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krj
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Classic Rock
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Aug 27 02:20 UTC 2002 |
I mentioned the new Rolling Stones reissues in another item.
Here I just wanted to discuss the musical aspects of the CDs, and
maybe a bit about the sound quality of the CD remastering.
The two Stones collections I always played as LPs were HOT ROCKS
and the first BIG HITS collection; I was never able to get into
any of their album releases until STICKY FINGERS. So I was
thinking of just getting HOT ROCKS and BIG HITS; there is some
temptation to replace them with the late 1980s 3-cd "singles"
collection, but I'm not sure I want to hear all the single B-sides.
Any Stones fans in the conference?
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| 44 responses total. |
mcnally
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response 1 of 44:
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Aug 27 04:28 UTC 2002 |
I'm not sure I qualify as a real Stones fan -- I've only got about ten
or so Stones CDs, mostly from their middle and early periods. Given the
quantity of material they've released over the years I probably have fewer
than half of their LPs. However, I like (and listen to) the ones I've got.
For what it's worth, although I have the two-CD "Hot Rocks" collection,
I generally much prefer to listen to the LPs, especially for their middle-
period material. For the early-period stuff, I sometimes do prefer
the singles collections.
However, Ken, I suspect your Stones tastes are pretty different than mine.
You mention that you never much liked their albums until "Sticky Fingers"
which rules out almost all of my favorite Stones material, with the
"Sticky Fingers" cutoff coming right after my favorite Stones album,
"Let it Bleed."
The LPs I definitely wouldn't want to give up, in order of preference:
Let it Bleed
The Rolling Stones [England's Newest Hitmakers]
Exile on Main Street
Beggar's Banquet
BTW, I have no idea whether my usage corresponds to any official consensus
among Stones fans but in the response above you can read "early-period"
to be anything released up through and including "Their Satanic Majesties
Request" (i.e. the Brian Jones era). Middle-period, in my estimation,
would be "Beggar's Banquet" through "Some Girls", and late-period, I
suppose, would be anything released in the 80s or later..
Perhaps a serious Stones fan can propose a more fitting division..
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tpryan
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response 2 of 44:
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Aug 27 16:41 UTC 2002 |
My Rolling Stones fandom seems to be from their start, thru
Satanic Majesty's Request and Let it Bleed, to Goats Head Soup. Though
I have CDs beyond that, I listen to them very little.
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krj
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response 3 of 44:
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Aug 29 12:38 UTC 2002 |
Two of Mike's favorites, EXILE ON MAIN STREET and BEGGAR'S BANQUET,
are in the LP mound. They've never really caught on with me, even
though I got EXILE back when it was released, in the wake of my
enthusiasm over the previous album STICKY FINGERS. Again on EXILE,
I like the singles ("Tumbling Dice" and "Happy") but I never found a
use for the rest of the album. No doubt I should revisit it, since
I've acquired this whole new interest in American roots music in
the intervening 30 years.
I can't remember a thing about BEGGAR'S BANQUET; I'm sure I got it
because it was a Famous Classic, but it went in one ear and out the
other.
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tpryan
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response 4 of 44:
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Aug 29 19:45 UTC 2002 |
Both my LP and my CD of Sticky Fingers has a zipper.
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mcnally
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response 5 of 44:
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Aug 29 22:11 UTC 2002 |
I think "Exile on Main Street" is uneven, frequently over-praised by
critics, and not half the album it's made out to be. However, as is
often the case, there's a very decent album's worth of music to be
found among the double album's worth of material.
"Beggar's Banquet", likewise has a few clunkers, but its high-quality
material is unforgettable and none of the greatest-hits collections
I've seen include gems like "Stray Cat Blues"
It sounds like "Let it Bleed" would be the album for you, Ken --
it's much more consistent than the others, falls during a period
of experimentation with new musical influences (in this case, country)
and also includes a number of singles everyone's familiar with.
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krj
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response 6 of 44:
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Sep 6 04:34 UTC 2002 |
A new wrinkle: Leslie wants to get a collection which includes
"Happy" (from EXILE) and maybe some of the later singles, and that
suggests that we'll be waiting a month for the release of the 40th
anniversary 2-cd anthology "Licks." I think this is the first
time that both parts of the Stones catalog -- up through STICKY
FINGERS controlled by Allan Klein/ABKCO, and from EXILE on
controlled by the band (I think I have the breakpoint right, but
I may be off by an album or two) -- will have been mined for
one compilation.
I am suprised that I'm not finding huge quantities of the Stones
reissues in the stores. Downtown Borders had a couple; Best Buy had
HOT ROCKS and maybe one or two others. Schoolkids had nothing.
I was expecting big displays of the whole 22-disc reissue series.
Either the early shipment sold out fast, or else retailers are
stocking extra-cautiously.
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mcnally
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response 7 of 44:
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Sep 6 05:39 UTC 2002 |
"Sticky Fingers" seems to be the first post-ABKCO album, judging from AMG.
I probably should buy a copy of the re-issue.
I'm not particularly recommending it, but it seems to me I've got
a Stones hits collection ("Rewind") that I think has "Happy" in addition
to most of the singles I care about from their 70s & 80s albums (chiefly
I enjoy it for the ability to get "Angie" and "Heartbreaker" without
buying "Goat's Head Soup"
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krj
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response 8 of 44:
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Sep 6 22:11 UTC 2002 |
STICKY FINGERS was the first album released on the label/imprint
Rolling Stones Records (I've got the original, very well-manufactured
LP from 1971, still sounds great after years of heavy play) but
when the singles from that album go on anthologies, they go with
the ABKCO stuff. "Brown Sugar" is on HOT ROCKS, and I think "Wild
Horses" is too. Maybe there were special contractual arrangements.
IIRC, the REWIND anthology which Mike mentions is listed as out-of-print
by allmusic.com. Hmmmm, should dig around some more.
On reflection, I'm a bit annoyed about how the whole Stones reissue
package is being handled. It seems that no consideration has been
given to creating a unified canon for collectors, as was done
with the Beatles CDs years ago. There are an awful lot of overlapping
hits collections being reissued: at a mininum, BIG HITS, BIG HITS vol. 2,
HOT ROCKS and HOT ROCKS vol 2, a late 80s(?) 3-cd set called SINGLES
and then the new collection LICKS. I suppose the BIG HITS and HOT ROCKS
sets are historic compilations which should be left alone.
I also am led to understand that for most of the early Stones albums,
they have issued a CD with the UK running order, and a separate CD with
the US running order. Sheesh. Why not issue the UK running order,
put the US tracks on as bonus tracks, and tell people how to program
up the US sequence?
But then, my understanding is that ABKCO has always been more about
milking the Stones catalog for all that could be gotten from it, rather
than giving up a few bucks to make the fans a little happier. :(
More so than average for the record industry.
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mcnally
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response 9 of 44:
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Sep 7 05:36 UTC 2002 |
The early Stones catalog is terrible as far as unnecessary duplication
is concerned.
My new standard for re-issues from that period is the work done by
Castle, the folks who recently re-issued the Kinks' catalog. The Kinks'
catalog, though, isn't even remotely as valuable as the Stones' work --
it's conceivable to me that there might be Stones discs that, in any given
year, outsell all of the Kinks' albums put together..
"
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krj
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response 10 of 44:
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Sep 8 01:28 UTC 2002 |
The correct title of the new collection is FORTY LICKS, and I just
saw a TV ad for it today. The push on this is going to be massive.
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mcnally
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response 11 of 44:
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Sep 14 02:14 UTC 2002 |
I was in Best Buy the other day (which qualifies as the closest thing to
an actual record store here in the Muskegon, MI, area) and took a look at
the Stones re-issue discs.
I drastically underestimated the annoyance and the screw-the-consumer
implications of the decision to release US and UK versions of the early
albums separately. The differences in track lists are small but
important -- popular singles have been included on either the US or UK
versions of albums like "Aftermath" but not on both -- and there was no
album where space couldn't have accomodated both versions, or at least
all the tracks needed for a combined version.
Additionally, the re-issues are in those quick-wearing folding cardboard
thingies rather than traditional jewel boxes. Highly annoying.
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dbratman
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response 12 of 44:
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Sep 25 17:05 UTC 2002 |
I liked very much how the Beatles reissues were handled. The albums
were restored to the original British form, and all the singles that
were never on any albums were collected on two CDs titled "Past
Masters".
I don't know the Stones discography well enough to know whether this
would be possible. But I get the impression with some other groups of
that vintage that their early albums included a lot of duplications of
songs between albums. That would make straightening things out for
reissue a lot harded.
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mcnally
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response 13 of 44:
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Sep 25 20:51 UTC 2002 |
Yes, the Beatles re-issues were well done -- thank goodness they didn't
mess around with the butchered American LP versions.
Unfortunately the case of the Stones reissues is not so clearcut.
Take, for example, the album "Aftermath". The All Music Guide sums
up the differences:
The British version of Aftermath was released earlier than its
American counterpart and had several differences beyond its
cover design: it runs more than ten minutes longer, despite not
having "Paint It Black" on it (singles were usually kept separate
from LPs in England in those days), and it has four additional
songs -- "Mother's Little Helper," which was left off the U.S.
album for release as a single; "Out of Time" in its full-length
five-minute-36-second version, two minutes longer than the
version of the song issued in America; "Take It or Leave It,"
which eventually turned up on Flowers in the U.S.; and "What to
Do," which didn't surface in America until the release of More Hot
Rocks more than six years later.
Additionally, the song lineup is different, "Goin' Home"
closing side one instead of side two. And the mixes used are
different from the tracks that the two versions of the album
do have in common -- the U.K. album and CD used a much cleaner,
quieter master that had a more discreet stereo sound, with wide
separation in the two channels and the bass not centered, as it
in the U.S. version.
How do you sort out a mess like that? If running time permits, you can
put both versions on a single CD, but in this case you can't fit both
versions in their entirety and if you decide to save space by only
selecting one mix of the songs that were duplicated between the two
releases which do you pick? In the end, if you want the two classic
Stones singles from the "Aftermath" period ("Paint it Black" and
"Mother's Little Helper") you either wind up paying ~40 for two greatly-
similar versions of the same material or you wind up bypassing "Aftermath"
entirely and just buying a greatest hits collection. Blech.
And while I'm still carping about the Stones re-issues, can I pick on
the decision to package these things in those awful cardboard "digipaks"
instead of in jewel boxes? This is music that people are still listening
to nearly forty years after it was initially released. Wouldn't it be
nice if they put it in packaging that will still look good after at least
a couple of years' worth of average use?
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dbratman
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response 14 of 44:
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Sep 26 22:22 UTC 2002 |
Mike, while that description of "Aftermath" may be more complex than
anything that happened to the Beatles, it's not much more complex, or
different in kind. Songs on early UK Beatles albums were regularly
left off the US releases; the US album "Yesterday and Today"
(the "butcher cover" album) was a 'phantom' album consisting of the
songs deleted from earlier albums on their way across the Atlantic,
some of them a couple of years old.
There were also issues for Beatles songs concerning remixes, cuts, and
master quality. Usually with the Beatles it's possible to determine
the preferred, "authentic" version. For instance most of their early
songs were mixed by George Martin in mono, and the stereo versions are,
IIRC, fake stereo.
But in a few cases both versions have a claim to authenticity,
notably "Love Me Do", which was issued on LP and single in completely
different recordings. (But the US album used the UK single recording,
or something like that - I don't remember offhand.) In that case, I
recall that the UK album version turned up on the album CD, and the UK
single version turned up on the collection of singles.
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mcnally
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response 15 of 44:
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Sep 26 23:29 UTC 2002 |
In the Beatles' case, however, the superiority of the British releases
was so clear-cut that I find it difficult to imagine anyone ever arguing
objectively in favor of the US LPs. That's not necessarily the case
with the Stones' work.
Again I'd like to cite the wonderful re-issue work done by the German(?)
label Castle on the Kinks' catalog, another band whose British-invasion
era recordings were scrambled a bit in the trip across the Atlantic.
But when Castle re-issued their masterpiece "The Kinks are the Village
Green Preservation Society" they included not only the original 15-track
mono version but a 12-track stereo album with a different track ordering
plus two songs not found on the original, plus a mono single version of
one of the new tracks from the stereo album..
It'd be great if something similar had been done with the Stones'
"Aftermath" -- start from the UK version, add the "Paint it Black" single
which was present on the US version and absent in the UK, then add as
many of the alternate mixes released on the US version as space allowed.
Instead they'd rather sock the consumer for two full-priced CDs of
newly-remastered but 40-year-old material from their back catalog.
Figure that anyone who's likely to buy both US and UK version probably
already owns the existing CD release of "Aftermath" and clearly it's
all about milking the hardcore fans for all they're willing to pay.
I don't find that very endearing..
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