The Rolling Stones

My earlier statements about the Butterfield Blues Band help crystallize an idea i've been struggling to explain for a long time: i don't like Rolling Stones' albums. I like the band, i like their songs, i like their variety and experimentation, but i would rather splatter house paint in my eyeballs than listen to an entire side, let alone two or three or any of the 30 full albums by them.

Up until tonight i couldn't really figure out why that would be true. I can listen to Yoko One or 45 minutes of random train noises, i can enjoy the constantly changing rhythms of the clothes dryer for an entire cycle as though it were an improvisational percussion ensemble, i can tolerate screaming and yodeling and bad spoken word, but by the third Rolling Stones song in a row i'm ready to punch myself in the throat just so i can hear my own choking for air instead.

But, why?

Because not a single person involved in recording this band at any point in their career gave a crap. With only 1 exception that i will talk about momentarily, it all sounds like the final mix down was done over the studio intercom by the coffee boy. Either the mics are 20 feet away from the amplifiers, or there was so much room noise that they had to use a dozen notch filters, or they set dials by rolling dice, or i don't even know what. Like i said, they wrote great songs, they played their instruments like normal people, but it all sounds wrong.

Now the exceptions, with some explanatory background. I love the sound of people playing their instruments and the tracks i'm about to talk about are pure ecstacy for me. Strangely though, i am not one of those people who lauds vinyl over digital in spite of my preference for the added sound of the mechanical playback equipment. The absence of crackles or tape hiss etc. doesn't actually bother me at all, what bothers me is deliberately removing the sound of playing for a quieter noise floor.

So in that light, the first 3 tracks from Beggars Banquet are the most delicious sounds i've ever heard in my life. I know "Sympathy for the Devil" better than any analogy for really knowing things, but i have never in my life heard that lead guitar tone sound like an electrified pane of glass played with a glass pick by a ham fisted angry child. That might not sound like a compliment, but it is raauuunchy in this form. At the complete other end of the spectrum, "No Expectations" has the most gorgeous slide acoustic guitar i've ever heard, so close you can imagine more than a few takes were ruined by actually bumping the microphone. Last, if every album sounded like "Dear Doctor," i wouldn't be writing this post at all. As it stands, though, that's it. 3/5 of the first side of Beggars Banquet is alls i can stands, and i can't stands no more.

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