tommydski wrote:thirty years of sucking is a lot of sucking.

Someone *coughkerblecough* is going to say something terribly rude about your mother now.

didn't you hear?

kerble was last seen wrestling with humphrey bear at the reichenbach falls. we assume neither survived.

steve wrote:The Rolling Stones are a terrible band. Their music is hack bar band crap. They think pouting and being jaded is cool. Fuck the Rolling Stones.

Wait, Charlie Watts is totally not crap. We like him. He is actually awesome.

But the Rolling Stones are crap.

I have never been more baffled by a band's popularity than by the Rolling Stones. The Doors: Okay they're crap, but I can at least imagine why girls or gay men would like them. And college students.

Same with the Smiths. It's crap, but I can understand the appeal to journal-writers and teenage closet cases. And the Chicano community.

But the Rolling Stones baffle me. What is there to like about this tepid, undistinguished lowbrow mediocria?

Crap crap crap.

best,

so earlier today i was discussing the stones with someone. i was saying they adapted black music and retained none of the soul, while the other dude was saying that their music is (somehow) more than that. the argument was proving futile and i just couldnt get him to concede. so i thought back to this thread and said "listen, buddy, the dude who produced in utero and surfer rosa thinks they suck. so there."

BClark wrote:

steve wrote:

so earlier today i was discussing the stones with someone. i was saying they adapted black music and retained none of the soul, while the other dude was saying that their music is (somehow) more than that. the argument was proving futile and i just couldnt get him to concede. so i thought back to this thread and said "listen, buddy, the dude who produced in utero and surfer rosa thinks they suck. so there."

Funny though, Steve listed Nirvana and The Pixies as being crap in a poll a while back. So hmm...

I listened to the Rolling Stones an AWFUL, AWFUL LOT for three or four very formative years in my early teens. The first Hot Rocks compilation, Sticky Fingers, Exile, Beggars Banquet, Let It Bleed ... that shit is in my DNA, like it or not. I can think of worse things.

On the other hand, I have not been able to abide them since about 1979. The only song of theirs I actively enjoy now is "Gimme Shelter," because it is and always will be a great fucking song no matter what ... oh, and I also like "Jumpin' Jack Flash" on the soundtrack of Mean Streets. But that's it. Terminal overexposure / overfamiliarity on my end, and really egregious suckage for over 25 years on the Stones' part (from what I gather, that is; I haven't been listening), should equal a Crap vote from me, yet in all conscience I just cannot do it; deep down I still feel their best work is worthy of respect. Not Crap.

1963-67: N/C. They were trying to figure out who they were. The awfulness of Satanic Majesties does not cancel out the good-to-greatness of everything else they did.

1968-72: N/C. Untouchable greatness for four albums.

1973-1978: N/C, but starting to lose the plot.

1978-now: Crap. But they were amazing live on Halloween 2002.

Can I overlook decades of uninspired albums because they made a decade-and-a-half of music that I love to pieces? I can.

Not Crap.

When I was a kid, I thought they were CRAP.

They have created many songs that are not crap, thus tipping the scale.

NOT CRAP.

Crap: "rock star" posturing, drama, countless shitty records from 1980 onward, reunion tours, their popularity among people who have terrible/no taste in music who "listen" to them because they're "classic" (see also: the Clash, Led Zepplin, the Doors...anything you would see on a frat student's dorm walls)

Not Crap: Most of their early material

I enjoy them for the most part, but I can think of better bands.

I have a theory: The Rolling Stones invented "Rock" music. Please bear with me a moment.

Yes, The Beatles attempted to take pop music beyond the three-minute mark, adding orchestras and weird effrects and all kinds of other cool shit. Certainly, a case can be made for The Beatles inventing rock music. But Paul McCartney keeps them firmly planted in the Music Hall (with Ray Davies and the Small Faces), while the Stones were souping up the blues into something monolithic.

The Beatles were cute. They were never dangerous, sleazy, creepy, or scary. C'mon, does anybody really find "Helter Skelter" to be scary? "Yer Blues" and "Dig a Pony" are the only Beatles songs I can think of that match the darkest of the Stones catalogue. The Stones set the template for all big, mean rock bands that would follow, including punk rock--The Dolls, The Pistols, The Heartbreakers, The Patti Smith Group all owe the Stones an obvious debt. Sure, Jerry Lee Lewis is meaner and scarier (so's Skip James)--but he was still playing rock & roll music. As someone already stated, the Stones are a rock & roll band, but songs like "Gimme Shelter," "Sympathy for the Devil," "Sway" (as good as any song Neil Young has done with Crazy Horse), "Monkey Man," even "Under My Thumb" introduced a sense of darkness, of creepiness, of bombast and quasi-messianic pretension (though never as pretentious as The Who) that signaled a new era: Rock music. Without the Stones, no Doors--but also no Stooges. Surely it's clear to everyone that Iggy is simply Mick Jagger as seen through a lens muddied by speedballs and Midwestern idiocy. Am I the only one who sees "Gimme Danger" as an answer song?

Don't get me wrong; I realize Mick Jagger is a loathsome human being and that his stage persona is almost unforgivably absurd. But's he's, at best, the third most important Stone--fourth if it's the Mick Taylor era. And you know what: in a perverse way I admire Mick Jagger because he is utterly shameless, willing to do whatever it takes to sell the song, whether it's singing in falsetto, adopting a cod-country accent, or jumping around like a buffoon in an attempt to embody a human form as exaggerated as the riffs blowing up all around him. And if you don't think he can sing, put on "Moonlight Mile."

For me, The Rolling Stones are behind only The Stooges and The Birthday Party in my rock pantheon. They're ahead of the Velvets, Sabbath, and Neil Young. Even (gasp!) Devo.

Brett Eugene Ralph wrote:The Beatles were cute. They were never dangerous, sleazy, creepy, or scary.

BER! you're full of shit!

creepy:
"Maxwell's Silver hammer"- a demented song about a murderer set to 'cute' music, or "Revolution No. 9," which is just creepy.

dangerous:
"Helter Skelter" is more raw and visceral than ANY rolling stones throwaway rocker. "I Want You (She's So Heavy)" is tremendous as a rocker. It doesn't have to be balls out to do so. Similar is the understated heavy guitar in "While My Guitar Gently Weeps" (in the coda).

The whole fucking second side of Abbey Road is a triumph of 'dangerous' song writing. when have the Stones done something unexpected? never? please do point out their groundbreaking bar rock.

sleazy:
"Why don't we do it in the road"

also,


scary:
listen to "Glass Onion"- it's scary how fucking terrible that song is.


the Beatles eventually turned into artists, Rolling Stones never got past bar band.