What do u think is the best Rolling Stones album?

I say: Steel Wheels

Its hard to say... but my two finalists would be probably Beggars and Exile in Main Street

sticky fingers

but you couldn't go wrong with:
let it bleed
exile on main street
beggar's banquet
or even
some girls

Their best album period:
1968 Beggars Banquet
1969 Let it bleed
1971 Sticky Fingers

Sticky Fingers by a mile

Torn between these...



...But if I had a gun to my head.


Let It Bleed would be my favorite one to listen to out of the three.


tA

Tribal Disorder

http://www.soundclick.com...dID=182431

Three way tie between Beggars, Bleed and Exile for me. At gunpoint I think I'd pick Bleed.

jacktheimprovident said:

Some dangerous folks out there that would threaten to shoot us over an album pick.
The same three at that.


Btw, something kept bothering me until I realized that this...



...was the original cover for Beggars Banquet.

tA

Tribal Disorder

http://www.soundclick.com...dID=182431

Christaro said:

Steel Wheels is the last good Stones album - as in the last album they made when they weren't just going through the motions - but it's not their best by a long shot. It's also the one which sounds the most dated, thanks to that typiclly bombastic 80s production. Seek out the original mixes of the album on bootleg. They came out last year.

Best album? For me it's Some Girls. But that's my personal favourite the one I think encapsulates them best at the time I got into them. That's not to say that the four critics' favourites aren't masterpieces - they are - but Some Girls is a late 70s equivalent of Beggars Banquet.

I think their most underrated album is Satanic Majesties - a flawed but fascinating album, and their most experimental one to boot.

.
[Edited 4/8/07 1:02am]

Shapeshifter said:

I love that typically bombastic 80s production!

Rock and a hard place
Almost hear your sigh
Hearts for sale
Mixed emotions

Those are awesome songs.

Christaro said:

Yeah, so are Continental Drift, Slipping Away and Terrifying. Do hunt down the bootleg version though - it has a great outtake on it called For Your Precious Love. A thing of jawdropping passion and beauty.
[Edited 4/8/07 3:21am]

Sticky Fingers

Cheek said:

Once you've listened to Detroit soul (Tempts, Miracles, Supremes), Stax (Otis, Albert King, Joe Tex) or Chicago blues (Howlin' Wolf, Muddy Waters, Little Walter), you might conclude the Stones are really kind of useless. To that end, I still haven't found a RS record, not even a Greatest Hits anthology that I ever wanted to own.

PFunkjazz said:

thats kind of interesting because I like a lot Rolling Stones Now and always seems to me a great r&b record

dammme said:

I guess they might be more platable now since this is all latter-day, but I've already lived through those moments.

Beggars Banquet

Shapeshifter said:

Ok, Shape. I'll try to download it. Thanks 4 the tip.

dammme said:

I AGREE! Now surely is the BEST R&B covers-album ever done by a white band, a must have!

My favourites:
From an objective point of view: Exile on Main St.
Personal reasons: Some Girls

Shapeshifter said:

Agreed.

I've always considered it the Brian Jones Stones album.
Although he doesn't write anything, his musicianship in terms of instrumentation and arrangement is everywhere.

The only album where they completely drop the Blues/R&B front and create what is probably the most original sounding record in their catalog.


tA

Tribal Disorder

http://www.soundclick.com...dID=182431

theAudience said:

But even that was a rip of the Beatles' Sgt Pepper.


Stones are the most unoriginal band of all time, but they surely knew how to push their franchise to the extreme. I don't hate them, I just have no use for them.

PFunkjazz said:

Yeah, that's the general comparison that comes up.
Personally, I think it's only valid on a surface/visual level.

When you actually compare the music is where the claim falls apart.
To me, they don't sound the same at all.

As for having no use for them, I can dig that. I do/did.
They were a fun part of the Pop/Rock listening palette of my younger days alongside of real Blues/R&B/Jazz/Gospel/etc.


tA

Tribal Disorder

http://www.soundclick.com...dID=182431

theAudience said:

I've never understood why the accusation that Satanic is a Sgt. Pepper ripoff has persisted so much. For one thing EVERYBODY was trying to create their answer to Pepper at the time, and secondly, as tA said, the music isn't actually all that similar (apart from the opening of the "Sing This Song Together" reprise which sounds suspiciously like Strawberry Fields...but that was off Magical Mystery Tour anyway ). If anything, Satanic is closer in sound to the "astral" psychedelia of early Pink Floyd, eg. piper at the gates of dawn, although I get much more of a kick out of Satanic than piper.

Second, just in defense of the Stones, I think the Stones, like Elvis, have suffered an unfair backlash for the amount of success they've had at performing "black music". Sure, they were hugely indebted to the Chicago blues, early rock n roll, and the R&B of the time, but again so was everybody, and I think they added their own flare/style to it, and I think they were innovators as well as immitators; they added the sneer and the darkness to rock n roll, and synthesized Muddy Waters and Chuck Berry in a way that no one else had thought of. Plus, they made tunes that were, for lack of a better word more colorful (or perhaps just poppier) and expansive, much in the same way that the Beatles did (including infusing some of the same elements as the Beatles did to their musical stew like psychedelia, music hall, folk-rock). In a general sense, when did Muddy Waters or Howlin Wolf ever make a song like Sympathy For the Devil or Street Fighting Man? I think a lot of the enmity for Elvis and the Stones overlooks how much sincere love and respect for the music they had, and how much praise and homage they gave to their influences, and, while I don't think PFunkjazz is guilty of this, I think a lot of it stems from the idea that any white person performing "black" music is inherently inauthentic, which I think is just another form of racism. Black music has been the predominant force in american popular music, but there were plenty of white boys who "got" it and made legitimate contributions to it as well.

Yea the satanic majesties v sgt pepper's bit was just played for fun, but I'm quite serious about the Stones being useless for me. I certainly don't give that only 1 race can do the music theory any cred. I can give props to Beatles, Allman Bros, Cream, Led Zep (even when they plagirized they were awesome) and others. I just don't feel the Stones did much more than mimic styles they admired. Their record probably shows they supported some of the black practitioners with opening spots on their tour, guests shots and even laying ground work for Living Colour to break through, but I don't feel their music was worthy of all the hoopla.