How do you rate this tune from Undercover from scale of 1-10. Oh no, guess whose back! or I'll take thoughts in general. The Mez needs the info for his data collection scales of diehards.Is this a good tune? MEZ

It is indeed - an 8.5/10 at least. I've fantasized about this one being played in theater shows for a while now . . .

Very good song, that's one that they should have tried during the 85/86 tour.

Undercover was a very good record....highly underrated. Songs like the title track, Too Much Blood and Wanna Hold You are as good as anything the band has done since the early 70s.

All The Way Down still sounds good. I'd rate it 7.5-8.

Is there a good reissue of Undercover out there on CD?

I'd say 8 of 10. very good stuff! Undercover=underrated!

I heard the album last week, can't believe how good is it. The Virgin reissue is the way to go, at full volume it rocks harder than any album post 1981.

I give it 9 out of 10 solely for the lyrics:

" I was king, Mr Cool, just a snotty little fool...
Like the Kids are now."

I think this is as close as we will ever get to MJ actually getting whimsical about lost youth. For me it is a lyric that has always hit home since first hearing it and now really resonates two decades later.

And the music ain't all that bad either.

Too Tough is a rocker. Started out as Cellophane Trousers I think.

"Still I play the fool and strut.
and still you're a slut!
Hey Babe!"

the shoot 'em dead, brainbell jangler!

2nd best song on the album after Pain of Love

I like this song; actually I like this record, a lot. I just wish that they had laid off on some of the "modern" production--they mess up some good songs--Too Tough comes to mind--great riff (yes, it is Cellophane Trousers) but the production of the tune..........

cellophane trousers? it's practically JJF!

JJ Flash?

My friend, must TOTALLY disagree--just went back and listened to it--Too Tough--pretty clear. Also sort of resembles Going Down. But not JJF.

At .08 it is the exact opening chords of Too Tough. Actually sounds like Can't Explain at one point.



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 2007-02-08 06:44 by Glass Slide.

not a bad track, but not among my favourities on Undercover (which are the title track, She was hot, Tie you up, Too Tough and It must be hell). I would rate it 7/10.

I love it. It's one of those nice simple "guitar band" numbers that they can knock out just for fun. I have to admit that these numbers are probably my favourite side of the "post Taylor" Stones...which makes me a bit easier to please than a lot of folks I suppose ;^)



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 2007-02-08 15:32 by Spud.

i've been listening to undercover in my car now for a few days (not a lot of casette tape variety in there) - it's the one that sticks in my head, so that says a lot for it (though at times, i've had little indian girl in my head for days as well, insprired by the fan club DVD)

Feel On Baby! My favoutite right now. Love the instrumental version as well.

It Must Be Hell has everything in it from JJF to HTW to Rock and a Hard Place.

Now the years just rush on by
Birthdays, kids, & suicides...

Quite a nostalgic song by Jagger, I'd say....I like it very much, too...

you guys got me inspired..

As soon as I get home, I`ll listen to Undercover!

And, believe me, it`s been a while.. I belong to those underrators..

Wesley

>> As soon as I get home, I`ll listen to Undercover! <<

i'm already home, and it is sounding good
ahhh here comes Too Much Blood - where's Vilhelm??
[kickin off shoes] let's dance! :E



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 2007-02-08 13:55 by with sssoul.

<It Must Be Hell has everything in it from JJF to HTW to Rock and a Hard Place.>

Yes, and of course: Soul Survivor

10.

with sssoul Wrote:
-------------------------------------------------------
> >> As soon as I get home, I`ll listen to
> Undercover! <<
>
> i'm already home, and it is sounding good
> ahhh here comes Too Much Blood - where's Vilhelm??
>
> let's dance! :E

I did my time and listened to Undercover. It has really it`s ups and downs, but don`t they all (with the exceptions of Exile and LI? The good ones were the title track, She Was hot and, as the thread calls, All The Way Down.

My rating is 8,5/10 of all the stuff these guys have done.

W

TT = JJF

there will be no further debate on the subject

StonesTod Wrote:
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> TT = JJF
>
> there will be no further debate on the subject

You forgot to close the thread, StonesTod.

StonesTod Wrote:
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> TT = JJF
>
> there will be no further debate on the subject


Well, that settles that.

Erik_Snow Wrote:
-------------------------------------------------------
> StonesTod Wrote:
> --------------------------------------------------
> -----
> > TT = JJF
> >
> > there will be no further debate on the subject
>
> You forgot to close the thread, StonesTod.

still working with bv on obtaining root access

All The Way Down = 7/10. The weakest song on a great great album. Undercover is the last truly great Stones album. Song for song, it still stands up amazingly well against anything that the Stones have done (except the big 4)

The Stones lost their identity in the 80's but musically this album is a tour-de-force. The PRODUCTION IS ACTUALLY QUITE AMAZING. Maybe the best dance rock album ever.

I am copying/pasting the Rolling Stone review just to reignite fan following for this underrated classic (not that I believe everything they have to say - RS magazine has been wrong about quite a few things but this review is on the mark)
**********************************************************************************
The Rolling Stones

Main | Biography | Articles | Album Reviews | Photos | Videos | Discography | Message Boards

Album Reviews
The Rolling Stones
Undercover
RS: 4of 5 Stars Average User Rating: 3.5of 5 Stars
1994
View The Rolling Stones's page on Rhapsody
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By now, the Rolling Stones have assumed something of the status of the blues in popular music – a vital force beyond time and fashion. Undercover, their twenty-third album (not counting anthologies and outtakes), reassembles, in the manner of mature masters of every art, familiar elements into exciting new forms. It is a perfect candidate for inclusion in a cultural time capsule: should future generations wonder why the Stones endured so long at the very top of their field, this record offers just about every explanation. Here we have the world's greatest rock & roll rhythm section putting out at maximum power; the reeling, roller-derby guitars at full roar; riffs that stick in the viscera, songs that seize the hips and even the heart; a singer who sounds serious again. Undercover is rock & roll without apologies.

There is a moment early on in "Too Tough," a terrific song on the second side, that sums up all of the Stones' extraordinary powers. With the guitars locked into a headlong riff and Mick Jagger hoarsely berating the woman who "screwed me down with kindness" and "suffocating love," the track is already off to a hot start; but then Charlie Watts comes barreling in on tom-toms and boots the tune onto a whole new level of gut-punching brilliance. That the Stones are still capable of such exhilarating energy is cause enough for wondrous comment; that they are able to sustain such musical force over the course of an entire LP is rather astonishing. Undercover is the most impressive of the albums the group has released since its mid-Seventies career slump (the others being Some Girls, Emotional Rescue and 1981's remarkable Tattoo You) because, within the band's R&B-based limits, it is the most consistently and energetically inventive.

Although the hard-rock numbers that make up the bulk of the record have the Rolling Stones' stamp all over them, they are also distinguished by a heightened creative freshness that recalls their song-rich 1967 LP. Between the Buttons (from which such numbers as "Too Tough" and the sentimentally salacious "She Was Hot" could almost pass as outtakes). The raw vitality of the performances is matched by the thorniness of the lyrics, which glimmer with all the usual veiled allusions and inscrutable ambiguities.

When Jagger sings in "Tie You Up (the Pain of Love)" that "You get a rise from it Feel the hot come dripping on your thighs from it," and that "Women will die for it," you might conclude that he's just being provocative (or, alternatively, that he's still the pathetic sexist @#$%& you always figured him for). But the song isn't simply about male domination of women; it's about the omnisexual oppressiveness of romantic obsession. Similarly, the black woman at the center of "She Was Hot" turns out to have been more than just a great lay–the simple sincerity of the singer's "I hope we meet again" adds a sudden emotional resonance to what at first appears an empty-headed sex anthem – while the title of the sinuously slippery "Pretty Beat Up" refers not to the song's female subject but to the singer's condition since she left him. And in between the shout-along choruses of "All the Way Down," where Jagger looks back on his beginnings and says, "I was king. Mr. Cool, just a snotty little fool"–and then slyly adds, "Like kids are now" – he sounds more self-aware than his detractors have ever given him credit for being.

This admission of emotional vulnerability, so far removed from the usual phallic strutting of most hard rock, is a familiar theme from at least the last two Stones albums. And while it coexists here with the indomitable self-assertion of "Too Tough" ("But in the end, you spat me out You could not chew me up"), it also achieves its most childlike expression in Keith Richards' unadorned declaration of love and hope, "Wanna Hold You."

One suspects the Stones wouldn't approve of all this rummaging around in their lyrics – they've never bothered to pose as poets, and their words have always melded with the music quite well. On Undercover, the music offers continuing proof of the band's commitment to black music. There are numerous young performers in Britain today who are lauded for adopting the trappings of Tamla-Motown or the dance-tested beat of black disco and pop reggae, but the Stones have been covering this turf (and more originally, at that) for years. It is a happy irony that at least two of the central songs on this album are prime examples of their commitment to the now-resurgent notion of black pop primacy.

On the flamboyantly grisly "Too Much Blood," they bring in Sugar Hill Records' former horn section (a four-man unit called Chops) for a rough and rambling rap tune that shows they've been listening to more than the occasional Grand Master Flash twelve-inch. The horns, coupled with the rampant clatter of Moroccan percussionists Moustapha Cisse and Brahms Condoul, plus reggae stalwart Sly Dunbar on electronic drums, churn up a marvelous, murky funk. And when David Sanborn comes screaming up on solo sax and Jagger rides in on a descending riff, singing. "I wanna dance, I wanna sing, I wanna bust up everything," the track transcends MTV-style racial considerations and emerges as a colorblind dance-floor hit.

And while there is a dark Jamaican dub groove running through "Feel on Baby," a somewhat poignant lament, the dub sensibility crops up most strikingly on the title track and single, "Undercover of the Night," a dance mix of which appears on the album instead of the less expansive 45 version. Like the careening "It Must Be Hell," "Undercover" exhibits a sense of political scorn that seems fueled by more genuine disgust than the Stones have spewed up in years. Rich in repugnant detail, the latter cut chronicles current Latin American political agonies, and its music, resounding with coproducer Chris Kimsey's sirenlike dub echoes, slams the message home with inarguable power.

If there are disappointments on Undercover, they can only be claimed in comparison to past Stones triumphs. If the album lacks the epochal impact of, say, Sticky Fingers, then perhaps it's because the mythic years of pop are past–by now, even the Stones have long since bade them goodbye. But Undercover seems to be more felicitously concentrated than Exile on Main Street, and while it may lack that album's dark power and desperate atmosphere, it does deliver nonstop, unabashed rock & roll crafted to the highest standards in the business. And that, rest assured, will do just fine. (RS 410)

KURT LODER

(Posted: Dec 8, 1983)



Edited 2 time(s). Last edit at 2007-02-08 22:25 by wanderingspirit66.

wesley Wrote:
-------------------------------------------------------
> with sssoul Wrote:
> --------------------------------------------------
> -----
> > >> As soon as I get home, I`ll listen to
> > Undercover! <<
> >
> > i'm already home, and it is sounding good
> > ahhh here comes Too Much Blood - where's
> Vilhelm??
> >
> > let's dance! :E
>
> I did my time and listened to Undercover. It has
> really it`s ups and downs, but don`t they all
> (with the exceptions of Exile and LI?
----------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Beggars Banquet has no filler. It is as much a masterpiece as Exile and LIB. I rank it higher than LIB for one simple reason - Beggars has 10 songs which are sheer genius while LIB has only 9 which are sheer genius :-)