The first LP I ever owned was the first Rolling Stones album, got it for Christmas in '64, I was five years old and even then, I knew this is good shit. I still play it, the same copy. I drew a mustache on Bill Wyman on the back cover.I don't know how they got so good and I'll bet they don't either. I do know they haven't made a decent record since Tattoo You in '81 but that's okay. I saw them do a great acoustic show at the Paradiso in Amsterdam in the early 90's but the record from that show-- Stripped wasn't very good, they'd gone back and fixed all the mistakes and took the life out of the thing. I liked the live version of "Oh No, Not You Again" they played live a few summer's back at Lincoln Center before their press conference. Their last big greatest hits package Forty Licks had one nice new tune-- Keith's "Am I Losing My Touch", but their records mainly suck these days, and I think even they know it. I read an interview with Keith Richards a few years back who said something to the effect of "we could still make great records, but the record company would never release them". So they bring in lames like Donald Was and Baby Face to try and make them sound as bland as everything else on the radio. Keith did make a great record about ten years ago which Virgin refused to promote or even distribute-- it's a Jamaican gospel record recorded at Keith's house in Jamaica, mostly acapella with a bit of African percussion for flavor. Keith dubbed his rasta songbirds The Wingless Angels. Here's their version
of the traditional gospel tune Morning Train. You should try and hunt down the CD,
it's the best thing Keith's done in decades.
According to Martin Elliot's The Rolling Stones: Complete Recording Sessions 1962-2002 (Cherry Red, 2002) these next four tracks were done in August or September of 1978 in L.A. at RCA Recorders (where "Satisfaction" was done) and feature the Small Faces' Ian McLagen on piano. Keith is singing lead and playing the rack harmonica and guitar on the three versions of Jimmy Reed's "My First Plea" (which features the classic line-- "don't pull no subway/I'd rather see you pull a train"-- translation---I'd rather see you gangbanged than gone). Freddie Cannon's "Tallahassee Lassie" (which Charles Gillet called "the worst rock'n'roll record ever made" in his classic Sound Of The City: The Rise Of Rock, 1970) seems to have always been one of Mick's favorites, he even said the end of "Brown Sugar" was ripped off from it. Anyone out there have any info on the life of Kenny Paulson who played guitar on the Freddie Cannon original? I know he ended up in prison and died of a heroin overdose in '74 and that's about it. Anyways, here they are, ladies, gentlemen and hermaphrodites of the jury, The Rolling Stones:
Dig how perfect the cymbal crash is, it sounds like they're playing over the original Jimmy Reed track. For comparison's sake, here's the original Jimmy Reed version
They may dress like the Golden Girls these days, but god love 'em, where would we be without the Rolling Stones?
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5 comments:
Hey Hound!
Jeff sent me the link to this, and I just added a link to my blog. (Don't expect to be deluged with new readers.)
My cut off point for The Stones was "Goat's Head Soup" and "Made in the Shade" until a couple/three years ago I bought "Rarities, mistakenly assuming it was gonna be a LOT of Mick Taylor/Jimmy Miller-era stuff.
To my surprise, some of the more recent cuts were decent, even good! Of course, at least half of the CD was utter crap. Still I was pleasantly surprised that zny 80's/90's stuff was good.
For me, even "Goat's Head Soup" gets prit-tee iffy. The last solid one being "Exile."
BTW, if you're into MySpace at all, J.D. King & The Coachmen have recently invaded its shores:
http://www.myspace.com/jdkingandthecoachmen
For those out there who are unfamiliar with his work, Mr. King is one of the best cartoonists in the world. He played in a band called the Coachmen w/Thurston Moore for many years.
Check out his site, a link is on the right side under "stuff I read".
The couple that lives next door provide another Freddie Cannon/Stones connection: She used to work for a Canadian teen mag. The first time she met Freddie Cannon he slapped her ass. She slapped his face, and in the future he behaved like a gentleman, at least around her.
She met The Stones, too, circa 1964, and says they smelled really bad.
At a concert in Canada, the girls were throwing themselves from the balconies onto the stage. (No one ever said Canadians were bright.)
She also met The Beatles around that time and has a photo of them that all four signed. It's kept in a flimsy shed out back. I've told them a couple of times it's worth a lot of dough, and they really should get it indoors, away from the baking heat of summer, the bitter cold of winter, not to mention humidity, mold, insects, etc. It's like they don't hear me, never mind the pic's probably worth more than the doublewide they call home. (No on ever said Canadians were bright.)
The hubby of this pair is a bass player, used to play in the NYC Playboy Club, and backed a lot of people there, and elsewhere, in his day: The Drifters, Ray Charles, Del Shannon, etc.
He also used to play in Atlantic City a lot and would get blind drunk at Rocky Graziano's bar. Rocky insisted he park in front in a reserved spot because, "You're too drunk to walk a few blocks to your car."
Other than that, I've been listening to Jimmy Reed's "At Carnegie Hall," which, I read, wasn't recorded at Carnegie Hall.
Thanks for the MP3s! This blog is not only bookmarked, it's in the Top 5 of my bookmarks, preceded only by stuff directly related to ME.
Thanks so much for this article, quite useful piece of writing.
Kenny Paulson died in 1981, not 1974. He is/was my mother's uncle, and 1974 is not right.
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