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Old 03-21-2011, 05:09 AM   #79 (permalink)
Scarlett O'Hara
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Originally Posted by Davey Moore View Post
'Exile on Main St.' by The Rolling Stones (1972)


It's rare if you encounter an album with less bullsh*t and frills than this. The bullsh*t levels would have to be negative because this album has none. And negative bullsh*t? Well, that's just a bullsh*t concept. This album is literally a tour across the Rock and Roll landscape and clearly illustrates that: Rock and Roll will kick your ass, get your girl and then do a funky dance with her, steal your money and gamble with it, then win and use the proceeds to buy drugs, getting your girl addicted to heroin and when she overdoses and dies, will do a sad bluesy ballad as a tribute to her(after all, Rock and Roll isn't soulless), making you watch the entire time, and after it's all over, Rock and Roll will buy you a beer, because he's that kind of a guy. He's like the Count St. Germain of Music. If you don't know who that guy is: Saint-Germain: The Immortal Count

Pretty crazy, about that Count guy, eh? Immortality. Even though I mostly despise ACDC, I share their scholarly views regarding Rock and Roll, and Exile on Main St. is a great example. Rock and Roll will never die, mostly because of albums like Exile. Ballsy, roots and raw, speeding along the tracks at three hundred miles an hour. The songs tend to cut off abruptly, a staggering effect which is used effectively, although at the time it was because Jagger decided he wanted to edit the album although he wasn't very skilled in a technical sense. That's a very Rock thing to do. Or arrogant. But then again, Rock is arrogance. Also, isn't that album cover pretty damn crazy, too?

It was post-Beatles, Bob Dylan had went off and done his own thing and would occasionally go the way of JD Salinger, and the people were looking for a leader, and a member of the Old Guard stepped up, The Stones, and carried the torch and passed it on when they saw fit, which came a few years later when Springsteen emerged. But, until then, they rocked out, and they did it better than any of the Americans who claimed to have invented the form.

This album is the opposite of innovative. It is a composite. An amalgam of everything that made Rock and Roll what it was, and Mick and Keith and the others were simply marionettes, interpreting a vast catalog. They pulled in Mississippi Delta resources, British Invasion sources, Jazz, New York bohemianism, basically every strand of Rock and Roll existing back then. And then they created a masterpiece. You know how in an earlier essay, I talked about the 'Great American Album'? This would qualify if it wasn't made by a bunch of limey bastard geniuses.

Sweet Virginia and Loving Cup are big highlights. Loving Cup has that classic Rolling Stones moment where they all of a sudden kick into gear. Think about in “You Can't Always Get What You Want”, where it starts soft but then goes into high gear: “You get what you n-e-e-e-e-d” and the drums pump up, etc. The same thing happens in this. It's near the beginning, and it, of course, is on the line: “Gimme little drink, from your loving cup!” Classic Stones. They really know how to build a song up and let it progress.

Not only is it a bad ass album, it's not afraid to be sensitive. The album runs the whole gamut of emotional range. The best Rolling Stones song on the album, by far, is a song called Let it Loose, a sad ballad with perhaps Mick's best vocal performance. The rhythm and progression of the song is brilliant. It might even be the best Rolling Stones song EVER. It's certainly my favorite. It has that sort of effect on me. Other songs in the same vein include Shine a Light, which I feel should have ended the album, putting Soul Survivor on a different part of the album.

A lot of friends of mine talk about how there can be no new genres, only subtle variations on what already exists. There has been so much innovation. Get a group of people together and try and combine random and disparate musical idea together and if someone's got enough of an encyclopedic knowledge, they'll tell you it's already been done. So where would we go from here? Perfection. Let's stop focus on being the most innovative, and lets focus on perfecting sounds and genres instead of trying to break them in half. The Rolling Stones didn't reinvent the wheel here, they just made a hell of a damn good wheel. And that's why this is one of the greatest albums, ever. It doesn't make any pretentious claims, it just admits that it is, what it is. And that's what Rock and Roll is all about. Being who you are and saying 'f*ck you' to anyone who has a problem with that.
This is the best review I've read in a long time. You are kick ass right now. I love the first paragraph particularly.
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