Clash 3: London Calling

First of all, it’s got a great cover. Aping the lettering from one of the first Elvis Presley LPs, the image is that of Paul Simonon destroying his Fender Precision bass on stage. This would be just one hint at the scope of music to be heard on London Calling. Stylistically, it’s all over the map, with nods to rockabilly, ska beats and even big ballads throughout its four sides—a far cry from the punk rush of the first two Clash albums, and most of the singles in between. Part of the credit could go to producer Guy Stevens, whose work on Island Records and with Mott The Hoople a decade earlier still resounds.

That’s not to say they’d gone soft in the slightest. If you’re looking for power and commentary, the title track kicks it off for you, a virtual siren of doom. The first cover of several on the album is “Brand New Cadillac”, a rockabilly favorite that’s another great showcase for Joe Strummer’s voice. (C’mon, how can you beat “Baby baby drove up in a Cadillac/I said ‘Jesus Christ, where’d you get that Cadillac?”) Things turn down for “Jimmy Jazz”, which isn’t jazz save a couple chords and a sax solo, but it’s the first time we learned how the Brits pronounce the last letter of the alphabet. “Hateful” speeds up the Bo Diddley beat and adds a catchy melody, and given the reliance on covers, “Rudie Can’t Fail” is especially surprising for its authentic ska arrangement. Plus, we like Joe’s exhortation to Mick Jones: “Sing, Michael, sing!”

“Spanish Bombs” is one of the catchier tunes about the Spanish Civil War, nicely layered with subtle acoustic guitars, organ, and octave harmonies. A personal favorite is “The Right Profile”, a horn-driven portrait of beleaguered actor Montgomery Clift, with one of the greatest lyrics of all time, which we’ve transcribed directly from the sleeve: “Arrrghhhgorra buh bhuh do arrrrgggghhhhnnnn!!!!...” While Joe wrote it, he must have known Mick was the best conduit for “Lost In The Supermarket”, so simple and somehow fragile. That feeling is wiped aside by the more urgent “Clampdown”, with an organ part we think is courtesy of Mickey Gallagher from Ian Dury’s Blockheads. For a real departure, Paul Simonon sings his own dark and brooding composition, “The Guns Of Brixton”. His voice is all but tuneless, but it works.

To keep everyone guessing, “Wrong ‘Em Boyo” begins as a cover of the ancient “Stagger Lee” before switching tempo and key and everything to the reggae tune of the actual title. “Death Or Glory” gets an awful lot of action out of its three chords, weaving well in and out of choruses and verses, showing their grasp of dynamics. (This would be a good place to praise drummer Topper Headon, who handles every tempo and style they throw at him.) Though it goes by too fast to understand most of the words, “Koka Kola” carefully avoids copyright infringement while putting a new spin on the phrase “coke adds life”. The only song on the album credited as written by the whole band, “The Card Cheat” pulls in Phil Spector’s magnificent Wall of Sound and mariachi horns for another tale of an outlaw’s demise.

Despite the misplaced apostrophe, “Lover’s Rock” is poppy and fun, with lots of wacky percussion things poking in and out of the mix. Another one that needs the lyric sheet to decipher, “Four Horsemen” presents the band themselves as the mythical figures of the title, and is poignant today given their limited time together. “I’m Not Down” is more wonderfully hook-laden pop, whereas “Revolution Rock” is another reverent reggae cover that would prove highly influential to Californian white kids generation later.

Possibly the album’s most famous song isn’t listed on the cover, label, or lyric sheet. More to the point, “Train In Vain” is the tune everyone thinks of as “Stand By Me” and was originally hidden at the end of Side 4. It was added so late in the process that some of the stickers only counted 18 tracks and not 19, but if you looked carefully at the runout groove on that side, you could see “TRACK 5 IS TRAIN IN VAIN” etched there. Even later cassettes and CDs didn’t mention it.

Released on the cusp of a new decade, London Calling firmly established the band as important, and turned the punk scene on its ear. Perhaps it could have been shaved from two LPs to one, but what would you leave out? If you’re going to have just one Clash album, this would probably be the one to choose; besides being solid start to finish, it was priced well, at least until the digital era. So after much ruminating, we’ve awarded it the rating below.

The album was nicely upgraded for its silver anniversary, with not only a DVD and liner notes but a bonus disc full of pre-album rehearsals, including several songs (and covers) that would make the album proper, plus a surprising take on a reggae cover of Bob Dylan’s relatively obscure “The Man In Me”. (Later reissues replicated the album on two CDs, despite previously fitting on one.)

The Clash London Calling (1979)—5
2004 25th Anniversary Legacy Edition: same as 1979, plus 21 extra tracks (and DVD)

Blue Nile 2: Hats

A Walk Across The Rooftops was intriguing, but not immediately stunning. When their second album came out at the end of the decade, that did the trick.

Hats follows the template of the first album closely: seven tracks, mostly around the five- to six-minute range, alternating upbeat tracks with slower numbers. All feature yearning lyrics and aching melodies, and it’s really hard to put into words the emotions they convey. The basic instrumentation consists of synthesizers, guitar, bass, trumpet, percussion and the soaring vocals of Paul Buchanan.

“Over The Hillside” creeps in with electronic drums and (fake?) strings, but the effect isn’t as cold as on their first album. By the time the song winds up you’ve got the sensation of riding a train going home (more on that later). “The Downtown Lights” was a moderate hit in the UK, and got even more notice when covered by Annie Lennox and Rod Stewart, both of whom followed the impressionistic arrangement to the letter. Just when the song seems to be winding down, an extended coda kicks in with incredibly picturesque imagery. “Let’s Go Out Tonight” closes what was once considered side one on a melancholy note, with a slow, ticking beat and stairstep guitar over sad piano accents. There’s an undercurrent of tension, accented by the repeat of the first verse an octave higher.

“Headlights On The Parade” has elements of the techno-pop sound that was all the rage in the ‘80s, but transcends it (again) with the vocal. While all these songs are stunners, “From A Late Night Train” is probably the album’s high point. It’s quite evocative of the scenery one could see south of Boston from the window of the Amtrak—to suggest just one mind movie of the thousands of candidates available worldwide—the streetlights shining on waterways and wet pavements. The entire lyric bleeds regret, leading right up to the breakdown of the last line. The switch from the minor to the major-seventh at the end is one of the oldest tricks in the book, but they pull it off.

After all that, “Seven A.M.” is a little monotonous; they must have known this when sequencing the album, as there’s several seconds of silence before it stumbles in. And while “Saturday Night” doesn’t live up to the potential of what has come before, the last minute or so, while repetitive, always leaves one wanting more.

Hats is truly one of the hidden gems of the ‘80s, arriving in what turned out to be a pretty good year for albums that have endured. It’s also another wonderful album for quiet evenings and rainy mornings, and it can be enjoyed even if one hasn’t been wallowing in self-pity. As with many classic albums, the eventual expanded remaster didn’t uncover any real gold, save a few alternate takes, one unreleased song (the underwhelming “Christmas”), a live version of “Headlights” and the okay B-side “The Wires Are Down”.

The Blue Nile Hats (1989)—5
2012 Remastered Collector's Edition: same as 1989, plus 6 extra tracks

Jam 8: Snap!

Having already closed out their short career with a live retrospective, it was high time for a Jam hits album. Snap! was a two-record set, packed to the gills with all of their singles, plus album tracks and B-sides. That last detail is key, because while The Jam made some excellent albums, their singles put them firmly in the tradition of the Beatles before them (and the Smiths after) by ensuring that every record counted, be it a single, LP or EP.

And they had some terrific singles in between those albums. “All Around The World” combines the energy of their first two albums with a call-and-response vocal; Bruce Foxton even got his own moment to shine on “News Of The World” two 45s later. (And what came between those? “The Modern World”, of course.) All Mod Cons gets the most representation with six tracks, leading up to two superior double-sided singles. The narrator of “Strange Town” takes the guise of “a spaceman from those UFOs”, but it’s just as fitting a description of any naïf lost in the Big City. “The Butterfly Collector” is a particularly nasty speech to an aging strumpet. “When You’re Young” dispenses further wisdom to “kids” his own age, while “Smithers-Jones”, in its original B-side guise, will always inspire debate as whether it or the tarted-up version on Setting Sons is better. Those were great singles, but the top was “Going Underground”, a masterpiece of melody, anger and fear, while “Dreams Of Children” predicts the Revolver-isms of their next album with a familiar riff and what sounds like the chorus of “Thick As Thieves” run backwards over it.

“That’s Entertainment” appears in a very similar demo version, while a remixed “Funeral Pyre” (written by the whole band) conjures the image of flames over a galloping rhythm. The horn section kicks off the final phase of their career for “Absolute Beginners”, but its upbeat mood is tempered by the haunting “Tales From The Riverbank”. The band’s last two hits were as elaborate as they were foretelling; “The Bitterest Pill (I Ever Had To Swallow)” sports bright strings, intricate guitar parts and a hilariously tragic lyric, while “Beat Surrender” overturns the anger of his younger days with a determination to rise above the BS. It provides an optimistic conclusion.

The original LP set (which came with a bonus EP of songs from their final show) was soon rejigged for the emerging compact disc format; since everything wouldn’t fit, Compact Snap! has eight fewer songs, sacrificing a few B-sides and album tracks, but still including every A-side. In 1991, after the reemergence of Paul Weller as a rock artist, the label released Greatest Hits, which duplicated most of Compact Snap!, with only a few substitutions. Six years later, The Very Best Of The Jam (not released in the US) added two more songs, while 2002’s The Sound Of The Jam took another stab at compiling their best. It wasn’t until 2006 that Snap! was reissued in a full two-CD package (three if you bought the one with the live EP) with all 29 songs. Even the inclusion of “Precious” can’t diminish the quality of this music.

The Jam Snap! (1983)—5
Compact Snap! CD: same as above, minus 8 tracks

Holiday Special #4: Festival Of Carols In Brass

A holiday tradition in the New York Metropolitan area for many years was The Yule Log. Every night on Christmas Eve (and again on Christmas morning) channel 11 would show a looped film of a fireplace with brass fixtures, while a seamless program of what used to be called “beautiful music” played in accompaniment. (The music was simulcast in FM stereo on the station’s radio affiliate—pretty high-tech sh-t in those days.) Even though our house had a working fireplace throughout my youth, stoked to perfection by my dad, we still had the TV tuned in to The Yule Log, with the music blaring from every radio available. A Google search reports that the artists supplied were usually along the lines of the Boston Pops and Percy Faith; we recall a few select vocal pieces, like “The Little Drummer Boy”.

As with many mainstays of one’s childhood, we don’t truly appreciate certain things until they’ve gone missing, and there was an outcry when certain local TV affiliates removed it from their programming. By the ‘90s, enough homes had VCRs anyway, and could easily buy a cheap tape of a fireplace for kitsch purposes, the show having been originally designed for Manhattan apartment dwellers without hearths of their own. But the original was still the best, and after a decade of mismanagement at the station—during which even Beavis and Butt-Head referred to it on one of their holiday episodes—The Yule Log officially returned to the airwaves where it’s remained, albeit only on Christmas morning.

That dark period when it was nowhere to be found didn’t have the convenience of the Internet and digital technology, much less YouTube, so us sentimental types had to rely on our own mind movies to experience The Yule Log and become a kid again. The Mantovani qualities of those old records didn’t always hold up, but one vintage album always managed to set the mood. A Festival Of Carols In Brass by the Philadelphia Brass Ensemble is a perfect soundtrack for a roaring fire above which stockings are hung with care. The epitome of simplicity, it stayed in print through the digital era on a “Nice Price” CD with basic artwork and no credits outside the 25 tracks. The selections are crisp and not at all overbearing, and like any good instrumental collection, just as satisfying to have in the background as for close listening. It always seems to end too quickly, but that’s why CD players have a repeat function.

The Philadelphia Brass Ensemble A Festival Of Carols In Brass (1967)—5

Van Morrison 12: Into The Music

It took a few false starts, but Van managed to close the decade with a masterpiece. Like all his greats, Into The Music takes a while to get into. And like all his greats, it’s full of romance and religion beneath the surface. It’s true Caledonia soul, mixing Irish folk touches with R&B, along with such instruments as harmonica, banjo and Dobro, Appalachian influences that reflect just how huge American country-western is in Ireland. Some prominent musicians appear in support: Robin Williamson of the Incredible String Band, Pee Wee Ellis from the James Brown band, and a couple of refugees from ECM Records and John McLaughlin. None seem extraneous. Even the ladies’ voices don’t get in the way.

He’s not really breaking any new ground at first listen. “Bright Side Of The Road” (which directly namechecks its relation to the modern R&B classic “Dark End Of The Street”) is a snappy starter, with the equally upbeat “Full Force Gale” following right along in an overt statement of thanksgiving. “Stepping Out Queen” is in the same punchy vein, with the addition of a violin sawing away in a premonition of several Waterboys albums a decade down the road. (The song seems to go somewhere else just before the fade, and one day it would be revealed that a second half of equal length was lopped off, which included a musical theme that would be used as both an instrumental and a melody within a few albums. An alternate take issued on a later expanded CD demonstrates the transition even better.) “Troubadours” removes us from the present, suitably, right up through the sharply constructed instrumental section, spotlighting pennywhistle, trumpet, and sax in that order, though the sax does drip of Adult Contemporary. (This is absent on the alternate on the aforementioned expansion, but it’s still not as good.) “Rolling Hills” goes deep into English folk country, the pounding drums notwithstanding, the side ends with the soulful goodtime “You Make Me Feel So Free”, which is a vast improvement on the framework of James Taylor’s recent hit “Your Smiling Face”.

Solid as side one is, the flip is a trip to the stratosphere and back. “Angeliou” starts out folky, repeating its lilting intro several times. For a full minute the only lyrics are the title, repeated melodically until pushing the song through rising changes under a meditation about “the month of May in the city of Paris”. His memories begin to wander, and his reverie becomes mostly spoken in hushed tones, just nudging the piece along. There’s a return to the title refrain, and more hints at something tantalizing that he’s not quite telling us. The song fades, but each piece that follows seems to lend some illumination. “And The Healing Has Begun” begins with the same progression as “Madame George”, and indeed takes us back to his hometown. Here is the genesis of the “yeah” asides that would permeate the ‘80s. Once he stops the band for a monologue it’s clear just what kind of healing he’s talking about, after a gig while the dirty old Van tries to get some. Our eavesdropping on his seduction technique is blocked by another fade, and diverted by a surprising cover. “It’s All In The Game” is a dramatic interpretation of the oldie, slowing down the tempo to a gentle 12/8 and ignoring the melody that came first. As he studies on the lyrics, he quiets the band and pulls the song into a glorious expression of ecstasy brought on by a simple love song, in a section of his own called “You Know What They’re Writing About”. (His repeated demand to “meet [him] down by the pylons” is another reference to his teenage days.)

Into The Music was easily his best album since the early ‘70s. It exudes joy and confidence without being pushy, and at fifty minutes, is a good length, too. Above all, it was a reminder of what made him such a legend in the first place.

Van Morrison Into The Music (1979)—5
2008 CD reissue: same as 1979, plus 2 extra tracks

Lou Reed 19: New York

Lou had spent much of the ‘80s mostly underwhelming listeners with so-so albums, to the point where by the end of the decade, the average person would have best associated him with a TV ad for Honda scooters.

Therefore, it was easy to be skeptical of New York—until you heard it. It was an especially big deal on a radio station like the late great WNEW-FM, who played it cut by cut with the man in the studio one night, even taking calls from listeners. (The lucky few who tuned in for the whole broadcast may recall hearing the last caller they took on the air, nervously gushing about Lou’s work, stumbling through a question about Lester Bangs and thanking him for writing “Sad Song”. “Oh, thanks, that’s one I like too,” said Lou.)

Following the lead of previous returns to form, the music consisted of his guitar in one speaker, another in the other, plus bass and drums. The lyrics read like the Op-Ed page of The New York Times and are still as clever as they were timely. It’s allegedly sequenced in the order the songs were recorded, and designed to be listened to in one sitting. It helps, of course, that the songs are so good that they don’t merely combine for an onslaught of negativity. Much of it sports the grime and grit of the city’s streets, but there’s some tenderness in there too.

With a couple of chords captured mid-strum, “Romeo Had Juliette” mixes a street romance with criminal commentary, then it’s off to the “Halloween Parade”, which explicitly points out the effects of AIDS on the city. “Dirty Blvd.” was the single, and includes the album’s first reference to “the Statue of Bigotry”; the poetry is continued on the metronomic “Endless Cycle”. He finally turns it up for “There Is No Time”, a call for revolution. (Another highlight of his radio visit was his suggestion that reviving public hangings in Central Park would be an excellent crime deterrent.) Environmental concerns dominate the quieter “Last Great American Whale”, complete with Moe Tucker on percussion. And the frightening concept of Lou as a dad is broached for “Beginning Of A Great Adventure”.

Generally a list is a lazy lyric, but “Busload Of Faith” works as both a song and a message. “Sick Of You” is a twisted look at the news that’s not as outlandish as it could be, particularly in comparison to the tensions chronicled in “Hold On”. “Good Evening Mr. Waldheim” covers the hypocrisy of racism, not only from the gentleman in the title but from the Pope and Jesse Jackson. The plight of the homeless Vietnam vet is raised for “Xmas In February”, and he summons all his anger for “Strawman”. “Dime Store Mystery” provides a striking finale, comparing the last thoughts of Andy Warhol to those of Jesus Christ as depicted in a recent Scorsese film.

Any summary of the album will fall short of the sensory experience, of course. A lot of rock legends put out albums in 1989 that re-established them commercially and critically, but not only was New York one of the first albums released that year, it was also one of the best. He kept it simple and he kept it real. Amazingly—and sadly—the lyrical content doesn’t seem dated at all. His new label was pretty pleased with it too; maybe he just needed to get away from RCA.

Over two decades later, the first commercial project to arise from the Lou Reed Archive team (housed at the New York Public Library, and containing documents covering his entire musical career and beyond) was a deluxe expansion of New York, and rightfully so. Alongside a fresh remastering of the original CD, two further discs offered “works in progress”, rough mixes, single mixes, the instrumental B-side “The Room”, and live performances of every track on the album. The latter were all transferred from good old Maxell XL-II 90-minute cassettes mixed live by the sound crew on the tour supporting the album. These are strong versions, stretched out and enhanced by backing vocals. Maureen Tucker, who was the opener for part of the tour, joins on drums for “Dime Store Mystery”. Because the tapes would occasionally run out mid-song, this one fades at the end. Despite the subject matter—which again, includes namedrops of people still making headlines in this century—Lou sounds confident, even cordial. (The live VHS and laserdisc of one of the concerts was included on a DVD, with bad graphics and worse mullets intact, as well as the audio from a promo interview and the album in hi-res. Also, because it had become the trend, the album appeared split over two vinyl LPs—the original was crammed onto a single disc—for maximum sound quality.)

Lou Reed New York (1989)—5
2020 Deluxe Edition: same as 1989, plus 28 extra tracks (plus DVD)

Tom Waits 10: Rain Dogs

Tom moved his new family to New York City, where he fell in with a set of unique musicians and recorded Rain Dogs. The album is nearly flawless, running the gamut from old ballads to rock songs, infused with the new carnival sound he’d started developing on Swordfishtrombones. Loaded with nineteen tracks, it’s one of his best.

“Singapore” stumbles in to immediately show off the latest weapons in his arsenal: guitarist Marc Ribot and percussionist Michael Blair, the latter of whom utilized hubcaps and industrial pipe over the usual congas and tambourines. “Clap Hands” is something of a fractured nursery rhyme, taken to an even further extreme on “Cemetery Polka”, with its litany of creepy uncles and their unappreciative offspring. “Jockey Full Of Bourbon” is a swampy little rhumba, a perfect match for its use in the film Down By Law. The broken-finger piano returns for “Tango Till They’re Sore”, something of a farewell speech in the middle of side one. “Big Black Mariah” sounds a little more standard, thanks in part to Keith Richards on guitar, before giving way to the spooky lullaby cadence of “Diamonds & Gold”. “Hang Down Your Head” is rocking yet mournful, just as “Time” is tender and sweet.

An accordion opens side two before bringing in the clatter of the title track. The minute-long instrumental “Midtown” perfectly captures the sound of the city in this or any decade. “9th and Hennepin” is a spoken visit to a donut shop somewhere in Minneapolis, before we go deep into the woods for “Gun Street Girl”. Keith returns to add guitar to “Union Square”, but he’s used to much better effect on “Blind Love”, as straight a country song as you’ll find here. “Walking Spanish” is a little on the ordinary side (for him) but who could have predicted that “Downtown Train” would become such a huge hit for so many other people? “Bride Of Rain Dog” is another instrumental interlude before we get the real farewell speech, New Orleans funeral-style, in “Anywhere I Lay My Head”.

With over 53 minutes of music, Rain Dogs offers a lot at once, but for the Waits newcomer, it’s an excellent place to start. Without the slightest hint of his drunken troubadour image, it sounds like nothing he’d done in the ‘70s, yet as ever, he wasn’t about to follow any recent trends. Best of all, the album hangs together very well as an album, making it a pleasure from start to finish.

Tom Waits Rain Dogs (1985)—5

Television 1: Marquee Moon

Not every band that came out of the CBGB’s scene during the advent of punk was as easy to describe as just that. For example, the band Television, despite having a distinct edgy sound covered in New York City grime, weren’t about loud and fast. Their songs were intricate, and particularly in the construction of the guitar parts, as played by main songwriter Tom Verlaine and musical foil Richard Lloyd on a variety of Fenders. Their sound was closer to Talking Heads than the Ramones, but never enjoyed the commercial success of those bands. Still, they managed to leave us with a classic debut, the wondrous Marquee Moon. These eight songs fill up 45 minutes so well—just right for one side, or both, of a 90-minute Maxell—and haven’t dated in the least.

“See No Evil” is a perfect starter, balancing a chugging rhythm in one channel and a spiraling riff in the other. Verlaine’s strangled voice is an acquired taste, but he gets so much joy out of the words he sings. The shouted backing vocals help too, as they do on “Venus”, with the striking image “I fell into the arms of Venus de Milo”. “Friction” is a great garage band song, using basic chords, a wonderful dissonant main riff and an equally chaotic solo. The masterpiece of the album is the title track, which features three existential verses bookended by the simplest of riffs. After the third chorus, the riff starts again to support a majestic solo, as the band follows, matching the dynamics note by note. An incredibly primitive attack explodes into a reverie with almost birdlike sounds, then it all starts again with a repeat of the first verse. (On the original LP the song faded at the ten-minute mark, so it was a discovery akin to a holy grail when the first and all subsequent CDs extended the song for another minute to a full ending.)

Another simple rhythm part starts “Elevation”, a minor-key marvel with a fascinatingly interrupted meter. The band allows themselves one pretty song with “Guiding Light”, which somehow manages to sound like some of the slower songs by the Rolling Stones. A reggae strum underpins “Prove It”, and after a while you notice the wonderful bassline Fred Smith concocted. (It bears mentioning that drummer Billy Ficca holds down the fort expertly.) The weakest song is the last, the lengthy and tortured “Torn Curtain”, but just because it’s not up to the level of the rest doesn’t necessarily mean it’s bad.

Marquee Moon is not an easy album to sum up, nor is it easy to convince others of its splendor. People raised on Clapton, Stevie Ray and other guitar heroes may not appreciate it right away, but you can hear its influence in U2, the White Stripes and Radiohead. Too edgy for radio, too polite for punk, it’s not yet new wave, but it is rock ‘n roll. (One of Rhino’s better reissues was the expanded version of this album, which added three alternate takes, an unfinished instrumental, and the complete seven-minute version of “Little Johnny Jewel”, their first indie single.)

Television Marquee Moon (1977)—5
2003 expanded CD: same as 1977, plus 5 extra tracks

The La’s: The La’s

About five years before Oasis brought sunny Britpop back to American shores (and about seven years before we were sorry they’d bothered) an album came out so packed with hooks you’d have to be careful not to get punctured. Yet despite its brilliance, its creator disowned it, despite the well-deserved accolades, and he’s barely performed since.

Granted, the eponymous first album by The La’s came after several years full of singles and performances, while lead singer/songwriter Lee Mavers chased an elusive sound only his head could hear. Apparently it takes a certain kind of genius to resent almost universal accolades for something which he feels he’s unworthy.

Which is too bad for him, because The La’s is indeed a fantastic album, even if they insist they’re nothing more than glorified demos that Steve Lillywhite produced despite not clicking with the band at all. Part of this can be supported by the predominant acoustic rhythm and lead guitars throughout. But that’s not to suggest that the album sounds remotely unfinished. Before the retro Merseybeat sound became fashionable again, it could best be described as what might have happened had Gerry & The Pacemakers been crossed with the Clash and the Sex Pistols.

In true pop fashion, most of the album tracks hover around the two-minute mark, stating their case and moving aside for the next one. “Son Of A Gun” is a perfect way to start, with a Scouse-thick melody sailing over two chords with a near-Latin beat, ending mid-verse in time for “I Can’t Sleep” to crash in with its chords worthy of early Who. And if you’re going to have a song title like “Timeless Melody”, you better make it stick, and this one does. There’s a brief detour with “Liberty Ship”, which tends to wander, but the backing vocals weave in and out effortlessly. And “There She Goes” (a.k.a. The Hit Single) doesn’t even appear until the fifth track, a single verse repeated three times with an instrumental break that leads into the briefest of bridges. Others have covered it, but this is still the definitive version. “Doledrum” sounds like it took about as long to write as it did to record, but it’s so damn catchy.

“Feelin’” begins with a strum oddly reminiscent of the first Violent Femmes album, and sports a repeated riff whose closest cousin seems to be David Lee Roth’s “Goin’ Crazy”. “Way Out” and “I.O.U.” are understated power-pop, layered in vocals and guitars, making the stark Brecht-like “Freedom Song” all the more striking. There’s time for a proto-punk rave-up in “Failure”, which they need to get out of the way before the grand closing opus. “Looking Glass” has it all—a misleading intro, a sensitive quiet verse/loud chorus combo, the wordless freakout and the long ending, which increases in both speed and reverb before the inevitable explosion. (And it comes in just under eight minutes, too.)

Naturally, in the years since the band went on hiatus, there have been rumors of a follow-up to The La’s, and anytime Lee Mavers appears on a stage the music rags get all in a tizzy. The album’s been reissued a few times around the world, generally adding tracks from earlier singles, or previously unreleased versions and mixes from the album sessions. A box set even managed to collect most of these, along with two full discs of live recordings. Clearly, for the completist, there’s plenty out there. But for simple, understated greatness, you can’t go wrong with the album itself.

The La’s The La’s (1990)—5

Dire Straits 3: Making Movies

For their make-or-break third album, Dire Straits was down to a trio; Mark Knopfler handled all the guitars, and John Illsley and Pick Withers stuck around to provide the rhythm. But the album they made was hardly stripped down. Recorded at the Power Station in New York City, with Jimmy Iovine (recently hot from Springsteen and Tom Petty) behind the desk and keyboardist Roy Bittan from the E Street Band, Making Movies was a majestic production, cinematic in scope and infinitely satisfying.

The opening strains of Rodgers & Hammerstein’s “Carousel Waltz” crash into “Tunnel Of Love”, where the familiar “Sultans Of Swing” chugalong is turned inside out and given room to breathe outside the pub. The chorus sends us out into the fairway, amidst excellent metaphors about romance and amusement parks. Things turn a corner for the bridge, which is a mere interlude for the “girl you look so pretty” section, which dominates the rest of the song. A drum-heavy break gives way to a brief solo, then we return to the verse and chorus. But then the lights go out for a repeat of the bridge and the pretty girl section, slowly building over a beautifully constructed solo that plays and plays off the neck, and we fade away over trademark Bittan arpeggios.

“Romeo And Juliet” puts the familiar characters into a more modern setting, with possibly a more realistic twist: what if they didn’t die, and just drifted apart—like many young lovers—after she got sick of him? Besides being incredibly evocative for anyone who’s ever been dumped, the appeal of this song is punctuated by a sly quote from West Side Story. Then, for people of a certain generation, “Skateaway” will bring to mind the music video starring a rollerskater wearing a Walkman. It’s a pretty literal image, transcended by the lyric celebrating rock ‘n roll radio and a chorus right out of New Jersey.

“Expresso Love” sputters to life at the start of side two, its backwards “Layla” riff taking off like a motorcycle, especially over those “Be My Baby” fills in the chorus. By the time the solo happens, there are several guitars vying for space in the mix, and none of them are out of place. The overall effect is, admittedly, stimulating. Things get quiet again on “Hand In Hand”, which mirrors “Romeo And Juliet” both in mood and subject matter, only here the ache isn’t hidden behind a literary allusion, going for a more adult approach. Now that you’re completely depressed, let’s crank it up. “Solid Rock” is one of the greatest records Bob Dylan never made. It absolutely cascades with clever rhymes over a galloping beat, held together by soaring guitar over piano and organ.

The weakest song is saved for last. “Les Boys” takes the movie concept literally, putting the band in the middle of a Teutonic caricature where “glad to be gay” is repeated for shock value. It’s the aural equivalent of the second song you hear over the closing credits, after most people have left the theater.

But that’s okay—it’s not enough of a departure to taint any of that which has gone before. Making Movies is an absolute masterpiece of an album, simple yet complex, and not at all dated.

Dire Straits Making Movies (1980)—5

Bob Dylan 43: Love And Theft

Some albums define their times; others are defined by them. For the first daylight hours of a certain Tuesday in September, the day was marked only by the knowledge that there would be a brand new Dylan album available as soon as the record stores opened. The sky was blue, the air was crisp. But suddenly, the world we knew had changed.

“Love And Theft” (quotes intentional) was Bob’s first state-of-the-union address since Time Out Of Mind four years earlier, fully vested in his new creed of only recording when he had something to record. There was no way he could have predicted the events of September 11, yet uncannily, occasional lyrics would stand out as all too fitting: “Sky full of fire, pain pourin’ down”; “Today has been a sad and lonesome day”, “It’s bad out there”, “I’m stranded in the city that never sleeps”, and on and on.

Such lyrics are scattered throughout an eclectic set of songs running the gamut of musical styles. “Tweedle Dee & Tweedle Dum” rumbles in from a reverse fade, its organ and spiraling guitars echoing the last album (not to mention the nursery rhymes from Under The Red Sky, but in a good way). Thankfully he reclaims “Mississippi” from Sheryl Crow, who he’d let record it first. The three long verses fit his cracked voice perfectly.

“Summer Days” and “Honest With Me” are some real rave-ups, with great riffs circling cracking drums over lyrics alternately repetitive, hilarious and cryptic. He goes even further back in time to the crooner era on “Bye And Bye” and “Moonlight”, with the especially startling “Floater (Too Much To Ask)” delivered via Western swing. In between, it’s back across the tracks with “Po’ Boy” (not about a sandwich), “Lonesome Day Blues” and the prophetic “High Water (For Charley Patton)”, with its recycled blues phrases, and lines taken from even more arcane sources.

“Cry A While” is an audible slowdown, like a freight train approaching the end of the line, and like all good Dylan albums—and even some of the bad ones—the last word is delivered slowly, wondering about a future nobody can predict. “Sugar Baby” is about as fitting a conclusion as any.

“Love And Theft” is a strong, highly satisfying album, chock full of quality wordplay and compatible backing. Even the packaging was fun, with Bob showing off his new Cesar Romero mustache and shown reading a Spanish newspaper, which only would have been funnier if he was holding it upside down. Such touches would be appreciated anytime the album reminds us of an awful day that had started out so pleasantly.

Bob Dylan “Love And Theft” (2001)—5

Robyn Hitchcock 10: Eye

Perhaps because it didn’t involve the Egyptians, Eye was released not on A&M but on Twin-Tone, the Minneapolis label best known for introducing the world to the likes of the Replacements, the Jayhawks and Soul Asylum. As we’d come to expect from an album with predominantly dark green artwork, it’s largely solo and acoustic—just like I Often Dream Of Trains—and practically flawless.

“Cynthia Mask” starts out prettily enough with just a guitar, then the voice, then the piano, setting the tone for what is to follow over the next hour or so. The first couple of verses could be described as political, but the chorus sends it all somewhere else. “Certainly Clickot” isn’t the best follow-up, though the instrumental interludes are quite nice. “Queen Elvis”, the title track that never was, appears twice (on the CD, anyway); the first is more straightforward, giving plenty of room for the vocal. “Flesh Cartoons” is a wonder in three chords, right up to the “looney-oh” ending. “Chinese Water Python” was his first instrumental in a long time and very pleasant at that. “Executioner” shows his amazing skill at holding those long high notes. It’s an angry one, and he wasn’t even at Live Aid. “Linctus House” is a comforting change, following a windy narrative through chisels and flesh hotels. (The CD added three tracks here: “Sweet Ghost Of Light” is a spooky little number sung in a higher register, while “College Of Ice” is a baroque duet for piano and electric guitar, and goes nicely into “Transparent Lover”.)

Things start to pick up with “Beautiful Girl”, much better than it deserves to be, simple as it is start to finish. The harmonies are killer. “Raining Twilight Coast” is another Lennonesque rant with the great line “just one thing, baby, you forgot my heart”; the rest of the lines probably keep it from becoming a standard. “Clean Steve” is a mineral man, obviously, another wacky, winding, namedropping song with the piano playing bass. “Agony Of Pleasure” is about a picnic or sex or both, and somehow he manages to get his vocal around those chords. “Glass Hotel” provides another respite from the shouting in the previous three. “Satellite” is more Lennon and Barrett with just the right amount of piano and the back of a guitar for percussion. “Aquarium” starts out mysteriously enough, then goes somewhere entirely different for the middle, and ends up somewhere else. The spidery guitar lines make the song. The spookier electric take of “Queen Elvis” closes the CD, different enough from the first version, and makes for a nice bookend.

The above may seem a pretty brief rundown, but here, the music speaks for itself. Each of the tracks deserves a paragraph on its own, and we just haven’t enough space at the moment. Eye sits together nicely and is a great way to kill an hour—or more, if you leave it in the player. It is perhaps Robyn’s most underrated album, and one of the most underrated albums of 1990. (In addition to those extra tracks not on the vinyl or cassette, Rhino’s reissue also added some demo versions of the songs, none of which were included on the Yep Roc reissue, which instead included some more acoustic songs of dubious origin. At least they fit sonically with the album proper.)

Robyn Hitchcock Eye (1990)—5
1990 CD: same as 1990, plus 4 extra tracks
1995 Rhino reissue: same as 1990 CD, plus 3 extra tracks
2007 Yep Roc: same as 1990, plus 7 extra tracks

Bob Dylan 42: Live 1966

Live bootlegs as we now know them got their start when tapes of Bob Dylan’s controversial British tour in 1966 began circulating—particularly the one inaccurately known as the Royal Albert Hall show. For years, this concert gained notoriety both for its performance as well as the audience’s response, and Bob’s reaction therewith. In the wake of the major success of Time Out Of Mind, Dylan finally allowed its official release 32 years later as part of the dormant Bootleg Series.

Disc one consists of Bob, his harmonica, acoustic guitar and transcendent versions of seven classics, three of which would have been new to the audience. From “She Belongs To Me” through “4th Time Around” and “Visions Of Johanna”, past “It’s All Over Now, Baby Blue” and “Desolation Row” to “Just Like A Woman” and a lengthy “Mr. Tambourine Man”, it’s a positively hypnotic performance. His playing never falters, and his grasp on all those words he had to remember is spot on.

Disc two is where the trouble started: he was backed here by the guys who later became the Band (featuring this guy on drums), and they played hard, mean, and loud despite the angry protests of the folk purists in the crowd. The opener, the otherwise unreleased “Tell Me, Momma”, rumbles into place amid trebly guitars, an explosive snare and wheezy organ. “I Don’t Believe You” is transformed from something of a jaunty comedy number to a near-pop song, with a prominent riff and a fantastic guitar and organ solo section. “Baby Let Me Follow You Down” is similarly kicked up a notch, as is “One Too Many Mornings”, from folk to rock. “Just Like Tom Thumb’s Blues”, “Leopard-Skin Pill-Box Hat” and “Ballad Of A Thin Man” are delivered much as you’d expect from their album versions (and that’s Bob playing piano on the latter). But it’s “Like A Rolling Stone” that gets all the attention, starting with the cry of “Judas” from the crowd, Bob’s startled reaction and the defiant performance that follows.

The sound on Live 1966 is as good as it gets, and as a historical document, the general public can finally hear what caused all the fuss and fueled an industry of mysterious records, but spurred the release of later, lackluster Dylan live albums. The dynamic of the musicians’ influence can still be experienced today, and not just in bands like the Wallflowers. (Anytime you see electric guitars with piano and organ, it all started here.) Best of all, it gave us hope that the Bootleg Series wasn’t finite.

Fifty years after the occasion, the release of what was called The Real Royal Albert Hall 1966 Concert was a nice idea, except that it was actually the first of two shows played at that venue. While good, it’s the second one, the one that closed the tour, with extended monologues between songs that drip with both contempt and pharmaceuticals, that is more “historic”. That could now be got legally, but only as part of the 36-CD The 1966 Live Recordings, which gathered every known document of the shows on that chaotic tour. The cumulative effect is akin to listening to the same album 18 times, sometimes in pristine sound, other times through a broken drive-in speaker. Whether any of these are preferable to the “Judas” show is up to the listener with the patience to compare them all.

Still, some highlights of those other shows include: cough-free renditions of “Mr. Tambourine Man”, which spiral out to great lengths depending on the multi-minute harmonica breaks; variations of a long prologue to “Just Like Tom Thumb’s Blues” wherein the painter gets older each time; people actually chuckling at the lyrics of “4th Time Around”; commenting on extended tuning jags with remarks that he doesn’t have such issues with his electric guitar; and actual audience cheers of recognition, of even the electric songs. One can now track the evolving lyrics of “Tell Me, Momma”, which never approached a finished set, and hear Bob’s creeping exhaustion as the dates drag on, culminating in the introduction of the band members by name at the final Albert Hall show. And why was “Like A Rolling Stone” dedicated to the Taj Mahal, anyway?

Bob Dylan Live 1966: The “Royal Albert Hall” Concert—The Bootleg Series Vol. 4 (1998)—5
Bob Dylan The Real Royal Albert Hall 1966 Concert (2016)—3½
Bob Dylan The 1966 Live Recordings (2016)—3

Bob Dylan 41: Time Out Of Mind

Seven whole years had passed since the last real Dylan album. In contemporary interviews, Bob said that for the longest time he just didn’t feel like writing songs, then was suddenly able to come up with a batch while being snowed in. Then he was hesitant to play them on tour for fear of having them bootlegged, and wanted to do them justice in the studio as well. So he spent a few weeks in Miami recording with some of his then-current touring band, a few session hotshots including the stalwart Jim Keltner, and Daniel Lanois, who produced Oh Mercy, and the album was in the can.

Naturally, there was a certain amount of anticipation and absolute fear upon the announcement that something new was finally on the way; meanwhile, the news of a potentially fatal heart ailment between recording and release brought decent PR to the event. Anyway, we needn’t have worried.

Of the eleven phenomenal tracks that make up Time Out Of Mind, half are based around the 12-bar blues form. Most deal with some unnamed woman (or women) who broke Bob’s heart in a big way, and boy, is he miffed about it. The production is pretty swampy, slapping a lot of echo over his voice, which was pretty shot anyway; he doesn’t try to hit any high notes, which in the past resulted in a lot of yelling on his part.

A quiet stomp and a bleating Vox organ opens “Love Sick”, taken very slow and sounding like he’s transmitting from Mars. A little more upbeat, “Dirt Road Blues” effectively emulates an old 78 but still maintains the spooky vibe. The album’s first masterpiece is “Standing In The Doorway”, another slow, slow song with wonderful imagery, each verse more heartbreaking than the last. “Million Miles” continues the blues theme, his voice a perfect match for the words, and we start to hear some of the dad jokes that will begin to pepper his lyrics (“gonna find me a janitor to sweep me off my feet”). “Tryin’ To Get To Heaven” provides a nice break in the form of a major key and a memorable melody that belies the fatalistic words; there’s even a harmonica solo. “‘Til I Fell In Love With You” doesn’t take hold as easily, but there’s some incredible imagery here. “Not Dark Yet” could be taken as another rumination on his own mortality, played in a style that links well to the better songs on Oh Mercy.

That’s practically a full album right there, but we’ve got a ways to go. The trip to hell continues on the downright scary “Cold Irons Bound”—that’s meant as praise, by the way—with the atmosphere dominated by Augie Myers on the Vox organ, to which the extra-gentle “Make You Feel My Love” provides welcome calm. While beaten to the charts in versions by both Billy Joel and Garth Brooks, this one, with Bob up front on piano, is still the template. “Can’t Wait” is another blues taken at a funereal pace, but keep an ear out for a killer two-line bridge. That’s a mere setup for the fascinating 17-minute journey of “Highlands”, which closes the album. The first few verses could be a song on their own, but he throws in a shout-out to Neil Young, then ends up in a restaurant sparring with a waitress over art and literature. (And really, how could it be that any eatery “ain’t got any” hard boiled eggs?) The final set of verses could qualify as a separate song too.

We knew he could do it again, and we’re glad he did. Basically, he waited until he had something to say, then said it. It went on to win a few Grammys, and even staunch Dylan haters were overheard saying it’s not that bad an album. Time Out Of Mind heralded a new era for a man who insisted he hadn’t gone away in the slightest. He’d had an actual near-death experience, and he was still out there—just a simple song and dance man.

While some of the outtakes were featured on the eighth Bootleg Series volume, the album eventually got its own installment in the series, kinda sorta in honor of its 25th anniversary. One disc of Fragments was devoted to a new mix of the album that stripped away some of the sonics Lanois took credit for to bring out more of the room, while another offered outtakes and alternates, starting with a lovely take on “The Water Is Wide” and the sadly shelved “Red River Shore”. “Can’t Wait” has a more melodic guitar part and different lyrics, and the spontaneous applause at the end of “Make You Feel My Love” is just charming. There’s yet another version of “Mississippi” that comes closest to the version he’d finally nail, and other songs with more upbeat arrangements than what was released.

That was fine, but a deluxe version added three more discs. One devoted to live versions—some from actual audience tapes, as befits a “bootleg series”—presented each of the album’s songs, mostly in the original track order, with “Can’t Wait” used twice because “Dirt Road Blues” has apparently never made it to the stage and “Mississippi” included just because. Further outtakes and alternates included an intriguing but still inferior “Dreamin’ Of You”, another “Marchin’ To The City”, “‘Til I Fell In Love With You” played as a samba, and “Can’t Wait” notable for a surprising Dylan yelp before the first verse. Most controversially, a fifth disc repeated the session outtakes and two live versions already included on that earlier Bootleg Series set. This wasn’t even done covertly—it was highlighted on the sticker on the shrinkwrap. Still, they fill in the bigger picture, even with multiple takes stacked together. (Also, each disc was packed nearly to capacity, each exceeding 70 minutes.)

Bob Dylan Time Out Of Mind (1997)—5
Bob Dylan Fragments: Time Out Of Mind Sessions (1996-1997)/The Bootleg Series Vol. 17 (2023)—4

Rolling Stones 17: Hot Rocks

Not even a decade into their career, the Stones had already fallen into something of a trend by following a studio album with a live album or compilation. In the case of Hot Rocks, at least, the motivation came not from the band but from their former manager, the always philanthropic Allen Klein.

Hot Rocks is two records’ full of great Stones tracks, arranged chronologically and conveniently. All the hits you know and love are here, from singles to album tracks, all the way up to “Brown Sugar” (making its first but far from its last appearance on a Stones compilation) and “Wild Horses”. The Ya-Ya’s version of “Midnight Rambler” mixes it up. Most of the songs had already been on Big Hits or Through The Past, Darkly, and both “Ruby Tuesday” and “Let’s Spend The Night Together” were making their fourth American LP appearance, but again, how can you complain with such a lineup? As solid as Big Hits and Through The Past, Darkly are, the novice can’t go wrong with Hot Rocks, which is why it’s always sold incredibly well. In fact, the only bad thing we can say about it is the back cover photo.

Of course, it opened the floodgates for other cash-in opportunities. In the UK, the Decca label put out a series of strange collections of catalog clippings, none of them very well thought out nor appreciated by the band. Most collected odd singles or US-only tracks, but the most notorious was Gimme Shelter, which was not a soundtrack in any way.

The Stones themselves weren’t above a little plundering. Jamming With Edward! was credited collectively to Nicky Hopkins, Ry Cooder, Mick Jagger, Bill Wyman and Charlie Watts, and consisted of six loose jams from the Let It Bleed sessions. While an official release on Rolling Stones Records, it was sold at a budget price in anticipation of the scathing reviews it was sure to get. Truth be told, it’s not all that bad, and would have been a highly sought bootleg had they not put it out. It’s still an excellent showcase for Nicky’s piano, and while “It Hurts Me Too” is correctly credited to Elmore James, you don’t have to listen that closely to hear Mick include a verse from Dylan’s “Pledging My Time”.

The Rolling Stones Hot Rocks (1964-1971) (1971)—5
Nicky Hopkins, Ry Cooder, Mick Jagger, Bill Wyman, Charlie Watts Jamming With Edward! (1972)—3

Rolling Stones 16: Sticky Fingers

Or, the one with the zipper on the cover. Sticky Fingers is the third in the series of Great Stones Albums, following on from Beggars Banquet and Let It Bleed, and in many ways it’s a completion of the previous two, as the recording sessions overlap.

“Brown Sugar” and “Wild Horses” both come from a trip to Muscle Shoals, Alabama (as seen in the film Gimme Shelter), and show just how much the boys had grown—a classic riff with horns on the former, and a tender acoustic charmer on the latter. On side one, they come on either side of “Sway”, a great lost number with a sinister undertone that would be stolen 20 years later by the Black Crowes. “Can’t You Hear Me Knocking” starts simply enough with a snotty riff and a few funky verses and choruses, then changes gears for an extended solo guitar section that mutates and eventually resolves. It sounds spontaneous and structured at the same time. He may have only been in the band for a few years, but Mick Taylor more than made his mark on these albums. “You Gotta Move” is also from the Muscle Shoals sessions, and another straight country blues cover.

Side two doesn’t disappoint either. “Bitch” is an underrated classic that probably would have received more airplay with a different title. As ever, Charlie Watts bangs the drums like no one else. “I Got The Blues” is possibly the least impressive of the songs here, except for Billy Preston’s capably brief organ solo and Mick Jagger’s passionate yelling over the end. “Sister Morphine” is the oldest recording here, having been started during the Beggars Banquet era, and mostly written by Marianne Faithfull. Its spooky lyrics set the tone, matched by Ry Cooder’s bottleneck and Jack Nitzsche’s dungeon piano. “Dead Flowers” raises the mood a bit, a signature clever country song that’s a lot nastier than it sounds. The grand finale this time out is “Moonlight Mile”, a pretty thing with a Japanese feel and great atmosphere.

If you ever owned Sticky Fingers on vinyl, chances are you got so much mileage out of it that various other Stones albums have scraped back covers thanks to the zipper. And it’s another one to suggest that 1971 was one of the greatest years ever for rock albums.

Nearly 44 years later, after the band had finished milking their 50th anniversary, Sticky Fingers received the Deluxe Edition treatment. The two-disc expansion offered a few alternates of varying interest (“Brown Sugar” with Eric Clapton, an acoustic mix of “Wild Horses”, a longer “Bitch”) and some live performances, all the same arrangements from Get Yer Ya-Ya’s Out!, only with Nicky Hopkins and a horn section. Those who sprung for the more expensive Super Deluxe Edition got a DVD teaser of a 1971 London gig, a book and an official release of the classic Get Your Leeds Lungs Out bootleg, also the source of the obscure “Let It Rock” B-side.

The Rolling Stones Sticky Fingers (1971)—5
2015 Deluxe Edition: same as 1971, plus 10 extra tracks (Super Deluxe adds another 13 tracks and DVD)

Rolling Stones 14: Let It Bleed

Let It Bleed finds the Stones in transition. Recorded over the better part of a year, it straddles the brief period where Brian Jones was on his way out and Mick Taylor was on his way in. But while the band was in flux, they made every song count.

“Gimme Shelter” creeps in with that spidery guitar and spooky backing vocals, setting a tone of genuine unrest. Then it’s back to the Delta (just like on Beggars Banquet) for the lonesome blues of “Love In Vain”. The difference is that this time, he’s watching the train leave instead of getting on it. “Country Honk” is a cowpunk version of “Honky Tonk Women” (the current single, not on the album) with different lyrics and a nice little strum. “Live With Me” gets its fire from Keith on bass and a few stolen Chuck Berry licks along the way. The side ends with the title track, filthy as ever, and thankfully that Amstel Light commercial went out of rotation before we had to kill someone. (While we’re at it, we still haven’t forgiven Elton John for stealing its melody for “Sad Songs (Say So Much)”.)

“Midnight Rambler” is a mini-blues opera in four parts, with that wailing harp and Charlie keeping time like a clock. This one would gain power onstage. Keith shines like a dirty diamond on “You Got The Silver”, in a way that’s almost gentle. (The story goes that Keith had to sing this because Mick wasn’t around; however, a Mick version does exist, but it pales compared to Keith’s.) “Monkey Man” is a tour de force, with every instrument doing its part, plus Nicky Hopkins keeping up on piano. This is easily one of their best-ever songs, and certainly one of the least known. On this album, however, it’s only a setup for the grand finale in “You Can’t Always Get What You Want”. Prefaced for some reason by the London Bach Choir, the song builds and builds through its verses before bringing the choir back in as counterpoint. Your enjoyment of this say may be tempered by how many times you’ve heard it, or how many times you’ve sung it drunkenly while staggering through New York City.

Let It Bleed fits perfectly in the catalog, part of the suite from Beggars Banquet to Sticky Fingers, but we’re getting ahead of ourselves. It’s a classic, right down to the deceptively innocent cover. (Just so you know, that old-fashioned record changer includes a cake, a bicycle tire, a pizza, a clock, a tape canister, and a plate. The photo on the label was retouched to include Mick Taylor instead of Brian.) There’s not a clunker in the bunch. At this point they truly were contenders for the best band in the world, and headed off to Altamont to claim the title. (As with Beggars Banquet, the anti-Beatles continued their own 50th anniversary campaign with another box that included the album in stereo and fold-down mono on both CD and vinyl with a book and a 45 replica. No outtakes.)

Rolling Stones Let It Bleed (1969)—5

Rolling Stones 13: Through The Past, Darkly

While the Stones took their sweet time finishing their next album, both their American and British record companies filled the gap with a hits collection (naturally, with different contents to complement with what each had already compiled in 1966). Through The Past, Darkly brought us up to date on the band’s middle period, straddling the transition from Swinging London to the cusp of their ascension to the title of best rock ‘n roll band in the world. (The Who would disagree, but we don’t have time for that now.)

All the big singles to date are included, in a juggled chronology that still flows well. “Paint It, Black” gives way to “Ruby Tuesday” (making its third LP appearance, along with “Let’s Spend The Night Together”) before falling into the psychedelia of “She’s A Rainbow”. “Jumpin’ Jack Flash” and “Honky Tonk Women”, still classic singles, make their 12-inch debuts, while “Mother’s Little Helper” and “Have You See Your Mother, Baby” get encores. “Dandelion” and “2,000 Light Years From Home” continue the trippy feel, and it all comes home with “Street Fighting Man”.

Sure, there were a few unalbumized songs that could have been collected, but that would be rectified soon enough. Besides, there was that cool eight-sided sleeve with the dedication to poor departed Brian Jones on the inside to make Through The Past, Darkly seem even more special. The music speaks for itself, and they were just getting warmed up. (The British version of the album was released the same day, and with the same cover design, but with a rejigged order that also omitted the songs that had already appeared on their version of Big Hits (High Tide And Green Grass) three years before. In their place came “You Better Move On” from the first EP, “Sittin’ On A Fence”, which the US got on Flowers, and “We Love You”, which wouldn’t make an American album for another three years.)

Rolling Stones Through The Past, Darkly (Big Hits Vol. 2) (1969)—5

Rolling Stones 12: Beggars Banquet

Beggars Banquet is the first of several Stones albums from the undisputed height of their career. While it does sound of a piece with its time—such as the occasional use of a Mellotron and Indian instruments—they mostly went back to basics, concentrating on guitars and the straight production style of Jimmy Miller, an American who’d recently worked with Traffic.

You may have heard it so many times, so you’re forgiven for skipping the first track on side one, the well-worn “Sympathy For The Devil”. You’d be well rewarded by diving straight into “No Expectations”, featuring Brian Jones’ last great contribution to the band (the mournful slide guitar) and the great Nicky Hopkins on heartbreaking piano. This song always conjures mental images of a stream in the woods for some reason. “Dear Doctor” is a funny one; who would have guessed they could be this clever? “Parachute Woman” is a chugging interlude before the epic “Jigsaw Puzzle”, with its Dylanesque cast of characters. Right there you’ve got a classic album side, and you’d be excused to lift the needle back to “No Expectations” several times before finally flipping the record over.

On to side two. The first thing to say about “Street Fighting Man” is that there’s not a single electric instrument on it—the drums and acoustic were recorded to a cassette and everything else was added after that, which is why it sounds so distorted. Get down indeed. “Prodigal Son” is a dirty blues tale right out of the Bible, while “Stray Cat Blues” is about as far as you can get from the Bible. The drums here are just one reason why Charlie Watts should be knighted. This is an incredible performance, and the last minute or so still kills every time—Mick’s “ba-ba, ba-boom boom CHA”, the rumbling bass, Charlie and Nicky taking over while Keith strangles a few more notes out of the guitar, and on out till the mix stops. “Factory Girl” is a fiddle-laden slice of English folk, while the closing “Salt Of The Earth” could pass for the real thing. Keith sings the first part of this one, and his young voice is already wrecked.

Beggars Banquet is one of the more unlikely country albums by a rock band, along with Elvis Costello’s Almost Blue. While it’s definitely electric, and no one would confuse it with Garth Brooks, the majority of the tracks sports acoustic guitars and hick vocalizations. But calling this “Stones do country” risks a disservice to an album that needn’t be pigeonholed as such.
The album came out in the days when bands (in the UK, anyway) would have put out a new single the same week, with tracks that weren’t on the album—in this case, “Jumpin’ Jack Flash”, which you can find on any number of hits collections, and the unjustifiably buried classic “Child Of The Moon”, which can be found on More Hot Rocks. Back in the days when you’d put Beggars Banquet on one side of a 90-minute Maxell (usually with Let It Bleed on the other), both of those songs had to be added at the end of the side. Rules, after all, are rules.

The 50th anniversary of the album would have been an excellent opportunity to include that single, any of the outtakes that dribbled out on Metamorphosis, and of course, unheard sessions and whatnot. Instead, the anniversary packages were limited to yet another remastered CD and, if you bought the vinyl version for thirty bucks, a flexidisc with a “rare” Jagger interview and a one-sided 12-inch 45 of “Sympathy For The Devil” in mono. At least, in respect to the history of the album, the invitation style cover shown above was used as a slipcase over the infamous toilet shot that had originally prevented the LP’s release, yet had been the standard cover since the album’s reissue in 1986 on CD and remastered vinyl.

Rolling Stones Beggars Banquet (1968)—5

Rolling Stones 6: Big Hits

In two years’ time, the Stones had released five albums in America, compared to three in the UK (where there were more songs exclusive to EPs and 45s). These had some great tracks and actual hit singles, of course, but with the possible exception of their debut, those LPs were increasingly chaotic, with arbitrary sequencing and consisting of a strange menu of covers, tentative songwriting attempts and incongruous “live” recordings punctuated by screaming girls. And for the completist, several but not all of those B-sides and EP tracks were scattered throughout, leaving little continuity. In that time they’d also evolved from an R&B combo to actual competition to the Beatles in the songwriting category.

So in many ways their first “great” album, and a much better place to soak up all the history up to 1966, is Big Hits (High Tide And Green Grass). This collection brings together practically all the snotty songs we love: “(I Can’t Get No) Satisfaction”, “The Last Time”, “Get Off Of My Cloud”, “19th Nervous Breakdown” and so forth. A few not-quite-hits like “Tell Me”, “Play With Fire” and “Good Times, Bad Times” and key covers including “Not Fade Away”, “Time Is On My Side” (here in its “guitar intro” incarnation) and “It’s All Over Now” round out the set, and if you’re feeling sensitive, there’s always “As Tears Go By”. The LP even came with a full-size booklet of dreamy photos. (Naturally, the British version, which came out eight months later, had different tracks and a different cover.)

If you love the Stones, you’re going to want those first five albums anyway. But for a starting point, Big Hits (High Tide And Green Grass) does the job well. And there’s nary a clunker in the set.

The Rolling Stones Big Hits (High Tide And Green Grass) (1966)—5