i'm not sure rock music - pop music in general - really matters in any important way, to be honest. it's a disposable diversion from real life at best.

the last stones album really seems worthy of the stones was TY, imo....



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 2009-10-27 16:29 by T&A.

The last pop music that mattered, seemingly, was The Beatles, with the Stones having an impact as well, just not as much as The Beatles. Before that it was Elvis. Then came 1967 and ever since then none of it really matters, it's just music.

For me, Undercover was the last album the Stones seemed to audibly give a shit about DOING something. It's way more vibrant of an album than Emotional Rescue was and is. Ever since then they've been phoning it in, with the odd good tune here and there.

Quote
skipstone
The last pop music that mattered, seemingly, was The Beatles, with the Stones having an impact as well, just not as much as The Beatles. Before that it was Elvis. Then came 1967 and ever since then none of it really matters, it's just music.

For me, Undercover was the last album the Stones seemed to audibly give a shit about DOING something. It's way more vibrant of an album than Emotional Rescue was and is. Ever since then they've been phoning it in, with the odd good tune here and there.

the effort was definitely there on UC, just not the results. keith/mick's songwriting muse deserted them after the '77 paris sessions and only to return in very limited one-offs ever since....

The Stones released lots of good, sometimes great music, after 1983. I like Undercover, I like Tatoo You, but I do not se why Dangerous Beauty, Out Of Control,
Continental Drift etc. should be worse than Hang Fire or When The Whip Comes Down.

Quote
windmelody
The Stones released lots of good, sometimes great music, after 1983. I like Undercover, I like Tatoo You, but I do not se why Dangerous Beauty, Out Of Control,
Continental Drift etc. should be worse than Hang Fire or When The Whip Comes Down.

i don't know either, but they are

UC somehow was the last album that felt like the "next new Stones album"; that just was still exciting in that way to me. UC was two-sided, 5 songs on each side, had a Keith song that wasn't a ballad, some Stu on it. The melodies are still the 70's type Stones to me; it's almost an intangible, but they hardly don't do those great songs anymore. Where there is a beat and a melody. Like Rocks Off, Silver Train, Hand of Fate. That is why a song like "Under the Radar" hit home immediately.
Dirty Work was so obviously tainted by their own agendas. They almost sabotaged their own release with their press attacks, solo album clips. The album was sub standard IMO, but it barely had a chance from the bet-go. And from 89 on it was all different anyway.

Quote
skipstone
The last pop music that mattered, seemingly, was The Beatles, with the Stones having an impact as well, just not as much as The Beatles. Before that it was Elvis. Then came 1967 and ever since then none of it really matters, it's just music.

I think many Brits who where teenagers in 1977 disagree with you -the Sex Pistols and the Clash made quite an impact.

UC is the last album where the Stones still meant sex drugs and violance, and where the music was still raw and dirty. Wanna Hold You is terrible, Feel on Baby a bit tacky, all else is killer.

Mathijs

POP music. Not punk, punk rock or positive punk. So some Brits might object to that - but certainly you get my point about Elvis and The Beatles. Those two really changed things.

Tattoo you, along with VL and ABB are the most. I think BTB is a compilation of bad producer's work, there is no line and relationship between songs, are so different, maybe is a mixture of "the worst of Jaggers" and the "worst of Richards". Therer are gems, of course, but the poorest reggae song is in here, Anybodyseen my baby was a copy from another songwriter, Thief in the night...... There are terrible songs. Something similar happens to Undercover, maybe the production was not fine...........

I like Undercover, but Tattoo You is the last Stones album that mattered...I agree that Undercover does set a feel and mood, but Tattoo You is timeless.

When it was released I liked one or two tracks on side two, now I that I'm older I find that I like the whole album (okay Little T&A is a bit trite, but besides that)

the shoot 'em dead, brainbell jangler!

Well, it didn't matter much...Yes, it had a Keith track, but a rather weak one. I side with those who say Tattoo You was the last Stones album that warranted excitement in the sense that their previous records did - and THAT was composed of a lot of older tracks, which I was blissfully ignorant of at the time. Be nice if they could pull that off again.

I think, as others have stated, that Undercover was they last time they tried to write songs that matters, particularly from the standpoint of lyrics.

Well if you look at the sum of that era - SG, ER, TY, U - it's pretty vibrant, overall. Great tunes on all of those albums. I think U was a sort of an end of an era for them - they did some different things on it, they explored some cool sounds and rhythms and they still had some blues fused with the tunes. After that, it pretty much left them, especially if yo listen to U and DW in a row. Two completely different bands.

the last good album was steel wheels,after that rolling stones last it.the power of rolling stones was gone.so..so much difference with voodoo lounge album,that was a slow album,with mick slow singing too,and that has been ever since 1994.

"Tattoo you" was the last one that mattered. Although I like "Undercover" same with SW and ABB and I love VL and B2B.

As for the original post:

"here's why: the political content, presented whole-heartedly without irony or clownish lyrics (Sweet Neocon), as in the title track, and also in 'It Must Be Hell', anticipating the violence and fearmongering we see today

great groove modern blues, classic Stones sneering (PAin Of Love, 'All The Way Down')
a raucous Ronnie romp (Pretty Beat Up) with wild sax playing

a great Keith track (Wanna Hold You)

a mature Jamaican dub treatment (Feel On Baby)

its a major release alongside SG, SF, EOMS, LIB"

Apart from that that reads in bold I disagree with everything.

As for "I agree with duke... but most fans didn't "get" that album, so it only mattered to those of us who appreciated it for what it was" Tate, don't you feel a smidgen of hubris in your sentence?

Quote
duke richardson
here's why: the political content, presented whole-heartedly without irony or clownish lyrics (Sweet Neocon), as in the title track, and also in 'It Must Be Hell', anticipating the violence and fearmongering we see today

great groove modern blues, classic Stones sneering (PAin Of Love, 'All The Way Down')
a raucous Ronnie romp (Pretty Beat Up) with wild sax playing

a great Keith track (Wanna Hold You)

a mature Jamaican dub treatment (Feel On Baby)

its a major release alongside SG, SF, EOMS, LIB

no it's not. it's not much better than dw imho. not a disaster but neither compelling nor engaging for this listener.

abb mattered more and does matter more..some beatiful and hot as hell tracks...come on old geezers do it again!!!

My personal opinion? Some Girls was the last Stones album that mattered -- that really grabbed everyone's attention and seeped through, as an album, to the popular culture.

The last Stones album that REALLY MATTERED? That's more difficult. Sticky Fingers maybe. Or maybe all the way back to Let it Bleed. The power of Let it Bleed when it came out, after Woodstock, got to people in a way that none of the albums since have touched.

Just my opinion, of course.

I think, in the perspective of what the Stones had just done, which was a pretty good run with Some Girls (the singles and tour), Emotional Rescue and Tattoo You (big single, huge tour) they needed something a bit...different.

Undercover is a very aggressive album. And sonically it's consistent, just as Some Girls and Emotional Rescue are (which is basically why I said it was a proper follow up to ER, because it sounds like it is). It's got some great tunes on it, it's got some interesting ie different tunes on it and it's certainly one of Mick's best vocal performances to tape as a whole in quite a while I think - there's a lot going on throughout the album and his singing is excellent.

And also, they explored some (maybe) new areas/genres as well (Too Much Blood, Feel On Baby, Undercover Of The Night) as reaching out with the production while also keeping with the true rock'n'roll (She Was Hot, Tie Me Up, All The Way Down).

I dunno. To me, it's the last album they really strove for something different as artists that were really creating, hence it being the last album that mattered being something I agree with. Bridges, which overall I like, was more flavour of the past six months because it was popular for 3 weeks for 1 song or some kind of ridiculous thing. By the time the album came out, some of that shit was already old and tired.

"Undercover" had some good songs, however, very few of them have ever been performed live or have ever been played on FM radio for that matter."I Wanna Hold You'is one of the weakest KR efforts of all time, and is the turd in the puchbowl, right up there with "Infamy". Most of his tunes in open G tuning have a crunch or bite to them, but not this atrocity. The guitars are weak, the solo sucks, and the lyrics are Jonas Brothers sappy and have zero edge to them. I refer to "Wanna Hold You" as "The Halftime Bathroom Break Song" because when KR and the boys perfrorm it, audience members are seen running for the bathrooms for a pee break.
"Some Girls" and "Tattoo You" were the last of the best.

ABB would have been one their best minus "Infamy" and "Look What the Cat Dragged In" and adding "Under the Radar" and "Dont Wanna Go Home".

"Look What the Cat Dragged In"?

I think that song's a blinder.

But I definately agree with "Wanna hold you". It is so weak I cannot believe it made it onto any album. The lyrics are lame at best and the verse sections of the song is arguably the worst ever in a Stones song. I wish that and "Feel on baby" had been overlooked and left the remaining eight songs as the album would be the stronger for it.

With the benefit of hindsight I wonder if they'd release SWH now as the kick off single. I know UOTN was a big hit but think SWH may have been bigger.

Just listened A BIGGER BANG... and I need to say that UNDERCOVER is a masterpiece compared to that. Both albums have quite mediocre songs to be begin with, but thé way they deliver them makes the huge difference... even though the production in UNDERCOVER is so 80's bad, it cannot destroy the fact taht the band is still playing with a full band effort and rocks like hell... "It Must Be Hell", "Too Tough", "All The Way Down", "Pretty Beat Up"...the band have not had a groove like that ever since! By contrast, the rockers of ABB are soooooo lifeless and lame. The songs are stupid and naive, and the 'band' - what band: solely Mick and Keith, then Charlie weeks later (playing so boringly and without a groove I cannot believe) then Ronnie adding few licks... If the band has so little motivation and idea or a band feeling as they had with ABB, I hope they will not go studio again. They are not The Stones anymore.

- Doxa



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 2009-11-29 11:36 by Doxa.

>They are not The Stones anymore.


Sounds like *your* perception of them does not exist anymore. The Stones by their nature continue to exist, like them or not; they just may no longer fit into some people's boxed-in ideas of who they're supposed to be.

Quote
Doxa
what band: solely Mick and Keith, then Charlie weeks later (playing so boringly and without a groove I cannot believe)

Listened to ABB again after a long while, and you are right...Charlie plays the same drum roll or fill over and over again in each and every song, and the sound of his crashes really start to irritate halfway through.

If the Stones ever record again I sure hope they do it with a producer who can spark some life in them again.

Mathijs

Perhaps SW, VL, B2B and ABB are considered mediocre because they are too long? Few songs chopped off and those'd be much tighter albums. That approx. 45 minutes per album is usually enough. You need a bunch of great songs to make a longer album, like Exile. Dirty Work is shorter but very inconsistent and I think it was poorly mixed album. I liked Under Cover very much when it was released. Not their best album but very good.

BTW, it's good that Voodoo Lounge LP version didn't have Mean Disposition, 'cause Thru And Thru is a great ending.

Quote
Glam Descendant
>They are not The Stones anymore.


Sounds like *your* perception of them does not exist anymore. The Stones by their nature continue to exist, like them or not; they just may no longer fit into some people's boxed-in ideas of who they're supposed to be.

Of course it's mine perception, and of course the brand "The Rolling Stones" will live forever... soon Charlie is replaced, then Keith, finally Jagger and and the band lead by Chuck Leavell will play Abba covers ... and then people keep insisting that they do still exist but "they just may no longer fit into some people's boxed-in ideas of who they're supposed to be"... Got my point.?.. how far they need to go before you start asking questions like what makes "The Rolling Stones" The Stones?

Some people say that A BIGGER BANG is mediocre by Stones standards but if any contemporary band have relaesed it or making music equal to it, they would be praised like gods. I don't think so. I would say that if the 'band' that performs in A BIGGER BANG would NOT been The Rolling Stones that album would have never seen a light of a day. It is a lame effort in any standards. (Oh yeah, there are few okay songs, but just about it.)

- Doxa



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 2009-11-29 12:03 by Doxa.

I couldn't agree with you more, Doxa. A Bigger Bang was a lame effort for sure, although there are just occasional sparks of life (Laugh, I Nearly Died maybe) even if there is little of the magic of old. Laugh, I Nearly died has a few interesting elements but Jagger's vocal ruins it as the song progresses. Those rockers in particular are painful to listen to.

>soon Charlie is replaced, then Keith, finally Jagger and and the band lead by Chuck Leavell will play Abba covers ... [...]"... Got my point.?..


Well no, I don't get your point because I don't believe you believe what you wrote will happen. The Stones will not exist w/out Jagger, end of apocalyptic fantasy.

You seem to have a fixed idea of "The Stones" in your head that doesn't necessarily equate with what Watts/Richards/Jagger/Wood are up to in the real world.

Quote
Glam Descendant

You seem to have a fixed idea of "The Stones" in your head that doesn't necessarily equate with what Watts/Richards/Jagger/Wood are up to in the real world.

That's true but I blame those guys (and Brian Jones and Mick Taylor) to have put that idea in my mind!

- Doxa

i have to tell the truth......these days Undercover does the job even better than some girls and TY...together!!!''All the way down is my fav....the album is dark and political...Nu Music...i love all off it!!

Quote
georgelicks
The last Stones album that mattered was Tattoo You, in 1983 everyone was into the Thriller-mania, MTV, heavy metal, etc.
Now, 26 years later, it's all the same but with hip hop and post Nirvana bands, and no Stones album since then mattered anymore.

Tattoo You was left overs from previously recordings.
Then the last album in sense of new recordings that matters is Some Girls.
That would mean - no serious new recording worth anything is since SG.
Is that really so - that's basically 30 years ago. Did the creative spirit stop in 1977/1978?