For information about how to use this forum please check out forum help and policies.
Quote
DandelionPowderman
Is it one of the versions on disc 4, Mike? Can't remember that version. Better check it out tonight ><
Quote
drewmaster
Arguably, the most interesting and compelling Stones music of the last 30 years has been those tracks which seem "organic", as opposed to recalling their past great work. I'm thinking in particular of songs like "Thief in the Night" and "Laugh, I Nearly Died." Songs that sound like they came out of nowhere and were just pure inspiration ... with no ulterior motive involved (like "Let's write a number that could be a new live anthem" to quote StonesCat).
Drew
Quote
Witness
Besides, I think that VOODOO LOUNGE contributed to pave the way for BRIDGES TO BABYLON and that album's pioneering spirit later on.
Quote
24FPSQuote
Witness
Besides, I think that VOODOO LOUNGE contributed to pave the way for BRIDGES TO BABYLON and that album's pioneering spirit later on.
Sorry, but I don't see any link between Voodoo Lounge & BTB, unless Mick rebelled at the retro Voodoo and was damn determined to make something modern. You can argue at the effectiveness of BTB, but it's definitely more adventurous than Voodoo. And A Bigger Bang falls somewhere in between the two, with a better success rate than either. Face it, it would take the highlights from all three to make one half way decent Stones album. And the bass playing is crap except for YGMR, Rough Justice, and Love Is Strong.
Quote
WitnessQuote
Doxa
Hmm.. one not so memorable VOODOO LOUNGE track... But I guess every Stones track is a worth of a novel, so here we go...
There is some peculiar problem I have with most of 'modern' Stones tunes; usually from the first listening they sound so 'good', very easy to recognize that is my favourite band out there, all those tasty familiar features, guitars, drums, vocals, and the tunes themselves are 'nothing but the Stones', so familiar, cozy, compared to anything else in the market. But still, after a few listenings, I find myself oddily bored, and don't feel at all giving them another go. Like there is nothing so capturing that make me hooked, like it is with their (past) great works. Everything is revealed by a few listenings, and there is nothing to discover any longer, or something so magical which forces one to listen again and again. I think "Sparks Will Fly" is a typical case in that sense. Basically 'all' is there, and right, but still it doesn't leave me a bigger impact. VOODOO LOUNGE altogether is the first album I made this observation, very soon after it was released.
I think great Stones works fall into two categories: those who get one hooked immediately by the very first listening and the thrill never escapes (thinking of "Satisfaction", "Honky Tonk Women", "Gimme Shelter", "Start Me Up", etc. etc.). Then there are those which take some time to 'grow on', but one 'gets there', one is hooked for good. EXILE is, of course, a famous case of the latter, but I think most of their not so supposedly great seventies and early 80's stuff seems to fall into that category as well (especially so called deep cuts, which make albums like GOATS HEAD SOUP, BLACK AND BLUE or EMOTIONAL RESCUE still so fascinating listenings.) For some reason, I don't find that feature in the modern albums, and, I have now 'given' twenty years for an album like VOODOO LOUNGE to 'grow on me', but it has not happened. I don't think any other 20 years would change the matter.
But, to not leave too negative tone, I always find it refreshing to hear a song like "Sparks Will Fly" when I haven't heard it for a while. It's the Stones, nothing but themselves, with their original sound. "By numbers", as the saying goes, but always pleases a Stones lover's, like mine's, ear. There is nothing wrong there that I could analysize into pieces there, but nothing very exciting, in the long run, either. But in the end, it is the latter, the very exciting things, which makes this band above of any other band in my book.
- Doxa
Asking you, Doxa, because you are not only a poster, but a writer with a capacity to take views that become a major reference. [Added afterwards in a latest edit: Sometimes in between that makes me worry a little and sometimes even a little more, I have to admit.] :
Seen not from then, but from now, do you consider the release of VOODOO LOUNGE as a sharp divisional line for when studio releases have lost that magic for you? Never before, but always later?
Or has the first experience of that kind, first time something you became aware of with the arrival of VOODOO LOUNGE, spread to some earlier releases than VOOODOO LOUNGE as well, not necessarily in a uniform way , but possibly making an exception for BRIDGES TO BABYLON?
Quote
DandelionPowderman
<and they hadn't sound so Traditional Stones-like for ages>
Well... That's where we disagree a bit. Musically, they did sound like that on their previous album. However, it might be that the "re-creating" of the past, on VL in particular, came across as more obvious because they also tried to make different music - like The Worst, Thru And Thru, Moon Is Up and New Faces (yeah, I know - that one was lifted, too, but they haven't really played that much baroque-ish music, so I'll give them this one ).
Quote
DoxaQuote
DandelionPowderman
<and they hadn't sound so Traditional Stones-like for ages>
Well... That's where we disagree a bit. Musically, they did sound like that on their previous album. However, it might be that the "re-creating" of the past, on VL in particular, came across as more obvious because they also tried to make different music - like The Worst, Thru And Thru, Moon Is Up and New Faces (yeah, I know - that one was lifted, too, but they haven't really played that much baroque-ish music, so I'll give them this one ).
You are right here. The 'great come-back' album STEEL WHEELS had that kind of retro pastishe feeling in many in its songs, but as you noted, it was that obvious, out-front, like "re-creating the past", as you beautifully put it, by which VOODOO LOUNGE made it so explicit. The nostalgic turn turn started in STEEL WHEELS and VOODOO LOUNGE just made it further. With STEEL WHEELS I tend to think that the 'looking back' was the thing that re-united Mick and Keith creativity-wise. The great common past was the the thing they could agree on (to stand each other). The way they write - for first time in years, even decades - songs together, just two of them, and handing the results then to band to quickly record - brought them back to the routines of very old days. With VOODOO LOUNGE I think they tried to copy the way their seventies masterpieces were done - especially EXILE and SOME GIRLS - by just putting the band into studio, giving them enough time, and hoping for the best. I think neither of the experiments were artistically speaking very fruithful, even though the circumstances sounded ideal in theory.
- Doxa
Quote
marcovandereijk
Now just hold on a minute.
Why is it that we're always trying to put a song or an album in some historic perspective
when we're discussing it on this board?
Why not listen to a song for its own merits? Why all the analyses about the phase the
band was going through, how songs don't sound like songs that were recorded 20 years
earlier et cetera?
Quote
Doxa
Easy marco - it is just a few of us, not the least myself, who have this tendency and big mouths...grinning smiley
Quote
marcovandereijk
Now just hold on a minute.
Why is it that we're always trying to put a song or an album in some historic perspective
when we're discussing it on this board?
Why not listen to a song for its own merits? Why all the analyses about the phase the
band was going through, how songs don't sound like songs that were recorded 20 years
earlier et cetera?
I hear a nice up tempo rocker, with good dynamics between the chorus and the verses,
an interesting middle eight and Charlie Watts hammering the sparks out of his drum kit.
I like that.
Quote
marcovandereijk
Now just hold on a minute.
Why is it that we're always trying to put a song or an album in some historic perspective
when we're discussing it on this board?
Why not listen to a song for its own merits? Why all the analyses about the phase the
band was going through, how songs don't sound like songs that were recorded 20 years
earlier et cetera?
I hear a nice up tempo rocker, with good dynamics between the chorus and the verses,
an interesting middle eight and Charlie Watts hammering the sparks out of his drum kit.
I like that.
Quote
DandelionPowderman
But what I really can't understand is why they picked the songs they did, when they had zillions of songs to choose from from the VL sessions. It was almost like Pathe Marconi, part II. Lots of different musical styles, and directions. They even had more commercial-sounding stuff than what they put on the album.
I still think Don Was is to blame for what ended up on VL, and how the album was put together.
Quote
DoxaQuote
DandelionPowderman
But what I really can't understand is why they picked the songs they did, when they had zillions of songs to choose from from the VL sessions. It was almost like Pathe Marconi, part II. Lots of different musical styles, and directions. They even had more commercial-sounding stuff than what they put on the album.
I still think Don Was is to blame for what ended up on VL, and how the album was put together.
Neither do I. Probably that is mostly up to Don Was. But what I don't understand either, why Mick Jagger had such a small role he claims he had there. He sounds like he didn't have a say there, like it was all up to Don Was. What? Mick Jagger? Altogether the way Jagger like washes his hands out of VOODOO LOUNGE sounds strange to me. Got he just got exhausted, and run away, 'do what you want. I'm outta here'. Or was he just disinterested? Was his heart alraedy more involved in planning a new stage for upcoming tour by then? Or was Was (sic) brought there in the fisrt place order to ease the tension between Mick and Keith like neither of them having a big say in these kind of decisions, but some 'neutral' third hand. Odd behaviour from Jagger's side in any case.
The point is that, artistically speaking, in VOODOO LOUNGE Mick and Keith seem to give up from the artistic leadership as far as their new studio releases go. Like their artsitic destiny was not any longer in their own hands. Even in the Jimmy Miller days, as far as I know, the Glimmer Twins were heavily involved in producting the album, like choosing the songs and making sure that it is expressing the 'right' intented musical statement. They didn't trust their own musical intuition, or they just didn't bother any longer?
Be the truth whatever, the attitude of especially Jagger's speaks volumes of their artistic interest in guiding the Stones into further musical adventures. Probably the real passion, the drive to say something, the determination, was not there any longer. I think that is something we can hear from the album.
- Doxa
Quote
DandelionPowderman
This was Don Was's first album with the Stones. It might be that he took on a bigger role than Mick and Keith were used to, and told them: "If I'm producing, I'm producing".