{"id":670,"date":"2007-06-27T14:47:54","date_gmt":"2007-06-27T18:47:54","guid":{"rendered":""},"modified":"2008-12-11T00:45:31","modified_gmt":"2008-12-11T00:45:31","slug":"takin-it-to-the-main-stage-lemgbeggars-b","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.rocktownhall.com\/blogs\/takin-it-to-the-main-stage-lemgbeggars-b\/","title":{"rendered":"Takin&#8217; it to the Main Stage: <em>Beggars Banquet<\/em> Is the Worst of the Great Stones Albums!"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><iframe class='youtube-player youtuber' type='text\/html' width='425' height='355' src='http:\/\/www.youtube.com\/embed\/jjEfgMB0mhY?rel=0&amp;fs=1&amp;ap=%252526fmt%253D18' webkitAllowFullScreen mozallowfullscreen allowFullScreen frameborder='0'><\/iframe><br \/>\nA few Townspeople have been bugging me to restate my opinion that <strong>The Rolling Stones&#8217; <em>Beggars Banquet<\/em> is the worst of the great Stones albums<\/strong>. I&#8217;ve been holding off on doing this for a few reasons, including the following:<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>I&#8217;ve been really busy and I don&#8217;t want to give this topic anything less than my full attention.<\/li>\n<li>I&#8217;m loathe to have to define &#8220;great Stones albums.&#8221;<\/li>\n<li>I&#8217;ve been really busy and haven&#8217;t wanted to waste any of my precious time on all those &#8220;blackface&#8221; acoustic, dusty porch-blues numbers that litter that album.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>As I&#8217;ve fiddled, Rock Town Hall&#8217;s dugout has started to smoulder with dialog such as the following:<\/p>\n<blockquote><p><strong>Townsman Hrrundi:<\/strong> <em>What&#8217;s wrong with you, boy? I just gave &#8220;Beggars Banquet&#8221; a quick scan for a reality check, and I was right &#8212; it&#8217;s a stinker! It&#8217;s got a few strong &#8212; in one or two cases, crucially important &#8212; Stones tracks, but in general, the album is chock-a-block with the worst kind of pretendo-country\/blues nonsense. Really. I&#8217;ll give you &#8220;Street Fighting Man&#8221; and &#8220;Stray Cat Blues&#8221; &#8212; those are songs where the Stones actually bring something unique and Stonesian to the table. But all those acoustic snoozers? Gimme a break! Music to clean the bong by!<\/em><\/p>\n<p><strong>Townsman Epluribusgergely:<\/strong> <em>Beggar&#8217;s Banquet will never be an LP for your ears. Why? 1) It doesn&#8217;t have your beloved written and recorded at Sam Ash sound that Aerosmith too favored when they recorded their version of &#8220;Walkin&#8217; the Dog.&#8221; 2) There&#8217;s an originality in the pseudo country blues numbers that you&#8217;re not hearing, i.e. taking Harry Smith anthology material and making it dirtier, ethics and style wise. 3) There&#8217;s an overall emphasis on acoustic instruments. And 4) They thought Bob Dylan was good&#8230;<\/em><\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p>Although I&#8217;m impressed by Hrrundi&#8217;s opening salvo, I can&#8217;t trust that this discussion will proceed toward the final, necessary point without my involvement, so <em><strong>let&#8217;s get it on!<\/strong><\/em><br \/>\n<!--more--><br \/>\nI&#8217;ll start by defining the &#8220;great&#8221; Rolling Stones albums. This short list won&#8217;t waste time with individual, early Brian Jones-era albums, because although a couple of them are <em>great<\/em> &#8211; OK, <em>12 X 5<\/em>, <em>December&#8217;s Children (and Everybody&#8217;s)<\/em> &#8211; none is greater than the band&#8217;s most underappreciated Greatest Hits masterpiece, <em>Big Hits (High Tide and Green Grass)<\/em>. The Brian Jones-era Stones is, for my money, the greatest singles-producing band in rock history, even better than my beloved Beatles and the singles-only <strong>Creedence Clearwater Revival<\/strong>. So let&#8217;s give credit where credit&#8217;s due. It also goes without saying that <em>Hot Rocks<\/em> is an awesome album, but let&#8217;s not quibble about any of the albums listed as &#8220;great&#8221; in this paragraph.<\/p>\n<p>It&#8217;s in <em>this<\/em> paragraph that I&#8217;ll list the <strong>great<\/strong> albums by The Rolling Stones: <em>Beggars Banquet<\/em>, <em>Let It Bleed<\/em>, <em>Exile on Main Street<\/em> (yes, even the full-length version), and <em>Some Girls<\/em>. Regardless of backstory, leftover tracks, tax status, and so forth, each of these albums sound as if it was put together with a purpose. According to almost any set of objective criteria, each of these albums is <em>great<\/em>. So before I make the argument that <em>Beggars Banquet<\/em> is the worst of the great Stones albums, take a minute to reflect on the love and respect I have for this album I never listen to in its entirety.<\/p>\n<div class=\"image_block\" style=\"text-align: center;\"><img loading=\"lazy\" src=\"http:\/\/www.rocktownhall.com\/blogs\/media\/users\/frankenslade\/banquet.jpg\" alt=\"\" title=\"\" width=\"205\" height=\"205\" \/><\/p>\n<div class=\"image_legend\">Judging this album by this particular cover<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<p>Please note, before I break down some of my objections to the album&#8217;s relative greatness, that I&#8217;m assessing the album on its originally marketed <strong>&#8220;classy invitation&#8221; front cover<\/strong>, not the restored dirty bathroom cover that has since made the album even cooler than it was during its heyday. I don&#8217;t care that this is the originally intended cover, just like I don&#8217;t care that Lou Reed wrote &#8220;Sweet Jane&#8221; with that &#8220;heavenly wine and roses&#8221; middle eighth that got snipped out of the original studio release of the song. OK?<\/p>\n<p><strong>&#8220;Sympathy for the Devil&#8221;<\/strong> is outstanding. It promises a groundbreaking album, doesn&#8217;t it? An album that takes rock &#8216;n roll to new heights &#8211; or depths, as may be the case in terms of vicarious moral decay, heh, heh! <strong>&#8220;No Expectations&#8221;<\/strong> is pretty cool for a slide-guitar blues song. I&#8217;m not great at dates, but it&#8217;s got to be up there with the first Faces album in terms of bringing rural, acoustic blues to the fore of white British rock. Good production touches too. A worthy successor to the opening jolt of &#8220;Sympathy&#8230;&#8221; Lets those first few bong hits take root.<\/p>\n<p>Things begin to go wrong, relatively, with <strong>&#8220;Dear Doctor&#8221;<\/strong>. A track like this is the reason rock artists started leaving tracks in the &#8220;outtakes&#8221; bin, waiting for the day when record companies could repackage what must have seemed like great ideas in their time as &#8220;rarities&#8221; for sickos like us. How can anyone who&#8217;s got a beef with even the thought of suburban, middle-class guys affecting country twangs and ditching their Epiphone Gibson copy guitars for strumming cowboy chords on knockoff, inlaid fretboard acoustic guitars accept this? Sounds like an exercise in <strong>Hillbilly Chic<\/strong> to my ears. Where&#8217;s more of the magic promised by &#8220;Sympathy&#8230;&#8221;?<\/p>\n<p><strong>&#8220;Parachute Woman&#8221;<\/strong> may be the worst Stones song on even all the good Stones albums. It&#8217;s surely the least-necessary song they ever committed to tape. Please explain the use of this song for anything but to cover the sound of doing stuff in your bedroom as a teenager that your parents would not approve of knowing you were doing.<\/p>\n<p><strong>&#8220;Jigsaw Puzzle&#8221;<\/strong> has some nice peaks thanks to the drumming of Jimmy Miller, Bernard Purdie, or whatever drummer sat in for the swingingly challenged Charlie Watts, but Jagger&#8217;s Dylan schtick is no more interesting than any number of 3rd-rate Dylans who&#8217;ve come in Bobby Z&#8217;s wake. Maybe the only thing more pathetic than Jagger singing like he wants to turn on Bob Dylan circa-<em>Blonde on Blonde<\/em> is Jagger trying to turn on Bianca or some 16-year-old South American supermodel. Thankfully, <strong>Goat&#8217;s Head Soup<\/strong> is not among the <em>great<\/em> albums by the Stones.<\/p>\n<p>Isn&#8217;t the story on this album that Brian Jones was so out of it that the band would let him plug in and play along but not record his parts? Whether they turned his mic up or not, <strong>&#8220;Street Fighting Man&#8221;<\/strong> is the only song on this album that sounds like a Brian Jones-era classic. Stone cold classic! It&#8217;s the only song that gels in the way their great &#8217;60s singles gelled. The other few good songs gel in their own way, but not in that &#8217;60s way that I so love.<\/p>\n<p>Did the Stones receive an honorary degree in Bluesology from <strong>Tuskegee University<\/strong> for their version of <strong>&#8220;Prodigal Son&#8221;<\/strong>? I hope so. They earned it! Although I usually lift the needle on this one, it&#8217;s well done. Much better than anything Faces would do on their first album with Rod Stewart and Ron Wood.<\/p>\n<p><strong>&#8220;Stray Cat Blues&#8221;<\/strong> is very cool, as cool as you might like to believe the whole album is. I can fully enjoy this song. This song points toward the coming greatness of <em>Let It Bleed<\/em>. I can&#8217;t believe how many of you rated that one as the worst of their best albums, when this topic came up a week or two again, but there&#8217;s nothing I&#8217;d like less than to see folks debate stuff like that in the middle of this more-important and focused thread.<\/p>\n<p>The would-be honorary degree bestowed upon the Stones for &#8220;Prodigal Son&#8221; was ripped from their hands and smashed by an Appalachian family upon hearing <strong>&#8220;Factory Girl&#8221;<\/strong>. This is so bad on so many levels that I prefer we refrain from discussing it on this list.<\/p>\n<p>Finally, <strong>&#8220;Salt on the Earth&#8221;<\/strong>. If you weren&#8217;t clear enough by now of the band&#8217;s humble stance on this album, this track brings things to a close. I like this song enough. I prefer the title track from their next album, which goes through many of the same beer-raising mechanisms, but this one&#8217;s really not bad.<\/p>\n<p>So there it goes. I look forward to reaching consensus on this topic.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>A few Townspeople have been bugging me to restate my opinion that The Rolling Stones&#8217; Beggars Banquet is the worst of the great Stones albums. I&#8217;ve been holding off on doing this for a few reasons, including the following: I&#8217;ve been really busy and I don&#8217;t want to give this topic anything less than my <a href='https:\/\/www.rocktownhall.com\/blogs\/takin-it-to-the-main-stage-lemgbeggars-b\/' class='excerpt-more'>[&#8230;]<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":5,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[342],"tags":[45],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rocktownhall.com\/blogs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/670"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rocktownhall.com\/blogs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rocktownhall.com\/blogs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rocktownhall.com\/blogs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/5"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rocktownhall.com\/blogs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=670"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.rocktownhall.com\/blogs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/670\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rocktownhall.com\/blogs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=670"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rocktownhall.com\/blogs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=670"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rocktownhall.com\/blogs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=670"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}