Rolling Stones Single-By-Single Thread

The two GRRR singles are better than the four Forty Licks singles is all I know. "One More Shot" is a nice if truncated groove as stated above and I can hear Keith doing on the vocals on that one though Mick does a fine job.

 

One More Shot - The other new track from the GRRR! compilation. The lyrics are about trying to win back a lover. I like this track as well and also think it is better than any of the new tracks on Forty Licks. The recorded a promo video for the track and have played it live in 2012-2013.

 

Finally a late-era Stones single that I don't like. That is terrible, no real song and no inspiration.

 

One more Shot - An absolute throwaway non descript song. Sounds like a few previous songs thrown in the blender and out comes goo.
A waste of time. Useless.

 

It can't be a coincidence that, after "Bridges to Babylon", the only new Stones recordings that I ever wanted were these two, each released as the first single to promote their new compilations "Forty Licks" and "GRRR!".

I can listen to "Rough Justice" and "Plundered My Soul", but they're both a little meh. I did like "No Spare Parts" and "I Love You Too Much", but they were both older recordings for me, as I had them on "Closet Classics", a killer bootleg CD-R of unreleased material.

 

IMO "One More Shot" as quintessentially a "Keith song" as "Doom And Gloom" is a "Mick song".

 

I watched a couple of the songs from the Dublin show on YouTube .

For the opener "Sympathy For the Devil" Charlie has headphones on.

That's the first time I've seen Charlie with headphones on in concert but I haven't seen all that much of them live the last few years .
Is this a standard thing for Charlie now or a new development ?

He wasn't wearing them in later songs I watched .

 

Charlie's probably wearing headphones for "Sympathy" due to the click/percussion track.

 

I've just never seen him using phones before for anything and wonder if this is a new development ?

P.S. My questions were meant for the Stones tour thread but I accidentally posted them here .
At latest it's the correct band.

 

Hi Tim, I just wanted to go back into thew mists of time (okay, 2012) and ask you - is the Radio Mix of Plundered My Soul only officially available on the promo CD single?

Tell you what, I wish there was a great old b***leg just collecting all the officially released, but extremely hard to come by, alternate mixes in one package. Sometimes the music nerd in me just wants to listen to a slightly different mix! I just listened to the 7" mix of All Down The Line earlier, and really enjoyed it. So thanks for this thread and the great replies!

 

I believe that is correct. There is a European promo with the Radio Mix on it as well as a green-vinyl "promo" 7-inch single that is probably a bootleg.

 

In late 2016, the Stones finally released a new studio album--Blue & Lonesome, a collection of blues cover songs. Three singles were released in support of the album. The first:

Just Your Fool (2016)



Released: 10/6/2016
Charts: #27 (US Adult Alternative); #1 (US Digital Blues); #49 (US Hot Rock Songs)

"Just Your Fool" (or "I'm Just Your Fool" as it was first titled) is a rhythm and blues-style song written and recorded by American jazz and jump blues bandleader/pianist Buddy Johnson and His Orchestra in 1953.[1] Called an "R&B anthem", the song features a big-band arrangement and his sister Ella Johnson on vocals—her "delicate and deceptively sweet phrasing was ideally suited to ballads such as this".[1] "I'm Just Your Fool" became a Billboard R&B chart record hit, reaching number six in 1954.[2]

Little Walter recorded a Chicago blues adaptation of the song using the title "Just Your Fool". It was recorded in December 1960 in Chicago, with Walter (vocal and blues harp) and backing by Otis Spann (piano), Fred Robinson and Luther Tucker (guitars), Willie Dixon and/or Jimmie Lee Robinson (bass), and Fred Below or George Hunter (drums).[3][4] "Just Your Fool" was not released until 1962 by Checker Records (catalogue number 1013). Although he used lyrics and an eight-bar blues arrangement similar to Buddy Johnson,[5] the song is credited to Little Walter, also known as Walter Jacobs.[3]

The Rolling Stones covered the song in 2016 for their album Blue & Lonesome, for which it was released as the lead single on October 6, 2016.

 

Just Your Fool
Blue & Lonesome is so great. I played the hell out of it when it first came out, then took a break from it for a long while but I have been back into it in a major way as I've been running this thread. It is so great to hear the band playing so well on the music that they love so much. They do the blues so well and have since all the way back in the days of "I'm a King Bee." I think everyone gets a chance to shine on the record with Charlie and Mick shining brightest. Mick sounds fantastic and his harp work is exceptional. I love Clapton's contributions as well and "Everybody Knows About My Good Thing" is probably my favorite on the record.

"Just Your Fool" was a great selection for the lead-off single as I think it gives a strong impression and it showcases what kind of vibe/production sound to expect from the album as a whole. A great performance, a great song and a great period for the band. Knowing that they recorded the whole album in three days is just more evidence to me that they are still the World's Greatest. I hope they incorporate some of the sounds of this record into their next project only on original songs instead!

 

Yes, I think Blues and Lonesome is great also. The Stone are old blues veterans now, actually older than their blues heroes were when they championed them in the 60's!

The only problem is, this album was such an unexpected delight for me that it raises my bar of expectations for their new album of original songs , whenever that appears.

Will it seem like a disappointment or do they still have a great album of originals left in them ?

For me, a nice compromise would be original material on the order of "The Spider and the Fly" or "The Under Assistant West Coast Promo Man."
Blues based originals rather than trying to come up with more "rock" riff based songs ala "Start Me Up" or similar.
They have kind of gone to the well with that enough times at this point,IMO, but we shall see.

They certainly have had enough time to come up with riff based songs if that's the way they want to go.

 

Just Your Fool - The Stones cover Little Walter via Buddy Johnson. I also like Little Walter's version as he is my favorite harmonica player. It is cool that Blue And Lonesome gave Mick Jagger a chance to play more harmonica rather than guitar. The Stones played this one live just the other night and it seems to be one of their live favorites from the album.

Blue And Lonesome is my favorite Stones studio album since Woody joined the band and I was always hoping they would release an album of blues covers. I would like to see them release a second volume or a volume of Bo Diddley and Chuck Berry covers as a nod back to their earlier years.

 

Hello D.B. your wish can come true! There's a 23 CDs box set titled The Rolling Stones - Rarities Deluxe, all tracks were officially released (Inc. Radio promo), studio, B sides and live but never on an album. Goes back to 1964 with Poison Ivy up untill Don't Stop. Of course it's not an easy listening some times, there are so many versions of mixes and remixes from Mixed Emotion, Voodoo, Bridges, etc but they are all there. I don't want to go on about it as I'm not sure if it's OK. I'll just add that the booklet is very informative. Hope it helps you.

 

Blue And Lonesome was a pretty good record. It sort of brings the band full circle. In the early 1960s, the Stones took their name from a song by an aging practitioner of an obscure American artform. Now the Stones were that aging proponent of a fading form of music. I first heard Little Walter's name because Mick cited him as the greatest blues harmonica player. I submit that in 2018, one of the greatest blues harmonica players is Mick Jagger in my view. I like that the Stones chose to return to the music they first fell in love with and I like that they continue to shine a light on the music of American performers with far less name recognition than the Rolling Stones. They led me to that music in the first place. The playing and singing on "Just Your Fool" is expert. It is proof of the Stones' greatness.

 

Little Walter, The Hendrix of Harmonica!

 

Blue And Lonesome - Great cover from a great album that was unfortunately mastered or recorded (I dunno) too raw, too loud.

 

Yes and no to my ears.
We can sing "Well it's all right now, in fact it's a gas, but it's all right I'm Jumpin Jack Flash it's a gas, gas, gas"
right over the "All I hear is doom and gloom, and all is darkness in my room "
chorus."
So yes, that sure sounds similar.

But the guitar solo section around 2:10
deviates a bit from the usual Ronnie and Keith trading Chuck Berryisms.
Instead we get one guitar with a harmonizer on it,which kind of perked up my ears a bit.
I like "Doom and Gloom" more now than when it was first released.

On the other hand Keith has worn the open G tuning suit so many times its threadbare at this point to my ears so that "One More Shot" just sounds like something, many things they have done better in the past .

 

Thank you for this explanation. When I saw your earlier post, my first thought was "I didn't know Billboard had a "Heritage Rock" chart", followed by, "What exactly is a Heritage Rock station?"

Interesting that Mainstream Rock and Active Rock ultimately came to be considered duplicative. At one time, these were two distinct radio formats. I would describe mainstream rock as "a format that tries to adhere to the old AOR concept, overlapping to some degree with other rock formats (e.g., classic rock, alternative rock, active rock), but keeping its center of gravity somewhere in the middle", and active rock as "a format specializing in playing 'heavy rock' of various kinds". Perhaps the two have converged over the years, at least in terms of the new music they play.

Back in the late '80s/early '90s, as the old AOR format was in the processing of splintering into various sub-formats, "heritage rock" meant something like "a station that used to be an AOR station, but is in the process of evolving into a classic rock station". These stations played too much current music to be considered classic rock, but most of the current music they played was either new music by artists widely accepted as classic rock, or music by younger artists that was seen as blending in well with the older artists they played (e.g., little to no hair metal or "modern rock", maybe someone like Guns N' Roses or The Black Crowes). This sounds similar to what you described above, but there haven't been any stations like that in my area for about 25 years.

The big classic rock station in Boston, 100.7 WZLX, plays a little bit of new music by classic rock artists. If you asked me to give an example of what I'm talking about, the Rolling Stones would have been the first artist who came to mind. Whenever the Stones come out with new material, WZLX will give it some airplay. This includes several of the 21st century Stones songs discussed in this thread. But at any given point in time, WZLX can't have any more than a couple of new songs in rotation, not enough to make up much of a chart.

FWIW, searching for "Heritage Rock" on Wikipedia will redirect you to the page for "Mainstream Rock", which indicates that Heritage Rock is a synonym for Mainstream Rock.

 

(Sorry I didn't react earlier today; this was an unusually busy day for me...potentially life-changing, but that remains to be seen.)

The enthusiasm the Stones have for "Just Your Fool" is obvious and contagious. I listened to it more than once and really dig it. It's possible that, had not Andrew Oldham and Eric Easton steered them into a hit-making direction, the band's entire first album, instead of merely a selected few songs, would have sounded like this. Of course, they might not have made it to 2016 if they'd made an album like this in '64. You can hear some of "Midnight Rambler" in Mick's harmonica wailing.

At 2:16, "Just Your Fool" is one of the Stones' shortest singles. "Not Fade Away" and "Play with Fire" are shorter Hot 100 charters, and several other early cuts are brief as well. Once they broke the three-minute barrier with "The Last Time," they rarely looked back.

Yet another indicator of the fragmentation of music: Somehow, Billboard determined that there were enough downloads of blues music to start a Top Digital Blues chart; that would seem to me as only slightly more popular than a Top Digital Classical chart. (Of course, Classical is now a fragmented format, with "pop classical" and traditional classical, but I digress.) Whatever is usually on that chart, the blues buyers considered the Rolling Stones' blues to be "authentic" enough to buy.

I can find no evidence that any hard-copy singles were issued in the United States. In England, a promo CD-R single in a cardboard cover and PVC sleeve exists; it has an insert announcing the single date as February 3, presumably 2017.

 

Next we have the second Blue & Lonesome single:

Hate to See You Go (2016)



Released: 10/21/2016
Charts: #1 (US Blues Digital); #78 (UK Radio Airplay)

"Hate to See You Go" is a Little Walter composition. The music video was released on November 8, 2016.

 

Hate to See You Go
One of the more uptempo songs on Blue & Lonesome, "Hate to See You Go" is infectious and hypnotic with a revolving riff and more great harmonica playing from Mick. I really like the music video they put together for it, combining footage of the band recording with shots of Chicago, evolving from sunny morning shot to lightning-struck nighttime shots as the video progresses. I find it very visually stimulating and I think it matches the aesthetics of the song and album very well. This is probably my favorite of the three singles released from the album.