Tracks: Route 66 // I Just Want To Make Love To You // Honest I Do // Mona
(I Need You Baby) // Now I’ve Got A Witness (Like Uncle Phil And Uncle Gene) // Little By Little // I’m A King Bee // Carol // Tell Me (You're Coming Back) // Can I Get A Witness // You Can Make It If You Try // Walking the Dog
Woo! The Stones dude! Best band ever! Well, maybe not, but they sure were an important one. I guess one of their big contributions was helping rock to evolve as a form, while at the same time keeping it raw and vicious as possible? I guess that’s a good thing, since without them we’d never have had the Stooges or the Velvet Underground, and then where would we be? Well, I guess people who didn’t like glam or alt rock would be alright. Or Neu! and Can. Or, really, half the music on the world today... Personally I’m still hanging-out for the big skiffle revival – I know it’s waiting just round the corner. Any day now! By this point it should be clear that I know nothing at all about the Rolling Stones. Anyway.
I think my favourite moment on this album comes when Mick Jagger cries-out “Sting it, Ben!” on “I’m A King Bee”, only to have someone deliver a little guitar solo that sounds, somehow, exactly like the stinging of a bee. The rest of the song is kind of stupid, what with the goofy lyrics coupled with a complete lack of humour, but that one little part is pretty ace.
This is a pretty neat little album. No-one would ever mistake it for a masterpiece, but once I accepted that it was just an unassuming blues album, I found myself enjoying it quite a bit. It’s basically just an Anglicisation of the Chess Records sound, but there’s nothing wrong with that. The lyrics are generally dumb (in the case of “I’m A King Bee”, they are spectacularly dumb) and the production is really, really cheap, but sandwiched in between those two things are a few pretty neat songs. I’m particularly taken by “Mona (I Need You Baby)”, which is a gritty and groovy Bo Diddley cover with the best vocals on the album, “Can I Get A Witness”, which has a wonderful jumping boogie piano (and was apparently originally a hit for Marvin Gaye), and “Tell Me”, which was apparently one of the first song Jagger and Richards wrote together. Interestingly, in contrast to the rest of the album’s driving blues sound, the song is a quite nice doo-wop influenced number with multi-part harmonies and a jangling acoustic intro. The story goes that Keith and Mick were locked in the kitchen by their manager, and he refused to let them out until they’d written some original songs. I find it amusing that, under such circumstances, they’d churn out something so pretty. It sounds like the sort of thing you’d expect to find on the first Velvet Underground album. Maybe if they’d focused more on originals the whole record could have been this good. Although "Walking the Dog" is pretty cool too, I suppose.
So. In the end I like this. Most of the songs are nothing to write home about, but it’s at least pleasant to listen to (unlike the early efforts of another prominent British blues-rock band of the early 1960s). It’s an interesting little signpost on the road to modern rock music, and it’s enjoyable enough if you have a fondness for such things. I think it’s telling that the best songs here have a big emphasis on the groove. “Tell Me”, “Mona”, “Can I Get A Witness” – all big grooves, you know. Personally, I can’t wait till we finally get around to “Sympathy for the Devil”.
Download: The Rolling Stones - Tell Me MP3
Download: The Rolling Stones - Mona (I Need You Baby) MP3
Fun Facts: “Walking the Dog” was the first Stones song to make it to number one on the Australian charts! And here it is, being performed somewhere other than Australia:
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