At Home in Hespeler

One likes to believe in the freedom of music.

Rush – Spirit of Radio.

Have you heard the new Rolling Stones song, Plunder My Soul yet? It was released for Independent Record Store Day on April 17th as a vinyl 45RPM single. There was a limited amount made and they moved quickly. If you managed to pick one up on Record Store Day or, like me stumbled across a copy a few weeks later, you got a nice collectable and a good song.

What is the best new Stones song of the last 25 years? – An argument could be made that the best Stones song of recent vintage was by a Montreal band recording their first English language album in ten years. The Respectable’s Sweet Mama is the Stones at their very best, even if they aren’t the Stones (actually a better argument could be made that Sweet Mama is the best Faces song in 35 years) – Plunder My Soul may well be the best Stones song since Little T&A from 1981’s Tattoo You?

Plunder My Soul was recorded in 1972 as part of the Exile On Main Street sessions. Most Stones aficionados would highlight 1972 as being in the middle of the bands peak creative years. Going a couple of years either side of 1972 you get the following singles released: Honky Tonk Woman (b side/You Can’t Always Get What You Want); Brown Sugar; Wild Horses; Tumbling Dice; Happy; Angie; Heartbreaker; It’s Only Rock and Roll; Ain’t To Proud To Beg (b side/Dance Little Sister). Add a year on the front end and you can throw in Jumping Jack Flash and Street Fighting Man. Then there was the album tracks, the stuff that didn’t get released as a single, but deserves mention: Sympathy For the Devil; Give Me Shelter; Midnight Rambler; Can’t You Hear Me Knocking; Bitch; Dead Flowers; Tumblin’ Dice; ‘Til The Next Goodbye. That’s quite a list, far from comprehensive as it is.

To many Rolling Stones fans, Exile On Main Street is the penultimate album, the apex of Rolling Stonery. But Exile has it’s weak moments, songs that sound more like jams than well crafted songs fit for a top level album. Other’s still are just weaker songs, songs that hint, ever so gently, that Fool To Cry is coming. When Plunder My Soul is played next to the rest of Exile, deserves to be there, and is better than many songs that made the cut.

By 1976 the Stones were no longer firing on all cylinders creatively. Black and Blue, that years release featuring the aforementioned Fool To Cry as it’s main single, was a much weaker album. It had been two years since It’s Only Rock ‘n’ Roll (my personal favourite Stones album). Things were about to go very badly for the band: Keith would face the possibility of a 7 year to life prison term when he was arrested on heroin possession “for the purposes of trafficking” charges by the RCMP in 1977. Convicted of a lesser possession charge, the judge did the sensible thing: he gave Richards a suspended sentence, one year probation and made him give a benefit concert.

Clean (of heroin, at any rate), chastened by the Canadian judicial system and the punks who were starting to dominate the English music scene, the Stones returned in 1978 with a stripped down, punk influenced album, Some Girls. One of their finest works, Some Girls featured four strong singles, Miss You, Beast of Burden, Respectable and Shattered. The Stones could have disappeared from the radar as many big early 70’s bands did around this time. But Some Girls put them in front of a new generation, and cemented their standing as a great rock ‘n’ roll band.

Followed by Emotional Rescue in 1980, a much weaker effort even if it did have Dance and She’s So Cold (a friend recently confessed Emotional Rescue was his favourite Stones song). Tattoo You would end the punk inspired period with an album of mostly outtakes including Waiting on a Friend, Little T&A and one of their best songs, Start Me Up. The Stones would never be this good again.

By 1983 Punk had died away and the MTV generation was ruling the airwaves. The Stones answered with Undercover, a largely forgettable album of largely forgettable songs. Dirty Work would follow three years later with Harlem Shuffle being the best of a bad bunch. Nineteen-eight-nine’s Steel Wheels the Stones hit rock bottom, with Mick uttering the horrific lyric in the albums biggest hit, Mixed Emotions:

Button your lip baby
Button your coat
Lets go out dancing
Go for the throat…

This coming and going
Is driving me nuts
This to-ing and fro-ing
Is hurting my guts
So get off the fence
Its creasing your butt
Life is a party
Lets get out and strut

This to-ing and fro-ing, Is hurting my guts? From the band that gave us:

Think the time is right for a palace revolution
‘Cause where I live the game to play is compromise solution
Well, then what can a poor boy do
Except to sing for a rock ‘n’ roll band
‘Cause in sleepy London town
There’s just no place for a street fighting man.

Untenable! It would get no better, and while the Stones would make a well deserved fortune playing the old stuff, any new work was average at best.

It is in this light that the Stones released Plunder My Soul last month. A throwback song, on a throwback format, it is quite the best Stones song since Tattoo You, possibly the best since Some Girls or even, It’s Only Rock ‘n’ Roll (but I won’t go that far). Best Stones song in 25 years? For sure. Best in 35? I’ll leave that for you to decide.

One things for sure, it is great to have a new Stones song to love.

The Freedom of Music, This Week on my I-Pod Ain’t To Proud To Beg, Angie, Beast of Burden, Bitch, Black and Blue, Brown Sugar, Can’t You Hear Me Knocking, Dance, Dance Little Sister, Dead Flowers, Dirty Work, Emotional Rescue, Exile on Main St, Fool To Cry, Give Me Shelter, Happy, Harlem Shuffle, Heartbreaker, Honky Tonk Woman, It’s Only Rock and Roll, Jumping Jack Flash, Little T&A, Midnight Rambler, Miss You, Mixed Emotions, Plunder My SOul, Respectable, Rolling Stones, Shattered, She’s So Cold, Some Girls, Start Me Up, Steel Wheels, Street Fighting Man, Sympathy For the Devil, Tattoo You, Tumbling Dice, Tumblin’ Dice, Undercover, Waiting on a Friend, Wild Horses, You Can’t Always Get What You Want, ‘Til The Next Goodbye

One likes to believe in the freedom of music.

Rush – Spirit of Radio.

Yesterday was Independent Record Store Day. Did you miss it? Are you, at this moment, slapping your forehead because you forgot all about it? Not likely. More like your saying to yourself, “there’s an independent record store day?” Why, yes there is, it’s a promotional event by some players in the music industry, and is significant because a number of artists supported the idea, and got behind it.

Of course, if you go the right websites, are on the right mailing lists, you knew about it. And quite a few people go to those websites, subscribe to those mailing lists. At Other Music in New York City, they lined up around the block to get in. Easy for them, you might think. They still have record stores in New York. While it’s true New York has everything, including a street with two chess shops across the road from each other and a peanut butter restaurant, you didn’t have to be in Manhattan to enjoy Record Store Day. Chances were there was someplace within a short enough drive. Out here in Cambridge, I had four or five options nearby, more than ten if I was willing to put in an hours driving.

Why, on the other hand, would you want to attend Independent Record Store Day? Why stand in line on Saturday to shop at a store that was there Friday, and still will be, presumably, Monday. The reason is that, as I mentioned earlier, a number of artists got behind the idea. Real, artists, significant artists, with long histories in the music world, released new material specifically for this event. We aren’t talking a new Lady Gaga video here, although she may have done so. How about a new Rolling Stones single, only on vinyl? The song, Plundered My Soul, is a find from the vaults. A lost song from the Exile on Main St. sessions, Plundered My Soul is a great rocker. Proof that The Rolling Stones were once a great band, especially considering Plunder My Soul didn’t make the final cut.

Plunder My Soul singles, which sadly were gone by the time I got off my lazy ass and wandered over to Encore Records, are already selling on eBay in the $30 to $60 range . As an aside, the Kitchener Record claims there was also a line-up at Encore Records at opening time. They did have a number of the items specially released for Record Store Day. A number of vinyl albums, Jeff Beck’s new one, and John Hiatt’s newest for example. Myself, I picked up two 10” singles, a new, Bruce Springsteen and a Them Crooked Vultures picture disk.

The Springsteen features two previously released tracks, but tracks that have never been out in a physical format before. Both have gotten the iTunes treatment, but the limited edition 10” is just for Record Store Day. The A side, Wrecking Ball, was recorded and written specifically for his 2009 Giant’s Stadium concerts. Giant’s Stadium will go under the wrecking ball itself. The song itself, according to Pitchfork upon it’s iTunes release,  is:

dedicated to the big building, New Jersey, living, dying, turning 60, and trying to hold onto memories in the age of parking lots.

B side is a live version of Ghost of Tom Joad from 2008.

The real treat of my day, the real keeper, is the Them Crooked Vultures 10” picture disc. In case you haven’t been keeping track, Them Crooked Vultures is a new “super group,” with Led Zeppelin bassist John Paul Jones, Foo Fighters frontman, and ex-Nirvana drummer Dave Grohl back on the drums, and Queens of the Stone Age front man Josh Homme on guitar and vocals. They are loud, brash, ballsy and real, real good. Their imagery, various drawings of a humanoid with a vulture head, is always excellent. Displayed in a Crooked Vultures red see through envelope, the picture disc is an excellent piece. The disc contains an album cut Mind Eraser, No Chaser, and a new live song, Hwy 1 on side one, and an interview on side two.

Over all Independent Record Store Day seems to have been a success, both for the stores that took part, and for me personally. It is simply great to be buying a new song, on vinyl, by some favourite artists, at a favourite record store. What more could a music fan ask for?

The Freedom of Music, This Week on my I-Pod, Uncategorized Bruce Springsteen, Dave Grohl, Encore Records, Exile on Main St, Foo Fighters, Ghost of Tom Joad, Giant's Stadium, Hwy 1, Independent Record Store Day, Jeff Beck, John Hiatt, John Paul Jones, Josh Homme, Lady Gaga, Led Zeppelin, Mind Eraser No Chaser, New York City, Other Music, Plundered My Soul, Queens of a Stone Age, Record Store Day, Rolling Stones, Them Crooked Vultures, Wrecking Ball