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Erik_Snow
it's like the smile from a clerk at Walmart....the smile means zero to both me and the clerk....the clerk's only interested in getting paid

I can't help but feel that you are somehow cheapening the experience.

Try reframing it in these terms: You never pay for the smile, only to make the person leave you alone afterwards.

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Beelyboy

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jamesfdouglas
I don't care, nothing the haters say takes away my enjoyment of this track.
To each their own.

jimmy let me tell you what a hater is. what cynicism is...

it might be someone who forces everyone here to look at his own promotion pic of an alien with a drooling shrimp coming out of it's mouth who is being struck by lightning just above his mule ears....

one sentence of text on various threads; and then your promo longer than your usually sillyass opinions...and bang. there it is again and again; the power alien mice eating shrimp getting struck by lighting with their mule ears up....

oohhhh kaaaaayyyyyy. times a hundred or a thousand. man that's pollution not promotion. why do you hate us so much?

Funny, I just came across another post by you in another thread about this song. What struck me as funny wasn't your opinion on Mick's singing here, but the fact that you said you weren't a troll.

If bv wants me to remove it, I'll do so.
Until then though, consider this my open invitiation to you.





[thepowergoats.com]

I didn't like this at first, for some of the reasons other people have given (overblown production, corny forced vocals) but the original track is so beautiful, and the damn thing is growing on me with every listen. I had a similar reaction to "Angie" - it took me FOREVER to get over the way Mick sings that first EEAAAENGIE... and realise that there's a lovely song there in spite of it.

However. Angie IS a Stones song, and to me this sort of isn't - it's a lovely song with some gorgeous piano from Nicky Hopkins, but with its new lyrics and production it's become a very good standard modern rock ballad, a song that any competent rock band or Vegas singer could cover - I guess this is what people mean by talking about kitsch and cliches.

- but it's growing on me... Help!

I've been listening to the track to attempt to get a grip on what people like.

This part, or the entire end part, it's just...what is it?

'I'll be calling out your name, calling out your name' - which actually sounds like they just copied and pasted it - and the rest on out - sorry, but it almost makes Streets Of Love listenable. Musically it's killer. So we have an oil and water mix going on here.

Lyrically it's just, well, in Tumbling Dice Mick talks about sixes, sevens and nines and then AMAZINGLY it's seven, eighths and nines in Might As Well Get Juiced. OK that was funny. Maybe that track wasn't really going to go on Bridges but it did. It's a shit track anyway.

Then on his solo track Hang On To Me Tonight he mentions that his cards are on the table. And AMAZINGLY he uses those exact same words in Following The River.

I've given it a shot. It's too overdone, ha ha, if there's such a thing. Way way way too affected singing style. It's syrup.

well a few months have passed. i like james music powergoat style. the graphic is fine. this track remains imo an abomination. not just bad or mediocre. if only. that would be forgiveable. mick has changed. the re release remaster not as good as virgin. its awful. its like THE mick j. is lonngg gone. MICk is new money sucking up to old money who will never take him too seriously around the royal parties anyway. keith was right about the KNIHTHOOD AND IT MAY not have been jealousy as mick claims. i dont know who THIS GUY IS AND SURELY DONT WANT TO HEAR ANY More crap like this. on their masterpiece too. god just awful awful



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 2010-09-30 17:06 by Beelyboy.

This is modern-day syrupy Jagger solo bullshit masquerading as soulful Exile Stones material. Maudlin, bloated Streets of Love tripe, only with a bit more polish and grandeur. As guitarbastard pointed out, Mick just does not sound believable.

But Nicky's piano is lovely, and the video is truly beautiful.

Drew

P.S. Beelyboy's lyrics are much better than Mick's!

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skipstone

Then on his solo track Hang On To Me Tonight he mentions that his cards are on the table. And AMAZINGLY he uses those exact same words in Following The River.

Stealing My Heart also has this line.

My cards are on the table, you can look up my sleeves
You say you're honest but love is for thieves
Well I was just out there, chaste as a nun
But it's easier said than done

Oh really?

Ha ha. I didn't know that!

I've only listened to it a couple of times - the first time to just listen to the new tracks, the second time because I didn't have the sequencing down yet. Horrible tune.

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drewmaster

But Nicky's piano is lovely

i love that track, if at all i don´t really like the piano. it sounds static and stale. sounds like mick jagger played it not nicky hopkins.

i agree it´s not as good as their best stuff though.

I don't think this song even sounds like The Rolling Stones. It doesn't sound like any of their ballads...and in this case, it's not a good thing.

Sounds like some Diane Warren crap.

Dancing in the Light is the bonus track that sounds like a pastiche or like someone aping the rolling stones.


Apart from Loving Cup and I aint Signifying and Good Time Women which are the REAL bonus tracks, I liek Plundered and So Divine. That's the only two new ones that sound worth a damn and like rolling stones songs.

Guitarbastard - My sentiments exactly, although I enjoy Plundered My Soul

beautiful. I listen to it nearly every day.
The same with Plundered My Soul.



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 2010-09-30 14:41 by 1962.

Okay. Finally confirmed by my soul. I've listening the song for ages now. "Following The River" is a wonderful song. Almost a masterpiece.

All the references to "Streets of Love" or GODDESS are out of place. This goes deeper. The song belongs to the rank of its own. It expresses feeelings that are odd among The Stones repertuare. Mick's voice is so human and vulnerable - he puts it on the table. That's the Jagger I've missed long.

Besides, the video is perhaps the best ever done. A kind of 'The Stones meets John Steinbeck'. It is wonderful how they were able to stick to the original concept of EXILE here.

Or maybe I'm just getting old.





- Doxa

The best ever Rolling Stones video.



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 2010-09-30 14:34 by 1962.

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Come On
I don't know what it is about rivers, but it always tends to be great songs and so is also Stones River-song...

other is Springsteens - The River, Dylans - Watching the River Flow, Nick Drakes - River man and so on...

Don't forget Boney M's Rivers of Babylon.

Doxa, you have jumped the shark.

awful awful awful. really really awful. just really awful. bad news. awful. he finally killed his best work..exile something hes long dissed. now i agree. at least this re release. abominably bad.

I don't get the hype for Nicky's piano, it's not his most outstanding contribution, he's just playing chords, though it's probably the best thing about it...this one's just a piece of Jaggerian schmaltz.

i can play that piano part and i am a guitarist.

but this does prove something. and i think i have my first and only true scoop in rolling stones world news with this: Mick is on more drugs than Keith.><

Following The River is f%$^&&% up by the strings! It's a mess. It's a wall of sound coming at you, just like Streets Of Love... no nice details in the parts.. it's all massive. That great piano part deserved better!

Listen to Angie.. it doesn't get messy or ugly.. the strings are effective and beautiful, together with the piano and the guitar parts.

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Doxa
Okay. Finally confirmed by my soul. I've listening the song for ages now. "Following The River" is a wonderful song. Almost a masterpiece.

All the references to "Streets of Love" or GODDESS are out of place. This goes deeper. The song belongs to the rank of its own. It expresses feeelings that are odd among The Stones repertuare. Mick's voice is so human and vulnerable - he puts it on the table. That's the Jagger I've missed long.

Besides, the video is perhaps the best ever done. A kind of 'The Stones meets John Steinbeck'. It is wonderful how they were able to stick to the original concept of EXILE here.

Or maybe I'm just getting old.
- Doxa

it's amazing what one song can do for one stones fan can make another barf and wonder how a man who has created such fabulous music can create such wretched drivel as this.

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Doxa
Okay. Finally confirmed by my soul. I've listening the song for ages now. "Following The River" is a wonderful song. Almost a masterpiece.

All the references to "Streets of Love" or GODDESS are out of place. This goes deeper. The song belongs to the rank of its own. It expresses feeelings that are odd among The Stones repertuare. Mick's voice is so human and vulnerable - he puts it on the table. That's the Jagger I've missed long.

Besides, the video is perhaps the best ever done. A kind of 'The Stones meets John Steinbeck'. It is wonderful how they were able to stick to the original concept of EXILE here.


- Doxa

Exactly my words. Can't say it better

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Muddyw
Following The River is f%$^&&% up by the strings! It's a mess. It's a wall of sound coming at you, just like Streets Of Love... no nice details in the parts.. it's all massive. That great piano part deserved better!

Listen to Angie.. it doesn't get messy or ugly.. the strings are effective and beautiful, together with the piano and the guitar parts.

Those are really good points. Couldn't agree more.

Drew

I think any possible messiness could come from attempts to replecate the muddy style of Exile it's self. I think Mick mentioned trying to do the new songs in the same way and I'm wondering if this is what is meant.

I don't have the hatred for it that alot of people here do. It's hardly the best but people on the Internet really love to blow things out of proportion. Mick trys to X-Factor it up with the OTT vocals but I feel they work ok at times and I like the background singers (Lisa and Cindy Mizelle?)

Not sure what all the fuss over the piano part is though, cause it seems like a pretty standard chord progression. I'll give it another listen.

It's clearly become one of those Stones songs that divide opinion in a big way, but I like it and I also love the very artistic video!

I raised this when someone first posted an overwrought paean to the video: what does the video have to do with the song?

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cc
I raised this when someone first posted an overwrought paean to the video: what does the video have to do with the song?

A key factor is EXILE ON MAIN STREET. Both of them are different extensions of its theme. What Jagger sings about does not have any relavance to the video content (even though the feeling or the sentiments of the music goes well with the pictures). We need to know the common factor - EXILE - beforehand to see the connection. It is incredibly controversial and ambitious attempt in today's standards. No "easy" indications are offered. This is a kind of thing I have missed for a long time. This video could have done for a Dylan song very easily and it had been a logical move and no further questions would not have been asked. But with The Stones.. "what a hell?". The Stones showed same kind of maturity and artistic purity without any cheap pop compromises or tricks as they did with EXILE. Most of all, they didn't underestimate their fans.

(A typical, MTV-era video would have been a kind of "Out of Tears" - one can easily make a manuscript for such a turkey - the Stones have done so many of them based on their philmographic essence.)

- Doxa



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 2010-10-01 11:13 by Doxa.

To defend this beautiful song against all the 'naysayers'...


I've been listening very closely the melody and Jag's interpretaion of it. Yeah, it took me for awhile - months - to pass over the mannerism it had in many sense of the word - too much DOGSHIT/Street of Love element.

But there is more. There is VERY MUCH more there. The difference is that Mick really worked his ass off to this song. As he has admitted. Yeah, he is the Mick of the 00's - his nasal vocals, metaphories, ways to interpret, go along the melody line - that's the limiation of his procedure. But in contrast to anything he has done for ages, he is forced here to use a templete that goes beyond his normal routines. Man, he needs to get out from the safe box and kick his butt. And so he does.

I think the result is marvellous. I think every litle detail of it is figured out. Even the elements that sound a bit cheap - the strings, the same old metaphors, corny melody hooks, etc. - are done in the purpose of the whole. I don't claim everything is perfect or even works very well - far from that - but one can hear the dedication to create an atmosphere that says something. It had been a very long time that anything Mick Jagger does had the impact of touching me. But he does it here.

But it needs time. The guy is challenging us - and himself - here. He takes riskies - he puts voice in its real limits and goes beyond. He lets the waeknesses of his voice to be heard - how he is not able to really deliver so strongly he aims (in the last part) but he still does it. What first sounded corny, or cliche-like, little by little starts to sound natural and effective - and it just gets better - finally you find out that it needed to be done this particular way - there is no other way.

I cannot change the ears of others to hear what I hear - all I can ask is to leave out the prejudices or certain outset problems - DOGSHIT, anachronism, etc - and just try to listen the song as Mick Jagger having a touch of muse. For me that is more than enough.

- Doxa



Edited 3 time(s). Last edit at 2010-10-01 11:45 by Doxa.

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René

Mick Jagger - lead vocals, acoustic guitar, tambourine
Keith Richards - acoustic guitar, electric guitar
Charlie Watts - drums
Bill Wyman - bass
Nicky Hopkins - piano
David Campbell - strings
Lisa Fischer - backing vocals
Cindy Mizelle - backing vocals

I bet my last dollar that the drums are NOT Charlie Watts, nor the bass Bill Wyman.

Without a shadow of a doubt.

Mathijs