An album like Exile is never going to be widely loved or popular amongst a wider music audience.

It's too hard to "get" ...

Heck, a lot of Stones fans have found it hard to get...

..but when you do "get it"...you get it big time.



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 2024-11-19 15:12 by Spud.

Amen, Spud!

Exile is the greatest rock album

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Taylor1
Exile is the greatest rock album

and not least of which because it carries it's consistency over 4 sides of vinyl. It's hard to make a great single album, Exile isn't just an album, it's a place.

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TheflyingDutchman

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GasLightStreet
EXILE can be frustrating. Sometimes it just doesn't cut it in terms of cranking something, although tidying it up into a single album does increase the magnitude, to where it punches through the way SOME GIRLS or TATTOO YOU or STICKY FINGERS does ie immediacy. It certainly starts off that way but it bottoms out and never really recovers, although it does swamp around a bit, and aside from Turd On The Run, it never kicks back up until All Down The Line.

That's what I call "gaslighting"

Some days are better than others.

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Taylor1
Exile is the greatest rock album

It is, with no doubt. Although I am not that sure if it really is even my favourite Stones album... Sometimes it is, sometimes it is not...

- Doxa

It may be rock, but it is also essence of American music (blues, gospel, country, rocknroll...). Masterpiece.

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MartinB
It may be rock, but it is also essence of American music (blues, gospel, country, rocknroll...). Masterpiece.

Well, I think that's why it is a rock album in its own class - it uses all the essential stuff this kind of stuff derives from - and it makes all of that sound original, unique and fresh - and rocking like hell. A definition of rock music at its best. Simply one of its kind. I don't think album of this kind could have ever done before or after by anyone, not even by them. Captures the very moment and makes it sound ever-lasting and eternal.

- Doxa

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Doxa

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MartinB
It may be rock, but it is also essence of American music (blues, gospel, country, rocknroll...). Masterpiece.

Well, I think that's why it is a rock album in its own class - it uses all the essential stuff this kind of stuff derives from - and it makes all of that sound original, unique and fresh - and rocking like hell. A definition of rock music at its best. Simply one of its kind. I don't think album of this kind could have ever done before or after by anyone, not even by them. Captures the very moment and makes it sound ever-lasting and eternal.

- Doxa

It winds through all those styles seamlessly. It's not like they sat around a room and said, "ok, we need another country bit hear and how's that gospel number coming?".

It just flows, nothing forced and nothing seems out of place as they wind through all those styles.

For me, the album in totality absolutely reeks of total self-confidence and awareness of their status as "greatest rock and roll band in the world."
Brilliant musically and attitudinally.

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treaclefingers

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Doxa

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MartinB
It may be rock, but it is also essence of American music (blues, gospel, country, rocknroll...). Masterpiece.

Well, I think that's why it is a rock album in its own class - it uses all the essential stuff this kind of stuff derives from - and it makes all of that sound original, unique and fresh - and rocking like hell. A definition of rock music at its best. Simply one of its kind. I don't think album of this kind could have ever done before or after by anyone, not even by them. Captures the very moment and makes it sound ever-lasting and eternal.

- Doxa

It winds through all those styles seamlessly. It's not like they sat around a room and said, "ok, we need another country bit hear and how's that gospel number coming?".

It just flows, nothing forced and nothing seems out of place as they wind through all those styles.

Absolutely. But by contrast, STICKY FINGERS has more that vibe of 'hey, look how brilliantly we nail and master this or that kind of thing'. And they do - each tune is stylistically perfect, and stands on its own (and make together a helluva showcase of their professionalism, variety and brilliance). But EXILE is more loose, free-going, instinct - it is that certain, unique, idiosyncratic Exile-sound and feel with which they approach each individual track. Surely the tunes are individually mostly great but even greater or even magical as a part of that fascinating seamless flow that is called EXILE ON MAIN STREET.

Somehow the album has the feel that 'hey, we don't need to prove anything, we just play our hearts out, play what we know, and trust our instincts'. They probably never been that content with themselves - and positively arrogant - as they were at that moment.

- Doxa

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Ps37
For me, the album in totality absolutely reeks of total self-confidence and awareness of their status as "greatest rock and roll band in the world."
Brilliant musically and attitudinally.

Indeed! Well put. I tried to describe the same observation above, then not yet seeing yours.

- Doxa

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Doxa

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treaclefingers

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Doxa

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MartinB
It may be rock, but it is also essence of American music (blues, gospel, country, rocknroll...). Masterpiece.

Well, I think that's why it is a rock album in its own class - it uses all the essential stuff this kind of stuff derives from - and it makes all of that sound original, unique and fresh - and rocking like hell. A definition of rock music at its best. Simply one of its kind. I don't think album of this kind could have ever done before or after by anyone, not even by them. Captures the very moment and makes it sound ever-lasting and eternal.

- Doxa

It winds through all those styles seamlessly. It's not like they sat around a room and said, "ok, we need another country bit hear and how's that gospel number coming?".

It just flows, nothing forced and nothing seems out of place as they wind through all those styles.

Absolutely. But by contrast, STICKY FINGERS has more that vibe of 'hey, look how brilliantly we nail and master this or that kind of thing'. And they do - each tune is stylistically perfect, and stands on its own (and make together a helluva showcase of their professionalism, variety and brilliance). But EXILE is more loose, free-going, instinct - it is that certain, unique, idiosyncratic Exile-sound and feel with which they approach each individual track. Surely the tunes are individually mostly great but even greater or even magical as a part of that fascinating seamless flow that is called EXILE ON MAIN STREET.

Somehow the album has the feel that 'hey, we don't need to prove anything, we just play our hearts out, play what we know, and trust our instincts'. They probably never been that content with themselves - and positively arrogant - as they were at that moment.

- Doxa

Albums like Let It Bleed and Sticky Fingers play like "greatest hits" packages...virtually every track individually iconic.

Exile is more like a "greatest journey".

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Doxa

Indeed! Well put. I tried to describe the same observation above, then not yet seeing yours.

- Doxa

And I agree with you that the album abundantly displays that attitude that "we don't need to prove anything."

The album, to me, is so magnificent in large part because it comes from a band so ineffably comfortable in their own skin that they massively impress simply by virtue of the fact that they don't even need to try to impress.

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Doxa

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treaclefingers

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Doxa

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MartinB
It may be rock, but it is also essence of American music (blues, gospel, country, rocknroll...). Masterpiece.

Well, I think that's why it is a rock album in its own class - it uses all the essential stuff this kind of stuff derives from - and it makes all of that sound original, unique and fresh - and rocking like hell. A definition of rock music at its best. Simply one of its kind. I don't think album of this kind could have ever done before or after by anyone, not even by them. Captures the very moment and makes it sound ever-lasting and eternal.

- Doxa

It winds through all those styles seamlessly. It's not like they sat around a room and said, "ok, we need another country bit hear and how's that gospel number coming?".

It just flows, nothing forced and nothing seems out of place as they wind through all those styles.

Absolutely. But by contrast, STICKY FINGERS has more that vibe of 'hey, look how brilliantly we nail and master this or that kind of thing'. And they do - each tune is stylistically perfect, and stands on its own (and make together a helluva showcase of their professionalism, variety and brilliance). But EXILE is more loose, free-going, instinct - it is that certain, unique, idiosyncratic Exile-sound and feel with which they approach each individual track. Surely the tunes are individually mostly great but even greater or even magical as a part of that fascinating seamless flow that is called EXILE ON MAIN STREET.

Somehow the album has the feel that 'hey, we don't need to prove anything, we just play our hearts out, play what we know, and trust our instincts'. They probably never been that content with themselves - and positively arrogant - as they were at that moment.

- Doxa

Considering a portion of EXILE is STICKY FINGERS leftovers, more so than LET IT BLEED, what if they'd chosen to release them opposite? Because obviously the lesser songs made EXILE. So would STICKY FINGERS be as great as it is if they'd decided not to release Sister Morphine, I Got The Blues, Dead Flowers, Bitch and Can't You Hear Me Knocking?

Regardless of whether the songs were finished, Shine A Light, Loving Cup, Tumbling Dice, Sweet Virginia, Stop Breaking Down, All Down The Line, Shake Your Hips and I Just Want To See His Face arguably could've been released on STICKY FINGERS.

Imagine if only the France newly written recordings were released. EXILE would not be heralded the way it has been the past 30 years or so as we know it. It's possible they would've finished Plundered as well as I'm Not Signifying and a few others that made the EXILE deluxe bonus album, as well as whatever else, and it would still be an interesting album.

Fortunately for rock'n'roll, EXILE is not The Rolling Stones' DARK SIDE OF THE MOON; the Stones' discography is not so tightly limited like Pink Floyd's is. As good as EXILE is the Stones have better and are not limited.

What a conundrum to have so many excellent albums, even beyond what the critics think or stubborn fans, and to be able to enjoy them in their own regard and not as some ranking tree with status branches in the pantheon of rock music history. The gospel blues, country and folk sounds of Loving Cup, Sweet Virginia, Sweet Black Angel, Torn And Frayed and Shine A Light were another foray into that styling already mastered with Salt Of The Earth, Factory Girl, YCAGWYW and I Got The Blues: the brilliance of all of those tracks is they never bothered to write or record anything in that style until Sweet Sounds Of Heaven.

Although If You Really Want To Be My Friend could arguably fit on EXILE.

Amazingly the Stones never repeated themselves. Sure, Dancing With Mr D is an extension of Satisfaction, Jumpin' Jack Flash and All Down The Line if you want it to be, but it's nothing like those tracks, either. There in lies the beauty of GOATS HEAD SOUP - SOME GIRLS: they carried on continuing to do different things.

Perhaps EXILE was the beginning of their expansion. Without Rocks Off it's very likely Doo Doo Doo Doo Doo wouldn't've worked, the raging horns. Although Bitch was the first fast song with horns, Rocks Off is a thousand times more melodic.

The Stones were just doing what they did, no set plan. It's not very far between 1971 and 1977 when you consider they recorded Miss You and Start Me Up in the same session. Their loose rock'n'roll embodiment ended in 1979, with the final monument being TATTOO YOU. Everything post-1979 has been on purpose, no "happy accidents", at least through A BIGGER BANG.

If I could wash up on that desert island with just one album ...I think Exile just might be it.

Exile is great...but Black and Blue, even Some Girls is an "easier" album to play completely through and not skip any song. So there is that.....and I'm essentially saying there were/are a lot of great albums of theirs to play.

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Spud
If I could wash up on that desert island with just one album ...I think Exile just might be it.

Exile, or Stones' Story (If that one's allowed)

No cheating !

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DandelionPowderman

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Spud
If I could wash up on that desert island with just one album ...I think Exile just might be it.

Exile, or Stones' Story (If that one's allowed)

You mean the red, green and blue vinyl's?

Fantastic albums, totally played to death and the reason I became a fan!

Mathijs

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Mathijs

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DandelionPowderman

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Spud
If I could wash up on that desert island with just one album ...I think Exile just might be it.

Exile, or Stones' Story (If that one's allowed)

You mean the red, green and blue vinyl's?

Fantastic albums, totally played to death and the reason I became a fan!

Mathijs

It's just a box set of all their 60s albums. I was a bit sloppy with the title - it's The Rolling Stones Story. I have the red, green and blue ones as well. Weren't those a Dutch release, btw?





Edited 4 time(s). Last edit at 2024-11-21 16:30 by DandelionPowderman.

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Rip This
Exile is great...but Black and Blue, even Some Girls is an "easier" album to play completely through and not skip any song.

Not for me

I listen to one side of Exile each day and the whole thing once a week. It still blows me every single time...

They made many brilliant records, but Exile is something else.

Imho ofc.

I have 3 of these "flexi's"...cool little thang for the collection.








Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 2024-11-24 17:27 by treaclefingers.

Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 2025-07-20 18:55 by schillid.

Thanks, Honestman



Edited 4 time(s). Last edit at 2025-07-20 17:30 by schillid.

[oilcity.news]

We all missed this ...

Stones’ album leads archivist to legendary photographer’s Wyoming cache
by Angus M. Thuermer Jr.

At the Wyoming State Archives, a researcher stumbled across a photograph from Casper, went down the rabbit hole and came up with the ongoing Robert Frank exhibit.

Documentary photographer Robert Frank drove all around the United States in 1955-’56, shot more than 28,000 black and white images and published 83 of them in the groundbreaking book “The Americans.” Frank focused on people going about their lives at lunch counters, around jukeboxes, at political rallies, on streetcars and so on. Many of the photographs are rich with social commentary, contrasting rich with poor, privileged with marginalized.

He visited Wyoming and photographed at least in Casper, Lander, Dubois, Fort Washakie and South Pass, exposing about 20 rolls of film and making more than 700 images. Not one of them made the cut for “The Americans,” a photography milepost that’s widely acclaimed but also criticized for Frank’s hard take on the country’s culture and customs.

Of the 700 Wyoming images, only part of one saw the light of day. The rest “have never been printed, have never been published,” said Robin Everett, an archivist at the Wyoming State Archives.

Now, the historical scenes and mostly gone people from the Equality State are alive again in an exhibit at Cheyenne’s Wyoming State Museum that Everett helped curate. Twenty-one images will hang at the museum through March 29, after which the show will travel to Buffalo and perhaps beyond.

“I want people to look at the images and say ‘Wow! There’s Aunt Dodie!’” Robin Everett

The exhibit includes both single-image prints from Frank’s 35mm negatives as well as enlarged contact sheets displaying at once about 36 images from a single roll of film. There’s a horse running through a field, “the long mane flowing back,” Everett said. “A mailbox, boots in the middle of a dirt road, an awful lot of people.”

Elisabeth DeGrenier, the director of exhibits at the museum, said the photographs “show everyday life in Wyoming... There’s a mother and her baby sitting in a car, folks at a rodeo, a high school prom, some landscapes.” Frank’s eye “highlights the life of an average American,” she said, “nothing flashy or extravagant.”

As he rolled through Wyoming, Frank photographed an armed forces ceremony in Casper, capturing a phalanx of saluting servicemen on one side of the frame, civilians lined up on the other. A car parked in the middle of the picture carries a Natrona County bucking bronco license plate and the lettering for radio station KSPR.

The Hotel Townsend, now the Townsend Justice Center, serves as a backdrop. In Frank’s style and method, there’s scant information. Nobody is identified. The picture is titled simply “Public ceremony — Casper, Wyoming, 1956.”

“Public ceremony” is the key that unlocked the photographer’s Wyoming cache for archivist Everett.


The National Gallery of Art posts some of the Robert Frank collection from Wyoming online, including this picture made in Casper in 1956, a cropped version of which appeared as part of the art on the Rolling Stones album “Exile on Main Street.” (National Museum of Art/June Leaf and Robert Frank Foundation)
“I was doing a personal research project with Casper newspapers,” she said. “Some article came up where they referenced an image that appeared on a Rolling Stones’ album cover.

“Being part of the baby-boom generation, that piqued my interest,” she said. Everett went down the rabbit hole. “It had appeared on the 1972 ‘Exile on Main Street’ album,” she said. One article said Frank had taken the photo. He photographed the entire double album’s art – front and back covers, inside spread and the printed sleeves for both disks. Liner notes credit John Van Hammersveld and Norman Seeff with the design and layout, Frank with the concept. One of the photographs has a cropped version of “Public Ceremony.”

Everett, a Wyoming native, admits to having been naïve about the history of photography and Robert Frank himself. That’s no longer the case.

She located Frank’s collection at the National Gallery of Art, which stewards the material for the June Leaf and Robert Frank Foundation. A good portion, if not all, is online. “After looking at them, I came to the conclusion the state of Wyoming needed to see them,” Everett said.

Frank, an immigrant from Switzerland, carried a small Leica III rangefinder camera suited for discrete street photography. A fashion photographer for Harper’s Bazaar, he mastered composition, lighting and the camera’s controls — shutter speed, point of view and lens aperture. He knew when to trip the shutter.

The contact sheets reveal how he worked. They show how many pictures he took of a particular scene, whether he framed it this way, then that, or just took one exposure and called it good. “I don’t see a lot of duplication,” Everett said.

Altogether, there are five contact sheets and 16 images in the exhibit. “To get as many images out there, we felt the contact sheets would be the best way to go,” she said. A cropped version of Robert Frank’s 1956 photograph “Public Ceremony” in Casper is reproduced on a sleeve from the Rolling Stones’ “Exile on Main Street” album. The picture led an archivist to Frank’s cache of 700 photographs from Wyoming. (screengrab/Bintphotobooks)
Frank’s presentation in “The Americans” carries scant information. “Trolley – New Orleans” captions perhaps his most famous picture of seven faces looking from the windows of public transportation, the Black ones at the back of the car. Historians say he never asked for names, just took his pictures and moved on.

Part of the mission of the exhibit is to reconnect the Wyoming images with the state’s people. “We’re asking folks if they recognize anybody in the photos,” DeGrenier said.

That would make the pictures more powerful, the two curators said. “I want people to look at the images,” Everett said, “and say ‘Wow! There’s Aunt Dodie! There’s my grandmother!’”

A Guggenheim Fellowship enabled Frank’s travels. The museum hosts an open house for the exhibit at 5:30 p.m. on Feb. 11.



Edited 2 time(s). Last edit at 2025-07-20 17:47 by schillid.

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[www.youtube.com]

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Feb 23, 1972




>>> NIXON In China Feb 21, 1972



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 2025-07-21 00:05 by schillid.