Between 1968 to 1972, they were the best band around. How many rock bands copied of the Stones? how many wanted to be Keef?. Way too many to count. Stick Fingers and Exile are two of the greatest albums given to Rock n Roll. Pity Richards drug addiction got the best of him and Jagger cared more about how much the band made rather then the art. They still had their moments after 72 (Goat Heads Soup and Some Girls are good albums) they never felt the same. Well Led Zep and David Bowie Soared in the 70's, The Stones got a little sillier and the parody started to set in.

By the way their 60's singles run was amazing.

What a clusterfuck of a song.

Babylon was their best album....just joking

When I broke up with my first live in girlfriend I was only able to get a few of my LPS not cds. Albums ..... sticky fingets was one , loved that cover and that tune.

Keith Richards' birthday today...



God bless.

I've read a few books about the Rolling Stones, and I've read a couple pages of his autobiography, so I know it's probably fucking awesome.

God bless.

Not really done much other than listen to the stones the last few weeks. Stuck my headphones in at work, worked my way through bootlegs on the train, had their records playing in the background whenever people came round to see me and just let them talk while the songs wash over me. And after all that time I really don't feel like doing anything other than listening to the stones. Think I'm more or less familiar with their whole official catalogue now, a few obscure b-sides and re-release bonus tracks might have slipped by me. Looking forward to sifting through all their unreleased stuff now.

The Stones are a complex band. Probably the most complex band there is. Peter Buck said it, Christgau said it, but the stones really are the best of rock and roll (using the term as a loose genre for 'tasteful' guitar music). When I first heard them I dismissed them as a singles band. I think a lot of people do that. And that's ok. You work your way through a greatest hits (which one you pick up shows your age guys) and you think you've got them down. That hard-riffing guitar sound; that's the stones sound man! That dropped-d tuning. You think you've got them figured out pretty good. They're a 60s band. But the album stuff doesn't sit right at first, it's not what you expect so you turn away for a bit. Or at least I did. Then you work your way through the big 4 records and decide that Sticky Fingers (or maybe Let it Bleed) is their best record because it's their best collection of songs. But while Sticky Fingers is easy to listen to, it's not easy to live with. That heroin doom, the slow, slow tempo of those songs are deceptive. They're very listenable, but they get under your skin. Man they get you down. And it's not the Rosetta Stone for the band; it's not gonna unlock the stones for you. No at some point you have to pay your dues on Main Street. And it lacks the hits, the mix is murky. But you begin to pick up on the stones themes; Distance, sex, craziness, 'laughter, joy and loneliness and sex and sex and sex and sex.'

Mick during those sessions was the very best singer there ever was in terms of technique. Every syllable, every beat teases various interpretations, affectations and layers of meaning. Those layers a represent in the sound; that's why they bury him in the mix. Like all great art at its heart is a contradiction in terms, and this irony really the key to the stones. And to really appreciate this, you need to listen to the weird, exhausted, often slow records they put out between Exile and Some Girls. Cos that's the real stones sound. On Exile they sounded exhausted, weary, burnt-out, but they rocked harder than ever as a result, and that's why that record just has so much depth of meaning. On these records they just sound dead. And in their quest for decadence they cut themselves so completely off from the rest of the world that there's no other way they could sound. That's why the Stones are the band of the 70s, just as the Beatles are the band of the 60s. If the Beatles embodies the hope of a progressive decade, the Stones in the 70s embody a decadent, shallow, paranoid generation clinging to that dream in a world where it just doesn't make sense any more. Someone said that Altamont was the start of the 70s. Shit, someone said it was the defining artistic statement of the 20th century. I don't know all about that. I just wanna listen to the Stones.

I mentioned it once or twice but I've been going through a fairly nasty break-up in the last month, and I think that's driving this. Cos the Stones music is tricky, and shaded by various layers of irony and affectation. And sometimes in life you just go numb. And sometimes you get shocked out of that, but sometimes, it takes someone just as burnt-out, just as jaded, just as tired to not give a shit enough to get through to you. And shit, if you can't bleed on the stones, who can you bleed on?

Still annoyed that they have writing credit for Bittersweet Symphony

That statement is void since the stones released Doom and Gloom.