This post violates all my rules, but I can’t resist.
I used to be a buyer at a used record store in Ithaca NY. Usually, folks would show up with an armful of crap records and you’d pass on the Tears for Fears vinyl, but take the Talking Heads ’77.
Occasionally, someone would show up with a couple of crates, and you could tell it was most of the collection. It was a bit of record store geek arcana that you could look at the cover of his (it was always a he) copy of Exile on Main St., and know what the rest of the collection looked like.
Exile came out in ’72. Sticky Fingers, ’71. The two seminal Stones albums of that decade. Sticky Fingers had a cover design by Andy Warhol, which famously had an actual zipper embedded in the cover. That YYK special scratched the hell out of the back cover of Exile, which was logically filed next to it in chronological sequence.
If the scratches were just impressions, but hadn’t actually torn the paper, then the rest of the records would be in pretty good shape. That meant the owner had bagged Sticky Fingers in order to keep it from hacking up his other records. If it was really torn to shreds, then the whole collection was useless.
If Exile didn’t have the scratches, then you were dealing with a poser, who either didn’t know how to file records, didn’t have Sticky Fingers, or had one of the later reissues without the zipper.
If the scratches ran from the center of the back to the left edge, then the rest of the collection tended toward more pop stuff. That was the result of pulling out Sticky Fingers, a near perfect album that was loaded with some of the best hooks of the Stones’ career. On the other hand, if the scratches ran to the right, that means they pulled out Exile more often, and they were into the weird, the murky and the obscure.
Exile on Main St. is a bellwether album. Its dense, occasionally off-key and can be downright unlistenable to the uninitiated. But once it gets its hooks into you, it is one of the most compelling albums in Rock and Roll. You either get it, or you don’t.
Yesterday, the Stones dropped a disc with eight new songs from that session, and alternate versions of Soul Survivor and Loving Cup. Hearing Keith croak through the lead of Survivor is worth the price of admission alone. Pass the Wine (Sophia Loren)” “I’m not Signifying” “Follow the River” and “Dancing in the Light” fit right in with sides 2 or 3 of the album, but are additive, not revelatory. They all have that same fever dream quality of Exile, and I can’t help but think they’ll embed themselves pretty deeply on further listens. Plundered My Soul, a song Mick put together recently using instrumental tracks from the Exile sessions, is the oddball. I’ve come to find his preening vocals so annoying in the last fifteen years or so, that my first reaction is to quickly dismiss this one. But he does a fair job trying to sound 30 years old and drunk, so perhaps it’ll grow on me. Like the Bootleg series from Dylan, this really makes one wonder what else is in the vault. Let it Loose, Mick, instead of releasing new compilations every other week. It’ll remind us of what we loved about the band in the first place, before it turned into a bad parody of rock and roll.
Occasionally, someone would show up with a couple of crates, and you could tell it was most of the collection. It was a bit of record store geek arcana that you could look at the cover of his (it was always a he) copy of Exile on Main St., and know what the rest of the collection looked like.
Exile came out in ’72. Sticky Fingers, ’71. The two seminal Stones albums of that decade. Sticky Fingers had a cover design by Andy Warhol, which famously had an actual zipper embedded in the cover. That YYK special scratched the hell out of the back cover of Exile, which was logically filed next to it in chronological sequence.
If the scratches were just impressions, but hadn’t actually torn the paper, then the rest of the records would be in pretty good shape. That meant the owner had bagged Sticky Fingers in order to keep it from hacking up his other records. If it was really torn to shreds, then the whole collection was useless.
If Exile didn’t have the scratches, then you were dealing with a poser, who either didn’t know how to file records, didn’t have Sticky Fingers, or had one of the later reissues without the zipper.
If the scratches ran from the center of the back to the left edge, then the rest of the collection tended toward more pop stuff. That was the result of pulling out Sticky Fingers, a near perfect album that was loaded with some of the best hooks of the Stones’ career. On the other hand, if the scratches ran to the right, that means they pulled out Exile more often, and they were into the weird, the murky and the obscure.
Exile on Main St. is a bellwether album. Its dense, occasionally off-key and can be downright unlistenable to the uninitiated. But once it gets its hooks into you, it is one of the most compelling albums in Rock and Roll. You either get it, or you don’t.
Yesterday, the Stones dropped a disc with eight new songs from that session, and alternate versions of Soul Survivor and Loving Cup. Hearing Keith croak through the lead of Survivor is worth the price of admission alone. Pass the Wine (Sophia Loren)” “I’m not Signifying” “Follow the River” and “Dancing in the Light” fit right in with sides 2 or 3 of the album, but are additive, not revelatory. They all have that same fever dream quality of Exile, and I can’t help but think they’ll embed themselves pretty deeply on further listens. Plundered My Soul, a song Mick put together recently using instrumental tracks from the Exile sessions, is the oddball. I’ve come to find his preening vocals so annoying in the last fifteen years or so, that my first reaction is to quickly dismiss this one. But he does a fair job trying to sound 30 years old and drunk, so perhaps it’ll grow on me. Like the Bootleg series from Dylan, this really makes one wonder what else is in the vault. Let it Loose, Mick, instead of releasing new compilations every other week. It’ll remind us of what we loved about the band in the first place, before it turned into a bad parody of rock and roll.
Advertisement
1 comment
Comments feed for this article
May 19, 2010 at 5:29 pm
jessica handler
Must. Has. Now.