Monthly Archives: April 2011

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Song of the Day #1,016: ‘Black Sails in the Sunset’ – Elvis Costello

In 1996, Elvis Costello toured in support of his All This Useless Beauty album with a series of low-key shows featuring just him on acoustic guitar and his longtime keyboardist Steve Nieve on piano.

The same year, Costello released a limited edition box set compiling performances from five nights of that tour. Each 5- or 6-track CD contained recordings from one U.S. city: Los Angeles, San Francisco, Chicago, Boston and New York. It wasn’t the most fan-friendly packaging (each CD runs a little more than 20 minutes, meaning the whole thing could have fit on one or two discs) but it was a special collection.

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Song of the Day #1,015: ‘Rocks Off’ – The Rolling Stones

AllMusic.com gives the highest 5-star rating to nine Rolling Stones albums, including the five I’m featuring this week. Two of those are their early covers albums, ranked so high apparently more for the ground they broke for the band than the actual content. Another is 1978’s Some Girls, a return to form for the band and, according to these reviewers, the last truly great thing produced by the band.

Another is Sticky Fingers, the 1971 record that followed up Let It Bleed. I have long wanted to own Sticky Fingers and I’m not really sure why I haven’t just bought it along the way. ‘Brown Sugar’ and ‘Wild Horses’ are its best-known tracks, and I like them both quite a bit, and it features other much heralded but new to me tracks such as ‘Sister Morphine’ and ‘Moonlight Mile.’

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Song of the Day #1,014: ‘Gimme Shelter’ – The Rolling Stones

Another year, another classic. In 1969, The Rolling Stones released Let It Bleed and kept up their crazy streak. I’m always amazed to see the consistent output of excellence year after year in the 60s by artists such as The Stones, Bob Dylan and The Beatles. It must have been amazing to be alive at that time and experience all of these albums one after another in real time.

If Let It Bleed consisted of nothing but its first and last tracks, it would still be an album for the ages. As it is, the stuff in between is damn good in its own right (particularly the title song and ‘You Got the Silver,’ which features Keith Richards on lead vocals). But it’s all about the bookends.

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Song of the Day #1,013: ‘Sympathy For the Devil’ – The Rolling Stones

Beggars Banquet was released just one year after Between the Buttons, in 1968, yet The Rolling Stones managed to sneak another album out in between them (Their Satanic Majesties Request, a foray into psychedelia). Talk about a prolific period.

Beggars Banquet was a return to a more blues/rock approach and is widely considered one of the band’s finest works. This was one of the first Stones albums I bought when I started reading up on their catalog and deciding where to dip my toe.

The album isn’t packed with hit singles — today’s track and ‘Street Fighting Man’ are the only songs here that would likely make a greatest hits record. But every song is great, from the jokey hoedown ‘Dear Doctor’ to the bawdy riff-tastic ‘Stray Cat Blues.’

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Song of the Day #1,012: ‘She Smiled Sweetly’ – The Rolling Stones

The Rolling Stones’ Between the Buttons was released in 1967, a year after Aftermath. Again, Mick Jagger and Keith Richards wrote every track.

As was customary in the 60s, different versions of the LP were released in the United Kingdom and the United States. The US version included hits ‘Let’s Spend the Night Together’ and ‘Ruby Tuesday,’ which had been released as singles in the UK.

Ordinarily I’m against this sort of repackaging (The Beatles albums were similarly bastardized and I feel fortunate that the UK releases became the official US CD releases eventually). But in the case of The Stones, I rather like having the more popular songs available alongside the lesser-known album tracks. Of course I don’t know what I’m missing in the two songs left off the US version.

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