I didn't hear VL in months but I played it today and, wow, IMO is the last spark of the old Rolling Stones magic. They sound like a real rock band, with great rockers, great slow numbers and the most important, is not dated as almost every post Tattoo You album. It's better than ABB (a good album), better production, better songs, no adult contemporary or pop stuff, a latter day classic and very respectable record. It was also, by far, their best selling studio album since '81 and won the Grammy for best rock album in 1995.
I'm hearing it again at full volume, 'I Go Wild' is playing now and nothing in B2B or ABB sounds so fresh and dangerous, I can't be ashamed for any song like some of the numbers in the last two CD's.

I can add Stripped in the bag too, the perfect combo.



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 2006-09-02 08:22 by georgelicks.

I listened to VL a few months ago and by and large it has aged well. Love Is Strong sits up there with all their great singles.

Only when the Stones are dead as a recording and touring entity will their latter day releases be fully re-considered and appreciated. To date the general public, and to a lesser extent committed fans, focus on a pereceived "golden era" rather than the whole body of work. One day lesser known works will receive the recognition they deserve.

In 95 I went to a VW (who were sponsoring the tour) event with my brother in law who is in the car trade. VL was being hyoped up there but he and others just didn't get it. They couldn't see beyond what we now find on 40 Licks. Radio stations are the same so essentially anything post 1981 is restricted to us devotees.

Voodoo Lounge is a good album...still gets plenty of play in our household!

yes it is superior to ABB and BTB

I've always loved VL but am wondering whether ABB may be even better - as I mentioned before, I think we really couldn't have expected anything better than ABB in 2005/6 from the Stones and it gets a lot of airplay from me here in London.

Apart from a couple of tracks (Saint, Keef's reggae track and - gulp - ASM, I just cannot listen to B2B. Flip The Switch was great live but not the same on record, much of the rest hugely disappointing filler. Sorry!

I think VL is superior to BTB but not to ABB.

I like it but I really only play'''Blinded by Rainbows'''A fantastic..political ballad....The Worst..Brand new Car...Moon is Up...Out of tears..Baby break it down(great soul music!)...those songs do it for me....to me it feels as if they wanted to remake Exile...I like ABB more.

There is one Stones song I dont really like ...and that is ''Í Go Wild''

Interesting that Rooster suggests they wanted to remake Exile. I seem to recall Jagger being critical of Don Was for wanting to dio exactly that.

And that long Keith tune I love too...can you remember that one?

The Worst and Thru and Thru.

Yeah...that one...i do like that one...cheers!!

They've gotten better each time over the course of their last four studio releases as far as I'm concerned. Steel Wheels was too glossy and overproduced and a lot of the material was so-so, but it had a handful of songs I still enjoy (Continental Drift, Mixed Emotions, Slipping Away, Hold On To Your Hat). Voodoo Lounge was still too slick and overproduced, but not as much as Steel Wheels, and it had an absolutely classic single in Love Is Strong and 6 or 7 other really solid numbers.

Bridges To Babylon was brilliant in my opinion. I thought the modern production and approach really worked on numbers like Might As Well Get Juiced, Gunface and Anybody Seen My Baby, and Keith's three songs were killer. I really love the mix of styles and the contrasts on that album; the only songs that I wouldn't rate as very good or better are Jagger's two sappy ballads, Always Suffering and Already Over Me.

And then we have A Bigger Bang, their best album since Some Girls or at least Tattoo You. The production is minimal and right on, the guitars sound great and most of the songs are fantastic. There's some filler on there, and some cringe-inducing Jagger lyrics here and there, but overall I couldn't believe they could put out something that good at this stage.

I agree with those on this thread who said their later work is going to be critically re-evaluated in a more positive light in the future, after the band is no more and we can look at their entire body of work as a whole and with the wisdom of hindsight.

I think ABB best Then Voodoo then B2B, Then Steel Of last 4. Yes I Like Vo0doovery Much. MEZ

ohnonotyouagain Wrote:
-------------------------------------------------------
> .
>
> Bridges To Babylon was brilliant in my opinion. I
> thought the modern production and approach really
> worked on numbers like Might As Well Get Juiced,
> Gunface and Anybody Seen My Baby, and Keith's
> three songs were killer. I really love the mix of
> styles and the contrasts on that album; the only
> songs that I wouldn't rate as very good or better
> are Jagger's two sappy ballads, Always Suffering
> and Already Over Me.
>
>


I listened to B2B recently and I found it to be very 'cringe-worthy'!
Anybody is an aweful song!! Embarassing really!
Flip the Switch has some stupid lyrics, I was surprised when that was played live. They're are 3 song I love, Saint,Too Tight and Thief. The rest I put in that same place as Steel Wheels or Diry Work. Hopefully we will get outtakes like from SW. They totally redemmed that lp for me.

liked it from day 1........and still do.......solid effort

I also think ABB is better but I think VL is their second best out of all the post TY releases. It would have gotten much more attention if it had come out ten years earlier, but it still went double platinum, won the best rock album grammy and had four top forty hits in the U.K. I think the albums also was number one in the U.K..

I like the mellow sound some of the songs have and "Sweethearts Together" would make a great wedding song.

coffeepotman Wrote:
-------------------------------------------------------
> I listened to B2B recently and I found it to be
> very 'cringe-worthy'!
> Anybody is an aweful song!! Embarassing really!
> Flip the Switch has some stupid lyrics, I was
> surprised when that was played live. They're are
> 3 song I love, Saint,Too Tight and Thief. The
> rest I put in that same place as Steel Wheels or
> Diry Work. Hopefully we will get outtakes like
> from SW. They totally redemmed that lp for me.


I think that way about BtB too. With the exception that I like ANybody Seen My Baby....but I didn't care much for it in 1997.
Voodoo Lounge is a much better album.

FrankM Wrote:
-------------------------------------------------------
> I also think ABB is better but I think VL is their
> second best out of all the post TY releases. It
> would have gotten much more attention if it had
> come out ten years earlier, but it still went
> double platinum, won the best rock album grammy
> and had four top forty hits in the U.K. I think
> the albums also was number one in the U.K..


I rank VL over ABB any day, it rocks harder, better songs, better guitar work.
And yes, it was #1 in over 20 countries (Canada, UK, Germany, Holland, Japan, Argentina, Brazil, Uruguay, Swiss, Australia, Spain, Portugal, Norway, Denmark, among others) and a comercial success, 5.5 million copies sold, the double of ABB and two Grammy awards.

Voodoo Lounge was a bit too long, but it's a fairly interesting record (Moon Is Up, New Faces are pretty revealing; You Got Me Rocking is a barnstorming ... ur, rocker; and Out Of Tears is a beaut). On the downside, they had some great B-Sides that should have made it on the album, especially So Young and Jump On Top Of Me. But, yoiu know, they never ask me to sequence their albums.

i really liked it alot when it came out, but it hasn't aged well with me. there's something too polite, mature about the sound of the album. the guitars are muted, Was thinks he's making a Bonnie Raitt album or something. He seemed to be trying to make his own version of Exile. For the sake of eclecticism he ignored great outtakes like Honest Man and for the sake of making it sound like some Adult Alternative recording he ignored some great groove tunes (which i remember he railed against in the RS interview at the time) like Make It Now. VL could've been a very adventurous album but instead they chose to make it a classicist, Stones retro release.

ABB is better than Voodoo. Loved BTB when it came out, but it is definately cringe worthy for the most part. VOODOO has a lot of great songs, but I hate the production. Charlie's drums sound dull...and all the rockers on ABB sound much better than YGMR( why the hell do they still play this piece of generic rock is beyond me-it's horrible and juvenile in lyrics like it belongs on a POISON or BON JOVI album) PURE b-side material.

A good album that could have been a VERY good one with a bit of trimming, and replacing a couple of the duds on it with Honest Man or one or two of the b-sides

I prefer BTB (the most consistent of all the post-tattoo You albums) and ABB (possibly the best of the albums of the last 25 years)

Bashlets Wrote:
-------------------------------------------------------
> and all the rockers on ABB sound much
> better than YGMR( why the hell do they still play
> this piece of generic rock is beyond me




Agreed! with so many other rockers to choose why this one. Maybe because the audience can go HEY HEY! I also thought Flip the Switch was crap too.

YGMR is one of the few times on VL the band actually seems to work up a sweat, but the verse lyrics are total shite, chorus is your typical rah-rah made for live stuff. After YGMR, comes the mediocre SWF and then after three uptempo rock tracks the album shifts gears and IMHO becomes very boring, with only I Go Wild and Mean Dispisition as the only rockers after that. Was is a putz and proves it with song selection and the sequencing of VL, abyssmal.

a wonderful album indeed; the best of the "nu era" Stones. (YGMpuking, Sharks will Cry & out of 'ears' aside) Moon Is Up is the best Stones tune of the '90s - and better than anything on ABB.

Moon Is Up definitely is one of the highlights, a great tune all the way around

Well, well, well. We will never agree on this. But I remember from some interview with Keith that he mentioned VL to be the stones trying to make an album even stronger than Exile.
So much for that - I still don't really like VL - but I promise to listen it through one of the comming days. But in my opinion B2B is one of the strongest albums they ever made.
ABB sounds a little desperate to me. Kind of we better make a really good album. It is very stonesy, it has some strong points but the desperation shines through. Actually I can hear the signature of Undercover in several songs.

Steen G Wrote:
-------------------------------------------------------
> Well, well, well. We will never agree on this. But
> I remember from some interview with Keith that he
> mentioned VL to be the stones trying to make an
> album even stronger than Exile.
> So much for that - I still don't really like VL -
> but I promise to listen it through one of the
> comming days. But in my opinion B2B is one of the
> strongest albums they ever made.
> ABB sounds a little desperate to me. Kind of we
> better make a really good album. It is very
> stonesy, it has some strong points but the
> desperation shines through. Actually I can hear
> the signature of Undercover in several songs.



there is some great material on B2B, but it just never sounded cohesive to me, like a mick solo ep, a keith solo ep and a stones ep, all mixed into one. not to mention waddy wachtel seems to be heard more than keith or ronnie. i do like the fact that they took some stylistic detours on it and experimented with their sound. gunface and juiced are superb, SOM and OOC classic, and Don't Have To Mean It would've been an adventerous choice for a single

Erik_Snow Wrote:
-------------------------------------------------------
> coffeepotman Wrote:
> --------------------------------------------------
> -----
> > I listened to B2B recently and I found it to be
> > very 'cringe-worthy'!
> > Anybody is an aweful song!! Embarassing really!
> > Flip the Switch has some stupid lyrics, I was
> > surprised when that was played live. They're
> are
> > 3 song I love, Saint,Too Tight and Thief. The
> > rest I put in that same place as Steel Wheels
> or
> > Diry Work. Hopefully we will get outtakes like
> > from SW. They totally redemmed that lp for me.
>
>
> I think that way about BtB too. With the exception
> that I like ANybody Seen My Baby....but I didn't
> care much for it in 1997.
> Voodoo Lounge is a much better album.

Lots of people feel that way. I'm definitely in the minority in liking bridges better than Voodoo Lounge. I just think Bridges has aged a lot better. It still sounds fresh to me and Voodoo a bit dated.