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Lovely. Well put...Quote
with sssoul
On the studio version, that very first sound is like the bottom dropping out of everything
and dumping you into another world: the dark howling paranoid brainbell-jangler landscape
i know i know - it's "just" Keith just brushing a string of a guitar plugged into a cranked-up-hot amp,
but it's brilliant
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Silver Dagger
This song is a Stones masterpiece and the one by which we now measure their live shows. It's also, when played live now, just about the last vestige of a bygone era, a spyglass peak into the great tours between 69 and 76 and a look at how their incredible rhythm section works.
It's the song that allows the band to open the throttle, shift up a few gears and take the Stones mobile out onto the open highway and give that amazing engine of their's a good work out.
It's the song that naturally follows up all the imagined wickedness of Sympathy For The Devil and the imminent threat of disaster in Gimme Shelter to create a blues odyssey into the heart of darkness and the mind of a serial killer.
This is the sound of Jagger giving notice of his acting ambitions and stepping into character of Albert DeSalvo, the notorious Boston Strangler.
And of course it's possibly Keith's finest moment, constructing a deranged symphony of crazed, wailing, undulating guitars that are every bit as unsettling as Mick's frenzied lyrics.
And what a shame that poor Brian didn't have much to do with it because this is in essence everything that he probably would have wanted to explore with a new band - a futuristic blues that looks back at the riff heavy stompers of Muddy Waters, John Lee Hooker and Howlin' Wolf but stretches them out into another dimension.
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whitem8
silver dagger and Drewmaster, great posts! Really wonderful to read both your writing. Creative and inspiring.
How can this song be described as tedious by anyone!? Just stuns me this isn't a unqualified universally loved song by Stones fan. One of their crowning achievements. So much to love about it.
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Redhotcarpet
And yes the studio version is underrated.
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ohotosQuote
StonesTodQuote
ohotosQuote
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howled
To me it's just a standard Boogie with Mick once again using dark imagery for the lyrics.
Nothing really special about it compared to some other Sones songs IMO.
I think it's a good number to play live.
precisely...a glorified blues shuffle, but as songs go, it's purty pedestrian...
somehow it's taken on mythic status over the years, while much better songs have been left in the dustbin....
I was really feeling the same until now. I wouldn't have minded a setlist without MR in Brooklyn and get CYHMK instead (with or without MT) but this Saturday's show completely changed my mind - what an amazing song!
after 42 years you changed your mind based on one performance??
I haven't been listening to MR for 42 years, I'm younger than that. Before I saw MR as just another warhorse (there are other warhorses that I prefer) that I could have passed on. But the performance was really that good that it heightened my interest in the song again, what's wrong about that?
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Silver DaggerBack atcha whitem8.Quote
whitem8
silver dagger and Drewmaster, great posts! Really wonderful to read both your writing. Creative and inspiring.
How can this song be described as tedious by anyone!? Just stuns me this isn't a unqualified universally loved song by Stones fan. One of their crowning achievements. So much to love about it.
And nice one drew, too!.
It is one of the most emotive songs in the Stones warchest.
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TheDailyBuzzherd
Count me in the minority as preferring the studio version most. Love the live version,
but again, there's something very APE about the studio cut that comes from the core
of The Stones. Everyone's on there, despite Brian on the outside of sorts. Keith is at
his rubbery rhythmic best, and if there's one complaint, he sure could use a partner
to spar with, as if he was doing hand-to-hand battle with the psycho. No matter.
Jagger is at his most camp and even though he's gone on record to maintain he's
not The Rambler, you do believe he'd stab you, dear listener, square in the back.
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whitem8
Sighunt,
Interesting, and I would agrue it actually does not glorify violence, but is more of a "newspaper" approach, and then like an actor he is giving a horrifying performance that shows the terror and dread. Like movies, this a dramatic song about real Midnight Ramblers. It isn't a literal call to become a serial rapist and murderer.
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whitem8
I can't imagine how powerful this would have been in 69 witnessing this before the album came out. I would have had to be sedated and given electric shock therapy.
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Redhotcarpet
Nicky's piano isolated live 1972