Rolling Stones Thread

[GetTheLedOut]

I have tried on many occasions to develop a taste for rap, and every time I come back with the same feeling, which is boredom. I absolutely find nothing redeeming about the music, which I'm sure is how you feel Midnight Rambler.

HOWEVER!

That by no means makes rap nothing more than a business or "moneymaker" as you put it, nor does it mean that rap is not an art form. I don't think anyone is close minded because they don't like rap, but if you refuse to accept it as a valid form of music, then perhaps you really are close minded, just the same way someone would be close minded for telling you that not liking rap makes you close minded.

[GetTheLedOut]

What sounds like rap or hip-hop? On "The Rain Falls Down" the second verse go's into a rap rythme. It's very obvious to me. I think people are so used to rap & hip-hop that they don't realise it's there. The Stones obviously did this to cash in on that audiance.

Your fooling yourself if you think that the Rolling Stones are putting hip-hop in their music to cash in on the rap-audience. I doubt anyone who isn't already listening to the Stones was brought into them by A Bigger Bang due to any "rap" within it.

Also, I don't hear any rap/hip hop in that song, so I have no idea what you are talking about.

[GetTheLedOut]

"The Rain Falls Down" is a perfect example of what I've listen to and find stagnant and unexciting. Rap is the fisrt thing I thought of when I heard the second verse of that song.

Then you are the only one.

If you don't like rap yourself, don't worry about what I say about it. Why defend it? Let the hip-hoppers worry about it. Let it sink by it's own weight. Why worry about what one guy says about it? Don't be a rap enabler. If it's as valid as you say, it can take care of it's self.

Don't be a rap enabler? While rap will neither succeed to fail depending on what I do, I don't think there's a problem with it existing. If I'm an enabler, fine. What I don't like is how people like you try to claim any new form of music, in this case rap, is just a form of making money. It's no more money making than the music of the sixties that you enjoy.

This reminds me of when Roger Daltrey was asked what he thought of the older bands like the Stones still performing. He said "I think it's great. It's the young ones I can't take."

I wonder if he was thinking of the hip hoppers.

I doubt it, since I think he was referring mostly to British music, which I don't believe has too much rap in it.

[alwizard03]

Sorry i dont like Rap and i will not broaden my horizons in that direction .I have placed in a little box right next to disco and then burned it. I will not eat Green Eggs and Ham . Not in a House Not with a Mouse .I do listen to Rock,Blues,Jazz,even yes even a little Country But i really love Rock.

the soul to soul groping show. I know i just lost 1000 cool points i will be okay .I can get a shrink

[Rock Action]

Keith Richards is my favorite Stone and I really don't care if someone has a go at him. I'm not that insecure .

AMEN!!

No Keith= no Stones. I've said it a million times, but I'll say it again. Jagger's solo albums make good beer coasters, but Keef's discs are priceless.

And I'm sick of all these people gettting all butt hurt because Keith made a flippant comment. Big fucking deal. Grow up, kiddies. Jimmy probably had a chuckle over it.

[Jahfin]

You're the first one that I've ever ran into who did not see my point about that second verse.

I don't hear it either and I didn't grow up hearing rap and hip hop. Sounds more like you're paranoid to me.

If you can't rip on rap with rock n' rollers on the led zep site, the rock n' roll comunity is getting a little too politically correct.

I don't think it implies any sort of political correctness at all. By the same token should it be out of place to rip on Led Zeppelin (and rock n' roll in general) on a site devoted to rap? Like I've said, I'm not a fan but just because I'm into rock n' roll it doesn't make rap fair game. It sounds more like racism to me. You make it sound like anyone off the street can add rap to their music and it's automatically going to be some kind of million seller. When Springsteen declared rap "the new rock n' roll" he wasn't far off the mark at all. The very fact that you seem so threatened by it is prime evidence of that.

Edited March 5, 2008 by Jahfin

[Rock Action]

I'm Glad you like Keith. I get a kick out of what he says. The guy has a nice wit about him. It's one the things I like about the guy. He's smart.

The people who get upset about what he says need to lighten up.

Thanks for the reply.

Keith has always been my favorite Stone. Even way back in the 60's. Always will be.

[GetTheLedOut]

I don't hear it either and I didn't grow hearing rap and hip hop. Sounds more like you're paranoid to me.

He's just manufacturing the sound in his head.

I don't think it implies any sort of political correctness at all. By the same token should it be out of place to rip on Led Zeppelin (and rock n' roll in general) on a site devoted to rap? Like I've said, I'm not a fan but just because I'm into rock n' roll it doesn't make rap fair game. It sounds more like racism to me. You make it sound like anyone off the street can add rap to their music and it's automatically going to be some kind of million seller. When Springsteen declared rap "the new rock n' roll" he wasn't far off the mark at all. The very fact that you seem so threatened by it is prime evidence of that.

While I think your accusation of racism is off, I agree with you on the rest. There seems to be just as many struggling and unsuccessful hip hop artists as there are rock artists, and similarly they are developing their own history and nostalgia.

[Jahfin]

While I think your accusation of racism is off, I agree with you on the rest.

I hestiated to use that term and maybe I shouldn't have but I couldn't think of any other reason why this person seems to be so put off by rap and hip hop.

There seems to be just as many struggling and unsuccessful hip hop artists as there are rock artists, and similarly they are developing their own history and nostalgia.

A few years ago Jimmy Buffett threw a rap-like chorus into one of his songs. By this person's estimation it should have been flying off the shelves with the rap/hip-hop crowd. The same thing he's saying is true of the Stones song from A Bigger Bang. The truth of the matter is, the "rap/hip hop crowd" (whoever they are) have most likely never heard either song.

[Deezer]

Like any style of music that becomes popular, you're going to have those that try to take advantage of it. Rap certainly falls in that. Do I think everybody who does rap is trying to be commercial. Heck no. There are a lot of guys out there that are doing some pretty radical things with the genre. But that don't sell records. I like bands like the North Mississippi All Stars aren't afraid to try and use elements of it in their music, and when used right, it really brings out a level of blues that is actually quite intriguing. Do I actually like hip hop and rap? Not really. But some of its elements can be used. I love Gnarls Barkley, because they're doing something pretty unique with the rnb/hip hop genre. They ain't talking about bitches and ho's. And they come up with some pretty cool songs with a lot of soulful singing that almost goes back to old school 70s funk. The point is, any genre of music can be taken and bludgeoned to death. Look what Zeppelin started, yeah that ended well didn't it. By the 90s everybody was glad hair metal died. You say Zeppelin had nothing to do with it, well big freakin' blonde haired singers playing lightning fast riffs and solos. Yeah, they did, although I think that wasn't their intention. Just doing what they do.

[Rock Action]

Get Yer Ya Ya's Out is a great album.

My favorite guitar solo is the one in "Sympathy For The Devil" on Get Yer Ya Ya's Out.

There"s a great live version of "Sway" on Too Hot For Snakes, an album by Carla Olson with Mick Taylor. It has a beautiful guitar solo at the end. You keep wanting Taylor to hit this certian note and then he finally hits it. That's beautiful.

I have that cd! Gorgeous guitar work.

I got to meet Mick after a show in 2000. Great guy. And the show he put on was magnificent. Pity he can't hook up with the Stones again, even as a guest musician. Let Woody go take a 2 hour break.

[Zepaholic]

Get Yer Ya Ya's Out is a great album.

My favorite guitar solo is the one in "Sympathy For The Devil" on Get Yer Ya Ya's Out.

There"s a great live version of "Sway" on Too Hot For Snakes, an album by Carla Olson with Mick Taylor. It has a beautiful guitar solo at the end. You keep wanting Taylor to hit this certian note and then he finally hits it. That's beautiful.

Speaking of Sway, Keef didn't even play on that track. It was the Mick and Mick show. Took me years before i realized that Jagger played rhythm guitar instread of Keef.

But it's one of my favorites anyway....

[Rock Action]

Speaking of Sway, Keef didn't even play on that track. It was the Mick and Mick show. Took me years before i realized that Jagger played rhythm guitar instread of Keef.

But it's one of my favorites anyway....

Jagger did a nice job there. But again, he had the ideal teacher. KEITH.

[Rock Action]

Keith? the one that chose to trash Zeppelin? Cmon Steve. I love his songwriting, but doesnt he piss you off at all???

OK, I'll bite.

Keith's comment wasn't necessary, I'll give you that. Definitely not needed, but you should also know how he is by now. He's always spoken his mind, whether we agree or not. I'm not going to become a Keef hater because of it. Fair enough?

Let's smokem peace pipe, OK?

[Rock Action]

I certainly dont hate him. No way. But Im pissed at him. Just like Mr LP59 who isnt fooling me any. But Im pissed at Plant even more. Turns down millions, and lets down his fans for this crap he is doing with Allison. Im sure he is doing her. Has to be.

Music is full of disappointments and annoyances. But it's not worth losing sleep over.

[Deezer]

I certainly dont hate him. No way. But Im pissed at him. Just like Mr LP59 who isnt fooling me any. But Im pissed at Plant even more. Turns down millions, and lets down his fans for this crap he is doing with Allison. Im sure he is doing her. Has to be.

Allison Krauss is one of the most respected artists in country and bluegrass music. She has an amazing voice and is a great violin player. Her band is a top-notch band, one of the best in the business. In fact, it was her guitar player, Dan Tyminski, who did the famous version of Man Of Constant Sorrow off of the Oh Brother Where Art Thou soundtrack. Her band also has Jerry Douglas, the famous dobro player, in it as well. She is no slouch in the music world. I very seriously doubt that her and Plant are "doing it." They're both great musicians working together. To imply that is the only reason they're doing is to discredit both of their artistic integrities.

[GetTheLedOut]

I very seriously doubt that her and Plant are "doing it."

So there's an opening?

[Deezer]

Yeah yeah. Ill admit you are right. But I just want to see Led Zeppelin one more time before I leave ths Earth.

That's still no reason to hate on Allison Krauss. She's an innocent bystander in this.

But what the hell do I know.

Edited March 6, 2008 by Deezer

[JethroTull]

Short little youtube of the Stones.

[Rock Action]

Short little youtube of the Stones.

I bet $20 that was ICQYB he was swingin' at.

JUST KIDDING!!!!!!!!!!!!

[Jahfin]

To each their own. My main point through all of this has been that I don't hear the rap you seem to hear in the Rolling Stones song from A Bigger Bang nor do I share your belief that anyone that incorporates an element of rap into their music is automatically going have a million seller on their hands. If there was some secret formula to success like that everyone would be doing it. Using rap in one's music is no way any guarantee of that sort of success. Not now or ever.

[The Pagemeister]

Scorsese's SHINE A LIGHT Movie

[SteveAJones]

Mick Jagger: Our Most Underrated Songwriter?

by Ron Rosenbaum | December 9, 2001 |

This article was published in the December 10, 2001, edition of The New York Observer.

I learned about George Harrison after a draft of this column went to the copy editors. Reading the many well-deserved tributes he's getting now made me feel even more strongly the importance of paying tribute to artists while they're still with us rather than waiting for death to provide a "peg." It's one of the things I've tried to do since I began The Edgy Enthusiast, and you can think of this Mick Jagger tribute in that light.

Recently I came upon a startling remark by Stephen Booth, a brilliant literary scholar who occupies a special place in my pantheon for his transformative edition of Shakespeare's sonnets. (His Yale University Press commentary on the sonnets is an exhilarating exercise in polysemous pleasure–which is not as dirty as it sounds.)

Anyway, I'd been tracking down some of Mr. Booth's other essays in places like Pacific Coast Philology when I came upon that remarkable opening line from one of his essays: "Shakespeare is, of course, our most underrated poet." Shakespeare underrated ?

In a tongue-in-cheek kind of way, Mr. Booth is saying that all the millions and perhaps billions of words expended on Shakespeare's poetry have still not come close to justly rating his immensity. So he's underrated! In that spirit, I would like to argue that Mick Jagger is our most underrated songwriter. Despite the millions and millions of words expended on Mick Jagger's rock-star persona, on the mansions and the babes and the paternity suits and the Tootsie Roll soaked in acid on the tour plane (or was that Led Zeppelin?), despite–or because of–the millions and millions of words about Mick Jagger the celebrity , no one has done justice to Mick Jagger as a writer . A writer of brilliant, soulful, soaring, incantatory anthems, hymns to broken hearts ("Memory Motel"), broken spirits ("Wild Horses") and fragmentary hopes for redemption (the incomparable "Sweet Virginia"). And let's not forget, at this particular moment, that he's one of the rare rock songwriters who has addressed the question of evil and apocalypse ("Sympathy for the Devil," "Gimme Shelter") in a sophisticated way.

He's more well-known for his "Jumpin' Jack Flash" manic-exhibitionist stage persona, but he's done some killer slow, aching ballads, such as "You Can't Always Get What You Want" and "Angie" and "Time Waits for No One."

He's been doing it from the beginning of his songwriting career, with underappreciated slow-tempo numbers like "Blue Turns to Grey," "The Singer Not the Song" and one of my all-time, all-time faves, "Tell Me (You're Coming Back to Me)."

That's the one where I think he first discovered the power of incantatory repetition that transforms simple love songs into soaring sonic prayers in the gutter religion of love. Sometimes it's the despairing prayer of a Graham Greene whiskey priest, as in the almost completely overlooked "Till the Next Good Bye." Sometimes it's the bleak beauty, the spare Beckett-like eloquence of "No Expectations." He's got another potential classic in the anthemic "Wild Horses" mode on his new solo album, Goddess in the Doorway –a song called "Don't Call Me Up." But that's not what prompted this column, or even my call to radio guru Jonathan Schwartz.

No, what prompted me to call Mr. Schwartz was the dispiriting news that I first read in Page Six, that Mick Jagger's new solo album only sold a paltry 900 copies in its first week of release in the U.K.! This despite a prime-time network documentary (ABC's Being Mick Jagger ) about his living the high life, hobnobbing with Prince Charles at the royal premiere of the film he's just produced ( Enigma , starring Kate Winslet), and making music with the many children of his several wives.

I say "despite" the prime-time documentary, but maybe because of it–because, again, it played into the image that people have always used to underrate him, to write him off as a jet-setting celeb these days, rather than the serious artist he was and still is.

This jet-set stuff obscures the fact that Mick Jagger has written powerful songs that will last forever (the unbearably sad and beautiful "Memory Motel" will last as long as memory–or at least as long as motels).

But before I go any further, I think it's important to say that when I say "Mick Jagger has written," I mean the songs that Mick Jagger and Keith Richards have written. Most of them are written for Mr. Jagger's voice , for his persona. But I have a feeling that the writing credit "Jagger/Richards" represents a real collaboration, whatever the division of labor may be.*

Actually, I'd love to know how Mick and Keith work together as a team. (My fantasy is to do one of those Paris Review "Writers at Work" interviews with them.)

But when I say Mick Jagger is our most underrated songwriter, I also believe he's our most underrated voice. A voice–and a delivery–that deserves comparison, by this time, with Frank Sinatra, Count Basie, Bob Dylan and Neil Young as one of the defining male voices of the century.

Yes: Jagger and Sinatra. That's why I felt compelled to put in a call to my friend Jonathan Schwartz, an elegant advocate for Sinatra, Bennett, all those guys, but someone who also has a deep understanding of Dylan. I've had some of my most illuminating Dylan conversations with Jonathan, and yet I couldn't recall any real conversation about the Stones.

Jonathan Schwartz, as I'm sure you know, is the gifted novelist, memoirist and host of two widely admired Saturday and Sunday afternoon music-and-meditative- monologue shows on WNYC. When I reached him, he told me he was about to send me news of an additional gig as on-air producer and programmer on a singer-songwriter channel of the new no-commercials satellite-radio service XM, where, he said, they allow him the freedom to play "deep tracks"– overlooked classics by his favorites, such as (in the order he reeled them off) Lena Horne, Count Basie, Nat King Cole, Tony Bennett and that other guy he likes so much, Frank whatever.

I felt that Jonathan might be the one person who could redress the imbalance in Mick Jagger's reputation, repair the underestimation of Mr. Jagger as a songwriter.

I was ready to say, "See here, Jonathan, you're one of the few people who has the perspicuity to appreciate both that Frank guy and Bob Dylan. It's time you did the same for Mick Jagger's songs."

But before I got two sentences into my prepared rant, Jonathan stopped me to say that, in fact, he has played Jagger on his mostly Sinatra and Tony Bennett show.

He told me how he segued recently from a conga riff at the end of "Sympathy for the Devil" into Mel Tormé's "I Don't Want to Cry Anymore" in a way that perfectly "married the two genres of music," as he put it.

And then he cited several other Jagger songs he'd played, including some of those classic anthemic ballads that are my favorites as well, among them "You Can't Always Get What You Want," "Wild Horses" and "Angie."

I shouldn't have been surprised at Jonathan's discernment. We went on after that to consider the relationship between Jagger and Dylan as songwriters. Was Jagger, as Jonathan initially suggested, "a blue-collar Dylan"?

I put it differently: Mick Jagger's audience might have been more authentically blue-collar, in the sense that Bob Dylan's initial audience bought their blue work shirts at the Harvard Co-op, so to speak. But Mick Jagger's songwriting was anything but blue-collar, even when–Jonathan had a point here–portraying blue-collar kids in "Satisfaction" and "Street Fighting Man."

Mick Jagger, I argued, was more of an aesthete in the sense that his art–or part of his art–was not to call attention to his art. Not to call attention the way Dylan did, with over-the-top verbal pyrotechnics, at least until Dylan shifted into a new, more pared-down mode of songwriting with Blood on the Tracks –not necessarily better, perhaps, or as novel as the Highway 61-Blonde on Blonde Dylan, but very, well, Jaggeresque. (I await the sensitively written Ph.D. thesis comparing "Gimme Shelter" with "Shelter from the Storm.")

Meanwhile, though, Mick Jagger–always a peacock on stage–was, in his ballads, more in the mode (or the pose) of the aristo-poet than the blue-collar rocker. At his unaffected best, Jagger can display flashes of the tossed-off brilliance of Byron.

But there's something else about Jagger that defines him as a songwriter, defines him as a singer–something that doesn't necessarily appear on a lyric sheet. It's his beautiful use of incantation.

Incantation : a lovely word for a special kind of vocal recurrence, one that combines overtones of prayer, magic, spell casting, all that.

Incantation: It's a kind of vocal voodoo that has almost completely overcome the genius of Van Morrison, so that sometimes you feel he's only about incantation.

Ecstatic incantation: It's what defines rock music against the "standards" given such knee-jerk reverence by young fogies and old. (Well, maybe that and the Little Richard-like, ecstatic " Whooo-oooo! " that made the Beatles the Beatles.)

But what made the Stones the Stones is Jagger's jagged-edge incantation.

No one does more with the incantation of a first line–a focused incantation–than Jagger. It's there in the beautiful, desperate, hopeless urgency of "Tell Me (You're Comin' Back to Me)." And in the way it's not just "Wild Horses" but "Wild, wild horses." And then there's the amazing apocalyptic couplet that fades to infinity in "Gimme Shelter":

War …it's just a shot away, shot away, shot away

Love …it's just a kiss away, kiss away, kiss away….

(By the way, has anyone ever compressed a deeper truth about human nature in two lines of a song?)

It's not "You're just a memory," but "You're just a memory, just a memory, just a memory" in "Memory Motel." Each incantatory reiteration of "memory" conjuring up a very real ghost, rather than consigning the unquiet spirit to the memory hole–which is the ostensible declarative intent of the song.

So many Jagger/Richards songs deal with time (and, implicitly, memory), don't they? "Time Is on My Side" ("Time, time, TIME / Is on my side … yes it is"), "Good Times, Bad Times," "Out of Time," "This Could Be the Last Time" ….

I've celebrated before the brilliant visionary metaphysics of "Time Waits for No One," with Mick Taylor's guitar somehow spilling out a vision of beauty and complexity that virtually translates Stephen Hawking's theory of "imaginary time" into guitar runs. String theory!

Recently, I came across an extraordinary phrase in a poem by Robert Lowell:

We are all old-timers,

Each of us holds a locked razor.

I found it in the foreword of the fascinating book I'd just picked up, Gracefully Insane (by the Boston Globe writer Alex Beam). It's about McLean's, that remarkable institution right outside Boston where some of the best and brightest madmen and madwomen, from Lowell to Sylvia Plath to Susanna Kaysen, were resident–some recurrently, like Lowell.

In a section of "Waking in the Blue," Lowell talks about waking up there and then glimpsing the "shaky future grow familiar" in those who were older and had been there longer–and more often. Thus:

We are all old-timers,

Each of us holds a locked razor .

For Lowell, the "locked razor" suggests mortality, insanity. In the songs of Mick Jagger, the "locked razor" is the heart, a ticking time bomb–the locked razor whose jagged edge scars when it opens.

Edited March 13, 2008 by SteveAJones

[Jahfin]

Keith Richards admits he smokes weed 'all the time'

Keith Richards Photo / Reuters

Watch Video: Rolling Stones film premiere

Keith Richards has admitted he still "smokes weed all the time".

The Rolling Stones guitarist - who was treated for heroin addiction in the late 70s - admits he still loves getting high on cannabis, but no longer dabbles in hard drugs.

He said: "I smoke my head off. I smoke weed all the time. There, you've got it.

"But that's all I take, all I do. I do smoke and I've got some really good hash."

Referring to his heavy drug use in the 60s and 70s, he added: "People thought I was going to die. I never did - as you can see. The drugs? Oh yeah, they were great.

"Now I'm on medication. Drugs now? It's a dodgy subject."

Keith's substance abuse earned him a notorious reputation as a hell raiser.

The 64-year-old rocker was arrested on five separate occasions for drug-related offences, and at one point was believed to have regular full-body blood transfusions to clean out his system.

Last year, Keith claimed to have snorted his late father's ashes.

- BANG! SHOWBIZ

[kirchzep27]

I relistened to -a bigger bang yesterday and in regards to some of the song writing...the one where jagger is apparently dejected, sitting at home and drinking on the couch. give me a freaking break. also the one where apparently one of his kids comes home after a night of being out...-look what the cat dragged in. what is this like reality tv songwriting? i seriously cant believe some of those songs made that album, we're talking about -the rolling stones here.