Tag Archives: The Rolling Stones

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Song of the Day #1,448: ‘Street Fighting Man’ – The Rolling Stones

Best Albums of the 60s – #11
Beggars Banquet – The Rolling Stones (1968)

Back in high school and my first years of college, I made a point to discover the important music recorded before I was born. I had sufficiently mined the catalogs of Bob Dylan and The Beatles before finally turning my attention to The Rolling Stones.

Given my limited resources, I settled on two albums considered essential by the powers that be. One is still to come on this list, and the other was Beggars Banquet.

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Song of the Day #1,440: ‘Ruby Tuesday’ – The Rolling Stones

Best Albums of the 60s – #17
Between the Buttons – The Rolling Stones (1967)

This marks the first appearance by The Rolling Stones on this list, but not the last. This band has released close to 40 albums over their careers and I own five of them — all excellent. I can’t think of another band that’s so clearly begging for further exploration.

Granted, the Stones went through period where their releases were met with indifference by critics and audiences alike. They are not a model of consistency. But they have released a good dozen or so albums considered classics.

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Song of the Day #1,426: ‘Shine a Light’ – The Rolling Stones

Best Albums of the 70s – #7
Exile on Main Street – The Rolling Stones (1972)

The best albums are always greater than the sum of their parts. Sometimes that’s just a matter of putting certain songs in a certain order and tying it together with the right title and right cover and — bam! — you have a consistent, unified experience that works as an album.

But other times an album serves as a document of its creation. Listening to it puts you in the room with the musicians, delivers not just the sounds but the sights, smells and tastes of its creation. The Rolling Stones’ Exile on Main Street is such an album.

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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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