic-to-electric, ballad-to-boogie build of an album.

and "Sway" and "Moonlight Mile" rank among Jagger's best performances in every dept.

i usually cut off my listen after "shine a light" because it would've been such a perfect closer. "soul survivor" is fine though. "stop breaking down" is fun but def a bottom tier rocker on the album.

soul survivor is one of those album closers that’s like.. when the credits roll at the end of a movie

I don’t necessarily buy the conventional wisdom that most double albums have filler.. I mean, I think this album is pretty consistent, idk!