That'll be Crap deluxe.

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IrelandCalling4
I always thought DW was much better than given credit for; it's rotten reputation seemingly stems from 3 tracks in particular - 'Winning Ugly', 'Back to Zero', 'Hold Back'. Perhaps 'Fight' could be added also; many seem to severely dislike that one too.

The remaining tracks, many discussed on Rene's Track Talk, have received praise from many

One Hit (to the Body) - Great rocker I think; lyrically and musically well done.

Too Rude - Always loved it; Keef duetting with Jimmy Cliff, Ronnie on drums; a keeper

Sleep Tonight - Not up there with 'Slipping Away', but an affecting ballad nonetheless.

Dirty Work - Very good rock track; the guitar breakdown in the middle is glorious!

Harlem Shuffle - Good cover of a great track

Had it With You - Minimalist, a B Side really, but not a bad track.


That's 6 tracks that routinely are praised by many, over half the album. The sessions produced songs which could have really altered the quality, 'Crushed Pearl' bootleg contains some real winners.

I take the point that in the era of Duran Duran, Bon Jovi..etc, this raw sounding rock would have been a welcome change, and even though it's not near the quality of the Stones 60s and 70s albums, I do feel it's reputation is far worse than the album actually is.

Thanks, you saved me time, already throwing out the 4 worst tracks. Now to the others ...

Dirty Work - also crap.
Sleep Tonight - lives up to its name, snoozer, my least favorite Keith track
Had It With You - agree, b-side at best, and not even a great one at that
Harlem Shuffle - decent, but their covers before this (Just My Imagination and Ain't Too Proud To Beg) are far superior
Too Rude - I love reggae and especially Stones and/or Keith reggae ... I like this track a lot too, but still, it's not up to par w/ Feel On Baby or Keith's solo Words Of Wonder
One Hit - also very good track

So yes, the album, although a couple bright spots, it overall a steaming pile of $hit

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GasLightStreet
Sorry. No. There's no improving a pile of shit other than to make it bigger and smellier.

Memo from Mick - I've had it I've had it I've had it wit chew

Compared to the pile of shit that other major artists have released in the 80ies, Dirty Work shines brightly! For me their best post-Black & Blue-release and in no way crap. Reading some postings here makes me wonder if we actually talking about the same album...

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LeonidP

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IrelandCalling4
I always thought DW was much better than given credit for; it's rotten reputation seemingly stems from 3 tracks in particular - 'Winning Ugly', 'Back to Zero', 'Hold Back'. Perhaps 'Fight' could be added also; many seem to severely dislike that one too.

The remaining tracks, many discussed on Rene's Track Talk, have received praise from many

One Hit (to the Body) - Great rocker I think; lyrically and musically well done.

Too Rude - Always loved it; Keef duetting with Jimmy Cliff, Ronnie on drums; a keeper

Sleep Tonight - Not up there with 'Slipping Away', but an affecting ballad nonetheless.

Dirty Work - Very good rock track; the guitar breakdown in the middle is glorious!

Harlem Shuffle - Good cover of a great track

Had it With You - Minimalist, a B Side really, but not a bad track.


That's 6 tracks that routinely are praised by many, over half the album. The sessions produced songs which could have really altered the quality, 'Crushed Pearl' bootleg contains some real winners.

I take the point that in the era of Duran Duran, Bon Jovi..etc, this raw sounding rock would have been a welcome change, and even though it's not near the quality of the Stones 60s and 70s albums, I do feel it's reputation is far worse than the album actually is.

Thanks, you saved me time, already throwing out the 4 worst tracks. Now to the others ...

Dirty Work - also crap.
Sleep Tonight - lives up to its name, snoozer, my least favorite Keith track
Had It With You - agree, b-side at best, and not even a great one at that
Harlem Shuffle - decent, but their covers before this (Just My Imagination and Ain't Too Proud To Beg) are far superior
Too Rude - I love reggae and especially Stones and/or Keith reggae ... I like this track a lot too, but still, it's not up to par w/ Feel On Baby or Keith's solo Words Of Wonder
One Hit - also very good track

So yes, the album, although a couple bright spots, it overall a steaming pile of $hit

Everybody knows what's on Dirty Work since 1986 (if born)...
This thread focuses on the tracks that could be on the BONUS-CD of a DIRTY WORK DELUXE release 30 years later.

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HMS
Compared to the pile of shit that other major artists have released in the 80ies, Dirty Work shines brightly! For me their best post-Black & Blue-release and in no way crap. Reading some postings here makes me wonder if we actually talking about the same album...

And I always thought Some Girls is their best post-Black & Blue-release...

Let's see for me nearly 30 years on...

1.) One Hit (to the Body) has great guitar work from Ronnie, Keith, and Jimmy Page. Sadly the vocals and drum sound are dreadful. Not especially inspired lyrically, to be kind. Avoid the 12" mix at all costs.

2.) Fight has okay guitar work, the middle section is lifted directly from Too Tight on the last album, the bit of organ is nice enough. The vocals and drum sound are dreadful. Makes the previous song's lyrics seem impressive by comparison.

3.) Harlem Shuffle is a standout in this company. Charlie swings. Chuck acquits himself well as part of the band sound. The guitars do a great job of replacing Barry White's original brass arrangement and Jagger's vocals are strong. Pity it's a cover version and not exactly a classic at that. The 12" mixes are worthwhile if only the reverb hadn't been overdone so much. Wonderful groove and shows just how good Chuck can fit this band.

4.) Hold Back has great guitars and organ and Ivan Neville's bass work is a joy. Sadly the vocals and drum sound are dreadful and the lyrics make Fight seem not so dismal after all. George Washington should never be mentioned in a rock song, but if he must then certainly never by first name only. I blame Chris Jagger. I can't prove it's his fault, but it's what I consider a Stand Up for the Foot moment.

5.) Too Rude is stunning and the best track on the album. Pity it's a Keith solo track and not a band effort, but still it's a true classic cut. I also prefer it by leaps and bounds to Words of Wonder although the live version from the Hollywood Palladium is also brilliant.

6.) Winning Ugly is the shape of Ruthless People yet to come. Keith's lead guitar catches you off guard. Pity the song isn't better. The 12" mixes are superior since there's more of a groove.

7.) Back to Zero - well what can I say, I like this one a lot. It swings. There's a great bridge. The lyrics are no where near as bad as many of the songs here. The groove is infectious. No, it's not a classic, but it's a highpoint on this album.

8.) Dirty Work has great guitars, drumming, and organ. The weak point is the vocals. Still, this is one of the better songs on this album.

9.) Had It with You is my favorite track on the album. Charlie swings, the guitars are great, Mick's blues harp is wonderful and a true rarity here, his vocals are strong. I love this song and always have. Sadly, it's treated like a toss-off. It's the best track on the record.

10.) Sleep Tonight is pretty good. Keith's vocal is one of his best. His guitar work is good. The weakness are the keyboards, drumming, and drum sound. Still, not bad at all.

11.) Key to the Highway is far too short, but I love the outro of Stu. As nice a tribute as they could manage. Pity it's his only appearance on the album.

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Rocky Dijon
2.) Fight has okay guitar work, the middle section is lifted directly from Too Tight on the last album...

Ha ha! Nice slip!

You meant Too Tough, right, since BRIDGES TO BABYLON came out quite a few years later.

I did. Thanks for catching.

There are album fillers and then there are album grenades. Back to Zero could've worked on She's the Boss, or at least that's where it belonged. But because of its doomsday lyrics Mick couldn't dance with Rae Dawn Chong on MTV so he tossed this grenade to the Stones. KABOOM!



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 2015-07-31 08:28 by Swayed1967.

they should have paid more attention to its content vs.the album cover. pure dog crap or as an englishman might say "bloody rubbish".

A deluxe version of the first Wino's album would be better.

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RipThisBone
Everybody knows what's on Dirty Work since 1986 (if born)...
This thread focuses on the tracks that could be on the BONUS-CD of a DIRTY WORK DELUXE release 30 years later.

Well then there's no point in reissuing DIRTY WORK with these leftover tracks, is there? In fact, there's no point in even calling it anything to do with DIRTY WORK because otherwise only about 14 people are going to buy it.

maybe a deluxe eighties mashup re-re, call it Dwusltyer.

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HMS
Compared to the pile of shit that other major artists have released in the 80ies, Dirty Work shines brightly! For me their best post-Black & Blue-release and in no way crap. Reading some postings here makes me wonder if we actually talking about the same album...

Steaming pile of $hit is a steaming pile of $hit, it doesn't matter what decade it was released in.

Granted, I agree '80s was a terrible time for music but still, there are tons of things released that same year that far trump Dirty Work

True Leonid

For starters...

or perhaps this Stones influenced track?



Edited 2 time(s). Last edit at 2015-07-31 21:29 by andrewt.

still better than that bloody awful "Undercover" LP.....

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LeonidP
Steaming pile of $hit is a steaming pile of $hit

At least you admit that Dirty Work steams

Yes indeed, it steams, it steams with raw power, rage, anger, violence, greatness. What we need is a 30th anniversary Dirty Work Tour in 2016. If they rehearse properly it would be a smash.

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RipThisBone
1986...DIRTY WORK...30 years ago next year...

Many IORR's consider this 1986 album one of their weakest.
So do I, but it would make a better and more interesting DELUXE release than STICKY FINGERS De Luxe 2015 and could even sell more copies.

DIRTY WORK DELUXE 2016:

- A NEW COVER - (The black and white close up shot used for promo at the time)

CD 1:
Remixed original album with the 12"inches (Harlem Shuffle, One Hit and Winning Ugly as bonustracks).

CD 2 (for example):
1.ONE HIT (long/early version)
2.STRICTLY MEMPHIS
3.TALK IS CHEAP
4.HARLEM SHUFFLE (long version with Bobby Womack talking lyrics version)
5.VICTOR HUGO
6.HAD IT WITH YOU (long/early version
7.SOME OF US ARE ON OUR KNEES
8.DEEP LOVE
9.CRUSHED PEARL (new 2016 MJ vocal)
10.CAN'T CUT THE MUSTARD (RW vocal)
11.SLEEP TONIGHT

The subject line of this post alone is a contradiction

Someone really likes it.

[humanizingthevacuum.wordpress.com]


Dirty Work: ‘a tattered, embarrassed triumph’
Posted on August 14, 2015 by humanizingthevacuum

As the online bone structure of Stylus Magazine begins to fray like an undusted dinosaur skeleton in a museum, I’ve taken to scanning, printing, and caching my archives. I’ll post them from time to time. One of my first pieces was this reconsideration of the most reviled Stones album. High on zealotry, I made a couple of ridiculous statements. “For one, Dirty Work lacks any concession calculated to win a segment of the marketplace” — er, no. “One Hit (To the Body)” and “Fight” sound like Steve Lillywhite fell in love with someone’s description of Ratt and added anabolic steroids so that the tracks boomed like War-era U2 and the P-Furs before the mousse. Dirty Work‘s creators were Keith Richards and Ron Wood, assemblers of a project Krazy Glued into fruition from errant guitar parts, hired guns doing their damndest not to sound like Bill Wyman and Charlie Watts, nattering reggae tracks given dub sonar echo, and Mick Jagger at his most unhinged. Peek behind the mismatched aural stitches of “Hold Back” and the synth slime and unmoored backup vocals on “Winning Ugly” and a lead singer mocked for a Jacksons collaboration and unnerved by the polite reaction to the solo album that he’d certainly earned the right to record — he hired Bill Laswell and Nile Rodgers and all he got was a prime Live Aid spot? I stand by this:

What gives Dirty Work its fitful power is the aggression the Stones’ handlers have hyped since they were supposedly the anti-Beatles. Except now they’re not “channeling” (read “exploiting”) anger, as they did on the marvelous secondhand belligerence of Some Girls: they’ve surrendered to it; they’ve agreed to loathe each other.

At any rate I still love the @#$%&-upness of the record, and had Dirty Work been the last Stones album it would have made a gauche, apt epitaph. And this track the benediction.

——

November 19, 2004:

Let’s start with the cover: the five Rolling Stones, in harlequin haberdashery, scattered like spent shells across a couch. To a man they look dreadful. Mick Jagger, bare feet protruding from Winnie the Pooh-colored pants, holds the camera with insolent, tight-lipped scorn. Bill Wyman and Ron Wood pose like middle-aged leches. Even the redoubtable Charlie Watts can barely contain his disinterest.

Only Keith Richards manages to keep his equipoise—no small feat when you’re wearing a sports jacket Sonny Crockett would gladly have sold at a rummage sale. It’s to Keith (and, to a lesser degree, Ronnie) that we must turn as we try to defend Dirty Work, an album which, then and now, inspires nothing but loathing. Everyone knows the back story: Jagger, ego swollen by the moderate success of his first solo album (the pneumatic She’s The Boss) and Live Aid performance opposite Tina Turner (“sizzling” in a New York Rockettes kind of way), could barely hold his contempt for the four men whose combined assets paid for all the blow Jagger snorted in Studio 54. Richards and Wood cobbled together 10 tracks (two covers!) which in most cases relied on outsiders like Jimmy Page and Anton Fig to play the parts Wyman and Watts were too bored or strung out to play. Journeyman producer Steve Lillywhite’s hamfisted mix and cavernous drum sound accentuate what’s missing.

None of this sounds appetizing; but Dirty Work is a tattered, embarrassed triumph, by far the most interesting Stones album since Some Girls at every level: lyrical, conceptual, instrumental. For one, Dirty Work lacks any concession calculated to win a segment of the marketplace: no disco crossovers like “Emotional Rescue”, no AOR anthems like “Start Me Up”. What gives Dirty Work its fitful power is the aggression the Stones’ handlers have hyped since they were supposedly the anti-Beatles. Except now they’re not “channeling” (read “exploiting”) anger, as they did on the marvelous secondhand belligerence of Some Girls: they’ve surrendered to it; they’ve agreed to loathe each other. Hence the most venomous guitar sound of the Stones’ career, and Jagger’s most committed vocals. Despite copping to tired ‘80s subjects like nuclear apocalypse (“Back to Zero,” the album’s lone turd), all this aggression is reflexive. As Robert Christgau—still the album’s most lucid defender—noted, these are songs of conscience only well-known sons of bitches can get away with.

The obscure second single “One Hit (To The Body)” is an ideal introduction, remembered for the infamous video (in which Jagger and Richards duck and feint like Ali and Foreman). What a striking opening! An acoustic strum, followed by an electric crackle that’s like an elbow to the ribs, and then Jagger, making the explicit case for love-as-violence that 1983’s Undercover argued in more puerile a fashion. “Fight” and “Dirty Work” are more of the same, although the latter’s pointed condemnations are remarkable coming from a man for whom emotional stonewalling is as natural as @#$%& models: “Let somebody do the dirty work…find some jerk, do it all for free”.

But it’s on “Hold Back” where Jagger, the “voice of experience”, really lets it rip. That Keith and Ronnie add particularly sympathetic fills to a song defending self-interest underscores its malevolent irony. Jagger, “caught in this tree of promises for over 40 years”, gives us lesser mortals the sort of advice that only a plutocrat who’s never worked a day in his life can offer. See, since Stalin and Roosevelt “each took their chances”, you gotta trust your gut reaction, so don’t hold back. Mick’s performance is irony-free; he’s pissed about something, shouting and braying like he wants to gnaw at the microphone. Lillywhite earns his paycheck: the guitars surround, taunt, and goad; the drumming by Watts or Wood or whoever shoves Jagger down a flight of stairs. The rhythm guitar coda is superfluous, an afterthought; how could it be anything else? In “Hold Back” the Stones, finally, embrace their image: they’re dangerous, they don’t wanna hold your hand, they want your money. It’s a masterpiece.

Richards is rarely given credit as a singer; he doesn’t sound a thing like Jagger, and that’s a plus. Whether it’s Exile on Main Street’s “Happy”, Emotional Rescue’s “All About You” or his tear-inducing segment on “Memory Motel,” he wipes the irony his partner smears indiscriminately like cum on a rag. When “Sleep Tonight” creeps in, ushered by ghostly piano, it’s like tomato juice for a hangover. Possibly Keith’s best ballad, it offers the reconciliation that “Had It With You” (in which Jagger refers to you-know-who as a “dirty, dirty rat scum” and “mean mistreater”) denies. But with Jagger so defenseless on most of Dirty Work, Richards’ junkie-Dean-Martin vocals echo instead of foil, conferring grace on an album which embraces the deadly sins with diabolical abandon.

It’s “Sleep Tonight”’s most poignant irony that two songwriters who’ve spent 40 minutes bitching like Golden Girls affirm their partnership’s continuing vitality. “Those thoughts of you / They’re chilling me / The moon grows cold in memory”, Richards croaks, and you know why the dirty, dirty rat scum is smiling: Steel Wheels awaits three years later, and then Voodoo Lounge, followed by—somebody stop me. Plutocrats never know when to quit.

As I always say, the best Stones-album après "Black And Blue". I feel the need to listen to it right now.

hmmm...very interesting review. Almost made me want to go back and relisten to the album.

ALMOST.

But calling Hold Back a masterpiece leads to the realization this guy's on crack.

Like Their Satanic Majesties Request, I reckon time will be kinder to Dirty Work as the album is seen in bigger context of the times and the stones own history.

A deluxe edition with outtakes etc etc might help that.

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His Majesty
Like Their Satanic Majesties Request, I reckon time will be kinder to Dirty Work as the album is seen in bigger context of the times and the stones own history.

A deluxe edition with outtakes etc etc might help that.

yeah, it's only been 30 years...prolly just need another 20 or so and we'll think Dirty Work is an absolute CLASSIC!

I think people have been urged to feel Dirty Work is a crap album through sound bites
Sheeple will just go along with what people suggest
I thought DW was a good album at the time it came out and i still think its a good album today
Just think of the rubbish it was in competition with in 85' 86'
Duran Duran , Motley Crue

Always liked DW. It has great songs on it, You get the tension in the band at the time. Lots going on. Interesting time in the band's history.

Love Dirty Work, Had It With You, Sleep Tonight, Winning Ugly. In fact I like the whole album. Very underrated, maybe even by the band too. Who knows?

Only the production sound (Lillywhite) I don't like. If you look beyond that, you get a great record.

Always liked it, and I am not afraid to go against the flow.

It's ok to like it and at the same time admit it's the worst thing they've ever put out, IMHO.

My point is that with the volume of everything else they've ever done, I never quite feel the urge to reach for it.

Not their greatest work. Agreed. But I play it more than A Bigger Bang right now.

I guess what i am trying to say is, the Stones garbage is much better than some one else's masterpiece
So its still a master piece then lol

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scottkeef
still better than that bloody awful "Undercover" LP.....

How many concussions have you had?