Some comments about some Stones songs sounding too 'pop' got me thinking about semantics, I love semantics, in this case pop vs. rock.

If memory serves me the early days of the Beatles and Stones consisted of them cutting there teeth on rock and roll standards while they dabbled with blues and country. But when the so called British Invation took place and these bands were writing there own material they were 'pop' bands, not R&R bands.

I'm counting on those with extensive record relase information here. If you had to make a guess when do you think they outgrew the 'pop mentality'. I'm torn between them reinventing themselves with Exile and a tour that catured the energy of a rock show (not a pop act) or the release of IORR at a time when Chuck Berry style R&R was off the radar.

Thoughts?

I guess with the release of Jumping Jack Flash. Not a bad attempt at all, since it's the most perfect song in the history of rock IMO.

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"Music is the frozen tapioca in the ice chest of history."

"Shit!... No shit, awright!"

Satanic Majesties, I'd say

Thats basically when they got a bit more 'arty farty', in the way the Beatles did with Sgt Pepper. TSMR is hardly a commercial sounding album and it's "themed" to some degree.

Personally I find the whole pop vs rock debate nonsensical and often elitist and snobbish. IMO there's only two types of music - good and bad.

Gazza....I hear you on the good and bad thing. The pop/rock, mod/rocker are all media terms.

you see I would have catagorized all that arty farty stuff as pop, it was the return to a certain level of roughness I was thinking about.

I was amused that some would call some tunes too popish yet they 'were' a pop band....if I can still play with those words.

not really buying into your premise. The Stones ARE a pop band - I don't really see the distinction between pop & rock. Rock is popular...that makes it pop, don't it?

I suppose if I said every form of music since orchastration in technically jazz it would confuse everyone...but check your history, jazz was a catch all term for everthing in the day. Much like jazz reffering to most types of music in the early days the terms pop and rock and R&R all grew out of differnt times by different media types. They do have some loose timeframes. For me R&R got sidelined during the Bobby era (Vinton, Ridell) when the key rockers ended up in jail or public displeasure. The term pop arose to capture allot of the strange style mixes in the sixties and the musical experimentation...the albums mentioned above. So for me it was at what point did we get back to pumping out some music that went back before the bobby years. I thought the JJF was in the ball park and had considered it myself.

Did not mean to confuse...like I said I love semantics and if anybody can pinpoint what musical terms apply to specifically you get into the elitist stuff Gazza mentioned. You are correct though that pop is a catch all for today....how about the new media darling....world music.

but then if you want to be pedantic, all music is by definition "world music"

You know I was going to say if pop was the catch all.. world music would be the blanket over everything.

Pop music means "popular music", and that includes rock'n'roll, of course. BUT: a hard rocker is NOT a pop song... Get it?

Nowadays, people refer to Madonna and Michael Jackson (the King of Pop), as Pop artists...I resent anybody saying the Stones are a "Pop" band, because this puts them in the same category. People have to find a "catchphrase" for things.

I like to think that it began with JJF but really turned the corner with Sympathy. JJF, as great as it is, is still a "pop" tune in terms of its appeal to the masses, pretty much a harder-edged version of Satisfaction but still emminently playable on AM radio at that time. But Sympathy, in both music and words, really shook up the status quo of what people thought popular music should be. And the sound of rock 'n roll was forever sealed.

-- Keep on rollin'. Keep on. Keep on. Keep on. --

Thanks bluesplayer....you seem to have grasp my question......good assessment.