"phoney beatlemania has bitten the dust"

it clearly hasn't, well done joe strummer- you are a crazy nutter!

personally i am bored of the hype granted for the beatles in the past few weeks. i used to love the beatles, when i was younger i absolutely adored their '1' album but now as an actual grown up adult man, [aparently] i ahve grown onto love other and better things. i choose my words carfeully here as the beatles are clearly the biggest band ever, undoubtedly, but for all their great popular music and pazazz-i want a bit of bite not just bark.

i enjoy pop music, and i think that the beatles covers of tracks such as 'rock'n'roll music' are great, and the 'with the beatles' album is bloody good. but in this post, i wish to celebrate the past 50 years of music with a close selection of my favourite albums from a year ending in 9.

ok as a start, 1959, there are in my opinion no stand out albums from this year. hit singles however include: el paso- marty robbins, a teenage in love- dion and the belmonts, only sixteen- craig douglas, it doesn't matter anymore- buddy holly etc etc. brilliant songs, check them out. i was basically educated on fifties music by my mum.

1969, my choice for an album from this year is easy. as the beatles were collapsing in on themselves and working with phil spector, the rolling stones released 'let it bleed'. 9 tracks long, originally two sides of an lp. i often wonder how albums are properly compiled and if the opening track is a sign of things to come for the album, martin scorsese is to blame for my love of the stones. 'gimme shelter', as featured in pretty much everything by marty is such a stonkigly great song that is hard to describe its full power, so i shall sum up the dark and brooding nature of the track with the lines: 'war children, it's just a shot away' and 'rape, murder, it's just a shot away'. they are delivered with such incredible intensity, and merry clayton the female voice [this is an apocryphal tale] even miscarried during her pregnancy due to the performance.

a cover is next, and covers are something that the stones do very very well and i genuinely can;t understand why modern bands don't do more covers of classic songs-re thinking them for themselves. the beatles did it, the stones did it and the clash did it. oasis tried but as they are just a cover band anyway, this doesn't really count. the original robert johnson 'love in vain' has nothing on it bar his bluesy acoustic and his captivating voice, but the cover has weaving sounds and his brilliant-jagger's voice is potent and rife with whatever makes his him the best, in my opinion at least. him or mercury, there are no other contenders :)

then a cover of themselves, a true bluesy song named country honk. when the clash covered one of their own songs [career opportunities on sandinista!], it was fucking awful. simply the worst idea they ever had. but the stones put a lot more of a country vibe on country honk, fiddles sounds rich and jagger has much more of an american lilt to his voice. it isn't as good as their 'honky tonk women' single, of which the track is a cover, but sounds good. however it is probably the worst track on the album.

track 4, live with me. the saxophones are really quite prominent on this little number, and blast through the rest of the guitar and rhythm work. it has a big sound, that has now become the stones' live thing and sounds great with the duelling guitars and all the other bits.

to close side one, we have a filthy song that is only beaten by 'star, star' in terms of lyrically nasty songs. a tad crass with the words, 'we all need someone we can cream on', but that is the rolling stones for you. i can only really think of 'kiss my cunt, oh kiss my cock' from pixies u-mass as a filthier line from a song. the song is down tempo as albums a re built to be, but really i can't wait to talk about the next song.

'the midnight rambler', the intrigue of the central character is what pumps the song forward as well as the fucking marvellous break down a good way through the song. the writing of this song is clear that they wanted to make the figure an elusive and nasty bastard strolling through the south of america, much like max cady in cape fear. my opinion. the guitar work is very good as it is so relatively simple, but it is the harmonica that helps to give the song a great sound. 'i'm gonna hit-and-run rape her in anger', nasty and observational of the nasty america that was unfolding. whereas charlie manson deduced satanic meanings from beatles stuff, if he listened to the stones there is no deduction needed. the closing lyrics 'i'll stick my knife right down your throat baby, and it hurts', pure evil. amazing!

you got the silver, love/blues and keith richards. richards lead vocals are very nice, not as good as jagger's overall voice but again, my opinion. also my friend wiki says that this was the last track that brian jones worked on with the stones, because he was going mental mental mental on drugs! so the man that formed the band was fired for being a lay about and being to drug addled, this coming from keith richards too.

i am getting tired now. monkey man, great track. listen to it.

the final track from the let it bleed album is the uplifting ditty [a 7.5 minute long ditty] called 'you can't always get what you want'. it is a moving track, again just listen to it.

the album will have it's 40th anniversary in november, will it get any coverage? no. should it? yes. it is every bit as good as anything the beatles put out, but as the outsider band the rolling stones will not grant the same publicity. still the band still has three of its original members, and they still work as a band. lennon is dead, ono is not. justice? no. but was lennon a dick? probably yes.

keep it rockin'