58. The Rolling Stones — Let it Bleed Recently I issued a half-formed opinion on double-albums. A prejudice, really, arising as much from ADHD as any learned assessment of music criticism. At best, an observation: I don’t usually like double-albums. I find them generally undisciplined, self-absorbed affairs. Sometimes, as with The White Album, or Exile on Main Street,… Read More Rating My CD’s: Exile on Main Street
57. The Rolling Stones — Sticky Fingers You could probably make an argument, if you really wanted, about the relative decline of Andy Warhol album covers by an exegesis of the “iconic” Velvet Underground & Nico cover as against the Sticky Fingers cover. For the Velvets, the genitalia was suggestion, conveyed via the kind of joke that middle… Read More Rating My CD’s: Sticky Fingers
56. The Rolling Stones — Hot Rocks 1964-1971 This is where it all began for me. I became a fan of the Rolling Stones about halfway through college, at the end of a late night viewing of Full Metal Jacket in a friend’s appartment. We were both of us familiar with the movie but had not… Read More Rating My CD’s: Hot Rocks
55. The Rolling Stones — Let it Bleed I don’t remember if I bought this before or after Their Satanic Majesties Request. I feel like it was after, because my earliest memory of having it was living in my duplex after college, when I distinctly remember putting the ticket from seeing the Stones on the ’99 No… Read More Rating My CD’s: Let it Bleed
54. The Rolling Stones — Their Satanic Majesties Request This album, long drawing question marks and sneers from the taste historians of the 60’s, has recently been undergoing a critical reanalysis. Which is to say, I read some guys in Magnet say some positive things about it in a head-to-head discussion of Beatles and Stones albums.… Read More Rating My CD’s: Their Satanic Majesties Request
One of the things I had in mind for this blog was a combination of my politics blog, Revolutionary Nonsense, with my music blog, Genre Confusion, mostly because writing two blogs was exhausting. And while my political writings shifted over here with ease, the music criticism hasn’t. Genre Confusion was about a lot of things (hatred of trendies… Read More I Write About the Rolling Stones
53. REM — Reveal I bought this — or rather, my aunt bought it for me, and I may have paid her back — at a Costco, because I saw it on the way out after getting the full Costco experience (the mayonnaise…THE MAYONNAISE). Back in 2001, I thought that it had lovely melodies and… Read More Rating My CD’s: Reveal
52. R.E.M. — New Adventures in Hi-Fi Critics like to give bands certain arcs, and those arcs tend to conform with the rise-and-fall of tragedy. The Beatles “fell apart” due to success, the Stones jumped the shark in the 70’s, briefly re-grouped for Some Girls, and then coasted along ever since. And according to overwhelming… Read More Rating My CD’s: New Adventures in Hi-Fi
52. REM — Automatic for the People In January 1999, I was on assignment for my first job at Nabisco Headquarters in New Jersey. I was driving a 1986 Lincoln Mk VII that I’d purchased for a song the previous August. I used to drive up from my Philadelphia apartment early Monday Morning and drive… Read More Rating My CD’s: Automatic for the People
51. Red Sammy — A Cheaper Kind of Love song [For the first 50 of this series, go here.] I first mentioned Red Sammy a good few months ago, at Genre Confusion. I described them as a “a country-blues-folk band with some pretty serious soul.” Better than that, they were serious gents, and gave me… Read More Rating My CD’s: A Cheaper Kind of Love Song
Content Blues 