Funny enough - three years earlier Ronnie and Mick T with

High and Lonesome

'Blue & Lonesome' currently only £6.99 in iTunes UK:

[iTunes.apple.com]

Vote on Album of the year section
[www.jazzfmawards.com]

sorry if it has already been posted

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Stone601
sorry if it has already been posted

You mean, you didn't search first before you posted?

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Koen

Quote
Stone601
sorry if it has already been posted

You mean, you didn't search first before you posted?

Not always

Done!

brook's and DUNN!

According to IFPI's annual report, B&L was the #6 best selling album worldwide in 2016 with 1.8 million units:

Title and artist Units (m)
1 Lemonade BEYONCÉ 2.5
2 25 ADELE 2.4
3 Views DRAKE 2.3
4 Hardwired...to Self-destruct METALLICA 2.1
5 Blackstar DAVID BOWIE 1.9
6 Blue & Lonesome THE ROLLING STONES 1.8
7 24k Magic BRUNO MARS 1.7
8 Blurryface TWENTY ONE PILOTS 1.5
9 A Head Full Of Dreams COLDPLAY 1.4
10 A Pentatonix Christmas PENTATONIX 1.4

Source: IFPI. Physical and digital albums included. Jan 1-Dec 31 2016

[www.ifpi.org]

The album has sold over 300k this year so the current total is over 2.100,000.

[www.dailymail.co.uk]

Already posted in the Charlie Watts jazz awards, didn't see it , sorry for repeating a post

Maybe just a function of their respective diaries... but with everybody else being there its a pity Keith didn't fly over.

Thanks

"You won't have seen this ad on TV. The good people at Polydor however granted us permission to show this TV commercial we developed for the Rolling Stones album, Blue & Lonesome. Somewhere along the line it wasn't chosen as the main ad - these things happen - however at Monument we were super proud of this piece, and are thrilled to be able to show it to you.
A real mix of live action, rotoscoped band members, motion graphics, animation, CGI and VFX. It's a mish mash of things that are blues, things that are reds and things that are awesome!
We even spent hours shooting a classic truck for precisely half a second of footage! That's passion."

[vimeo.com]

Quote
Cristiano Radtke
"You won't have seen this ad on TV. The good people at Polydor however granted us permission to show this TV commercial we developed for the Rolling Stones album, Blue & Lonesome. Somewhere along the line it wasn't chosen as the main ad - these things happen - however at Monument we were super proud of this piece, and are thrilled to be able to show it to you.
A real mix of live action, rotoscoped band members, motion graphics, animation, CGI and VFX. It's a mish mash of things that are blues, things that are reds and things that are awesome!
We even spent hours shooting a classic truck for precisely half a second of footage! That's passion."

[vimeo.com]

Nice.
Jeroen

Cool!!

....Red Blue & cooooooooooooool ... fanks Cristiano....



ROCKMAN

Anybody else noted the vinyl sounds so much better than the cd?
Got myself the cd package with the booklet this week and it just occurred to me this great album sounds horrible on cd compared to the vinyl.

Hi, I wrote this piece already in December last year, but wasn’t inspired enough to finish it. But despite of that, and it being so long, sloppy and  boring, I did release it at one other site. But I decided to move - or restore - it now here. My take on BLUE & LONESOME hasn’t changed basically since then. So let me interview myself haha….
——
 
Okay, Doxa, what do you think of this new blues album?
 
Well, the idea of it – a pure blues album – has been a sort of romantic hardcore fan dream to come true as far as I can remember. I also have flirted with the idea, even though I’ve been rather skeptical about the actual outcome as well. I usually find the odd blues numbers they occasionally do – such as ”Fancy Man Blues”, ”The Storm”, ”Back of My Hand” – probably the most enjoyable pieces in their catalogue from the last 30 years or so; they sounding so relaxed, not trying to copy latest trends or, even worse, trying to sound too much like The Rolling Stones. But I still have thought a whole album consisting of such a material probably would turn out to be way too one-dimensional and even tiresome. The Stones probably are not that good blues band to keep it that exciting. My take has been that ‘yeah, a theoretically exciting idea, but probably better never to be realized’.

So that said, I was positively surprised how great the record turned out to be. I was stunned how raw, relaxed and passionate the first singles sounded. If, as I wrote earlier, the rest of the tracks would be anything equal, we would have some kind of little latter-career masterpiece in our hands. Well, they were, and what was even more, I was stunned by the variance of the material. There is no dull moment, no repitition, no filler tune in the album. Each track contributes to the whole and to the others. A pleasing listening experience: the album flows from the start to finish; each song is a little blues statement of its own, but also contributing the impression of the whole. There is nothing that is not needed, and there is nothing that is missing; a cohesive little showcase of the Chicago blues in its different forms. It is like an old time vinyl album: short enough, and well-thought concept-wise. I can’t recall when I have listened any new Stones item as many times in repeat as I have this one. Probably ”Plundered My Soul”, but that was just one song, this is a whole album. And not tired yet.
 
That’s nice to hear, knowing your habitual critical stance over the Stones doings in recent years. So you think that it is a ‘masterpiece’, something equal to their great works in the past?
 
Haha… that’s absurd to claim. Of course, it is not any LET IT BLEED or SOME GIRLS. Probably I could argue that it is ‘best since Tattoo You’, like many have already done, but even that is a bit far-reaching. How would you compare a three-days cover-song effort to such a big and long, creatively demanding projects such as UNDERCOVER, STEEL WHEELS, etc. ? I think the strenght of BLUE & LONESOME is that it artistically offers ‘something different’, something out of their comfort zone, out of their box. The truth is that the ‘standard Stones sound’- a result of the Stones copying themselves for ages – has turned out to be such a cliche that it hardly excites even a hardcore fan, not to mention anyone else. It is nice to notice that the buying audience has also recognized it. I guess the reason for its strong sales (by the day’s criteria) is not just ”yeah, it’s the Stones, man”, but that of ”man, that actually sounds good”.
It is too early to say how lasting impact the record will have. Probably it is a ‘flavor of the month’ type of thing, and just a footnote in the long run. But it doesn’t matter – personally I think the Stones needed this kind of artistically positive argument in this late phase of their career, having known mostly for their ‘greatest hits’ shows for decades. It looks good in their CV. Even better, making #1 album out of non-compromised, raw old blues material, shit, could anyone thought that possible in 2016? And somehow, The Stones doing that, by repeating almost ancient history, sounds almost like a fairytale… The wonder of ”Little Red Rooster” repeated…
 
So how would you rate their recent readings of blues against their old efforts?
 
Comparing the recent ‘elder statemen of rock’ paying homage to their old heroes to those young blues missioners popularizing the blues would be almost like comparing them to the actual Chicago blues masters; they are so different in different circumstances that I think we need different concepts to evaluate them rightfully. I mean, is there any point in trying to compare, say, their 2014 reading of ”Blue and Lonesome” or “Little Rain”, with, say, their 1964 reading of ”Little Red Rooster” or “Confessin’ The Blues”? They probably are now a better blues band (that is, being more able to offer more accurate readings of the originals, as they were not in, say, 1964), having all that experience and all, but that doesn’t translate that they are able to do as great and memorable records. What was so great and unique in those early readings – the sheer youthful energy and attitude and playing like your whole existence depends on that – that sort of momentum can never been recreated again. Now listened, the less they succeeded to capture the originals, the more authentic and charming they sounded, and thereby more point we still have listening to them. (The most important are the ones recorded in two days in the legendary Chess studios during their first American tour – sessions done under the supervision of their heroes sounding like a final thesis for the studies that started when Brian, Mick and Keith put a band together and started to cham the London club circuit).

I think the best this new album does is sometimes giving us some sort of recollections of the past. It almost like discusses and explains some phases of their own story. Take ”I Gotta Go” – holy shit, Jagger sounds like the boyish voice of 1964! Or listen the hectic roll of ”Ride ‘Em All Down” – isn’t that exactly like the band making the same rocking mess as they did in many of their fast early R&B numbers? Or ”The Way I Treat You”. It could be that the leading sonic idea they had was that of recreating the atmosphere of classical mid-50’s Chess recordings, but there are tracks that reminds me so much of the sounds of especially their first English EP – just listen the distortion in tracks like ”Bye Bye Johnny” or ”Money”. The opening number would be like a showcase of any mid-60’s British R&B playing the 12 Bar Blues (a nice to way to open the album, a good introduction to the theme).

Then there are those ‘golden era’ blues covers, doing at the time when they were at the height of their powers as a creative unit, just having discovered their unique voice and sound they now used without a shame. The same argument holds here. As little as they could now recreate the unique magic of ”Rocks Off” or ”Brown Sugar”, as little they can recreate the unique magic of ”Love In Vain” or ”Shake Your Hips”. That band and phase is long gone. But then again, it is great to hear Jagger doing ”Little Rain” – isn’t there a nice reminscant of the voice of ”@#$%& Blues” or ”Hill Side Blues”? Or ”Hate To See You Go” – isn’t there that frightening, omnipotent rock god of EXILE period (”Shake Your Hips”, ”Stop Breakin’ Down”)? Also the Clapton cuts are offering us glimpses of the phase they had a Clapton-like guitarist in their band.

A side note: if their initial mission was to popularize the electric Chicago blues, their golden period was heavily rooted on studying more deeply the country blues. Within those three consequent albums – Beggars, Bleed and Sticky Fingers – there is a trilogy of deep country blues songs (”Prodigal Son”, ”Love In Vain”, ”You Gotta Move”). Exile brought us more back to Chicago, accomplishing the Blues Americana.
 
So how good the Stones are as a blues band?
 
Again, a conceptual difference. I think they are the best Rolling Stones-sounding blues band that there is. But of course, the Stones would never charm ‘blues purists’, and I am sure Mick Jagger (him probably being one) would be the first to recognize this. Anyone taking blues seriously – acknowledging the factor which makes people like Robert Johnson, Muddy Waters, Leadbelly, Little Walter, Howlin’ Wolf etc such stunning – knows that the Stones, even at their best, are just a pale pop rock interpretation in compared to the ‘real thing’. This is a ‘purist’ stance, and I think we don’t need to question it. To dig the Stones doing the blues one would add something to the experience, call it ‘Stones extension’ – that is, we find some idiosyncratic features. We have to remember that the Stones never contributed to the story of the blues musically anyway, never adding anything to the canon. They always were and are ‘outsiders’, and they always been rather frank about it (if we forget Keith’s self-mythologizing romantic talks). They did popularize it, yes, and they used it in creating their own blues-based rock music, but that’s another story.

It is actually this innocent and humble attitude of ‘look man, we know that we are not any blues masters, but you know we love playing this music, and we wish you like it too’ that is so charming and obvious in BLUE & LONESOME. I also admire the idea that they didn’t even try to re-write some original Jagger-Richards songs a’la ”Fancy Man Blues” or ”Back of My Hand” (in the old manner of ”Little By Little” and ”The Spider And The Fly”) – a sort of pastishe blues songs based on way too obvious pattern – and thereby claiming for pretended originality, but instead dig deep on their own blues record archives. Even there they didn’t rely on the most obvious choices – no Muddy, no John Lee, no B.B. King, nor ”Hootchie-Cootchie Man”, ”Boom Boom” or ”Everyday I Have The Blues”– but probably not so well-known names and songs to a general public (but, of course, not for ‘purists’).
 
Mick Jagger’s contribution in vocals and harmonica has been praised a lot. What do you think?
 
Well, the first impression I had when listening the whole album first time through was that of ‘wow, Jagger is on fire’: this is really a Mick Jagger showcase. I think that’s the impression for many people: the band is solid and good, as it should be in music like this, but it is the singer that makes the difference, making this album unique sounding in compared to any other album in the same genre. And I guess the album actually stands or falls in regards to what one thinks of Jagger’s voice, which stands out everywhere. If his voice altogether is seen too ‘thin’ or shamelessly ‘English’, as one can imagine if the comparison is the real masters, well… no matter how well the band plays, I can understand why they – the blues purists – can’t stand this album. Of course, for the people who love The Rolling Stones or generally prefer pop rock, Jagger is Jagger here, and for those ears, doing a great job in interpreting the blues. I belong to the latter group.

An important distinction: I don’t even think of Jagger as a ‘real’ or ‘good’ blues singer, but what happens in BLUE & LONESOME is a rock singer Mick Jagger singing the blues and in that sounding unique, fresh and awesome. That was the biggest singular positive surprise in this album. I need to admit I was very concerned about that; for example, what he does a couple of years ago in their version of Dylan’s ”Watching The River Flow”, full of over-interpretation, nasal and typical late-day Jagger mannerisms, didn’t sound promising. Luckily, there are only some little signs of that (occasionally in ”I Can’t Quit You Baby”). Jagger’s harp is strong and distinctive throughout the album. But the thing is, if one is familiar with Little Walter, Jagger’s playing is probably not that impressive.
 
Hey, wait a minute, do you mean that ‘blues purists’ cannot like this album?
 
Well, they can, if they are big-hearted enough or like Jagger’s voice an sich. But the problem lies deeper. We have to remember that this album is not directed to ‘blues purists’ as more than their early recordings were. Like then, this is done for a bigger audience. The same old principle of ‘popularizing the blues’ holds here. It could be that even for the Stones fans who are familiar with the original versions – and having a bit of ‘blues purism’ in their hearts – the Stones doesn’t actually ‘add’ much difference or offer some artistically important surprises here. I can very well understand anyone who has grown up listening to Howlin’ Wolf singing ”Commit A Crime”, and knows the song thereby, whatever Jagger does, it would sound lame. The same argument could be directed to against all of them, especially since they try so one-to-one follow the originals. My heuristic advice simply is: try to forget all you know about the originals, and just try to concentrate this as a product of its own. Or better: just think of it solely in the context of The Rolling Stones, not in a correspondence with the blues tradition. To put it in simple terms: they might not sound very authentic or even be a great blues band, or adding anything to blues legacy, but they sound damn fine Rolling Stones making a statement in a contemporary pop world.
 
Okay, I try to get it, let’s keep talking the album in terms of a Rolling Stones musical world, and let’s forget the blues tradition. We already talked about Jagger. What about the others then?
 
The band shines. Like one living big organ. It feels cruel even trying to discriminate elements from there, since each of them supports the wholeness so perfectly. Generally I tend to approach music as a wholesome deal; it is the over-all impression that matters, and when trying to reduce it to pieces, something crucial is lost in that ‘analysis’. But it holds here extraordinary strongly. This is the best exemplary for ages what Keith Richards means when saying that ”I shine when the band shines”. I thought he had forgotten that philosophy. I would go even so far that they haven’t sounded so cohesive, and band-like since the legendaric SOME GIRLS album.

But as asked, I try to say something about the individual players. After the Jagger show, when one starts wondering what the hell happens behind him, one cannot but notice the huge presence of Ronnie Wood. He probably is given more room since the mentioned SOME GIRLS. He actually sounds like a full-blooded, independent band member, not just a sidekick of Keith filling gaps left by the maestro and being careful to not step on his shoes. Ronnie is everywhere, all the time, doing anything: weaving with Keith, adding nasty licks, throwing striking solos. And doing it well. Especially what he does in ”Blue and Someone” (song) belongs some of his most distinguished recordings ever with the Rolling Stones. It could be that giving more freedom, responsibilities and space to Ronnie, and thereby altering a bit the guitar dynamics within the band, has something to do with why they actually sound so organic and cohesive. The difference, for example, to A BIGGER BANG is a huge one in that sense.

This doesn’t mean that maestro Richards is subsided or something. No, he might not be so profilic as usually, but his majestic presence, by setting the feel, can be felt strongly on each track. This is band – or any – leading at its best: you don’t need to be seen or heard all the time, but just a bit back, taking care of that the whole thing – the band – works. Less is more. And there he is with Charlie, keeping that rhythm down-down-down. The engine room of that famous Stones groove. I am afraid that there are even many Rolling Stones fans who don’t quite grasp the genius and uniquoness of Keith Richards in this sense, and might ask ‘more’ from him, that is, to sound more like a ‘normal’ guitar player.

But let me remind that this is once again just reflection inside the Gates of Stones Eden. If one doesn’t have a Stones-trained ears, one might not hear anything extraordinary, nothing actually differing much from a competent blues band playing at your local bar. The whole is just bigger than the sum of its parts, literally. And, of course, and like I argued, it is finally Mick Jagger with whom the whole thing stands or falls.
 
You have made that quite clear. By the way, do you miss Mick Taylor?
 
I knew you were going to ask that. What is a Rolling Stones discussion without dropping his name, huh? Honestly, when I heard about this project, I thought Taylor would nicely fit there. Even more, I thought they will need him; I was rather skeptical about the abilities of Keith and Ronnie to play traditional blues excitingly enough with needed variance throughout a whole album, since they are, how to put it nicely, a bit limited and one-dimensional as blues players. But they prove me wrong. The choice of the material – and Jagger with his harp – also had a huge role there. Besides, Clapton gives us a nice little touch of that kind of blues guitar solo skills Taylor might have added. I think Clapton does a fine job with a good taste. Like I argued earlier, there is nothing missing in this album. I don’t seem to even miss Bill Wyman. Maybe Bob Dylan does…
 
Are there any highlight songs in the album?
 
I have tried to think that one, but I need to conclude that no: I don’t think there is any song that especially stands out. But like I said earlier, there is no filler in the album either. Each track has a justified place in the whole. A high over-all quality: good songs and good performances.
 
So, finally, how would you rate the album? How many stars?
 
Hey, if I would compare it to any other album released this year, I would give it five stars without a doubt. But that doesn’t actually say more than what the quality of recorded music is these days and because I see BLUE & LONESOME a sort of bold, uncompromised statement against the current trends. The record easily makes a difference and shines in the context of ours. It is an important, incredibly good and fresh sounding record in many ways (for example, a great living reminder how lively, great genre Chicago blues once was). But if we compare it to their previous works – and start being a bit more objective – it gets difficult. If I cannot give TATTOO YOU more than four stars (a great record, yeah, but, c’mon, it is not EXILE or LET IT BLEED), three stars starts to be maximum here. I am sorry, but the standard is just so damn high.
 
Fancy a drink?
 
Finally a good question. Yes!

 
- Doxa



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 2017-11-08 11:33 by Doxa.

Great Doxa. gonna read it later.
Jeroen

After "Conversations with Glenn Gould", "Conversations with Doxa"!


C

Great Doxa ! Let's go for a drink now

Nice read Doxas!

Quote
mtaylor
Funny enough - three years earlier Ronnie and Mick T with

High and Lonesome

Superb!

Great format Doxa.....

Brilliant read Doxa, inspired me to light the fire and put album on repeat instead of shopping

That about sums it UP.

Looks like a great read Doxa! Gonna save this for the weekend..

Good thoughts. Also, I agree!

Blue and Lonesome is one of the nominated albums on the Best Traditional Blues Album category, on the 2018 Grammys.

[www.grammy.com]