pretty much the best stones album except those other ones

i'll defer to "exile on main street" and possibly "sticky fingers" on this point, but otherwise i think "let it bleed" is probably the best stones album.

i've always liked the stones, but until a year or so ago held the opinion that i also hold (which i know is wrong, don't flame me) towards the beatles. that they're just a decent band who got famous playing lots of pop rock hits when pop rock was still something intelligent music fans listened to. jesus that makes me sound like a huge dick. oh well. it stays.

anyway, my mantra for years had been "the stones are great, but they can't string together an album. every album has 3 excellent tracks and 7 bad/poor ones".

well, i think my mantra was wrong. in looking at the band as a pop music band (which albums like the great, but pop-music skewed "40 licks" tend to reinforce) i was just sort of tossing off the rest of their stuff as insignificant. it turns out that the pop-rock side of the stones, who wrote all those songs you've been hearing on the radio since you were born, are actually pretty much the most boring, least interesting of all stones incarnations. these guys are really a gritty-ass, dirty down-home blues rock band that'll knock your teeth out and then spit in your mouth.

okay, i don't really know what that was supposed to mean.

so now, having wasted oh-so-many years of my life thinking "street fighting man" was the extent of the stones' catalog, i'm on/off the wagon/horse and loving every minute of the dirty, filthy awesomeness that is mick jagger.

so let it bleed rules. i know that saying things "rule" is probably not hip anymore. that's okay; neither am i. i stopped being hip the night i got so drunk i tried to pull a stop sign out of my front yard using my plastic car bumper and a pair of battery cables.

first we've got the title track, "let it bleed", which is just about the best opening track heretofore seen in my collection (although of course i'm partial to ryan adams' "magnolia mountain" too), or the stones' "rocks off". then the excellent cover of Robert Johnson's "love in vain", then "midnight rambler". as far as i'm concerned, the album could end right there. fortunately, it doesn't. then you get "gimme shelter" which is, in terms of studio-recordedness at least, my favorite stones song. and, if you've been involved at all in my occasional dabbling in the idea of making a handheld cam roadtrip film/documentary for the last few years, it's the song i would most love to steal for the intro sequence i've written up. i'm actually so-so on the next two tracks, but then you get "monkey man", which pretty much has the best guitar tone in the galaxy, "country honk" and "you can't always get what you want" as the closer. though i don't see how it really fits with the rest of the album, maybe it's just that i'm not used to hearing it in its original context. either way, it's such a great song that it really doesn't matter what i think.

anyway, listen to this album. i have to go work now.

EDIT: after relistening to "you got the silver" and "live with me", which were the two tracks i blew off above, i really do like "you got the silver" a lot. "live with me" is good, but the opening bass line always makes me think it's going to be "bitch" and when it's not "bitch" i get pissed. also, i forgot to mention "monkey man" has pretty much my favorite guitar tone outside of a cardinals or trey anastasio/phish concert. i especially love the part during the jam where keith goes high for the solo at about 2:46. good times. i can't wait for scorscese's (sp?) stones film to come out. "no direction home" was so good; here's hoping "shine a light" will be better.