51. Otis Redding - Otis Blue: Otis Redding Sings Soul

Tracks: Ole Man Trouble // Respect // Change Gonna Come // Down in the Valley // I've Been Loving You Too Long // Shake // My Girl // Wonderful World // Rock Me Baby // Satisfaction // You Don't Miss Your Water

Analysis:

I must ask myself the following question – What does Otis Blue: Otis Redding Sings Soul mean to me? It’s no good blathering on endlessly about formal developments that could easily be pinpointed by a visit to Wikipedia. Rather ask – do I like this album? And the answer is yes. Do I love it? No, maybe not. And here I must show my work.

Otis Redding presents probably the most mature, fully-developed soul album yet enlisted. His unique and influential voice – woody and raw, yet capable of great emotional expressiveness and feats of technical daring – is contrasted with impeccably played and produced Stax-brand™ Memphis soul to give the world something peculiar in the realm of pop music. There is little doubt that this is pop music, you see – and it is infectious pop music at that. Redding, Isaac Hayes and Booker T. & the MGs combine forces like some sort of soul-powered Voltron to lend the magical, horn-laden, bronze-coloured touch to such songs as “My Girl”, “You Don’t Miss Your Water” and “A Change is Gonna Come”. In the case of “My Girl”, they even manage to better one of my absolute favourite songs! And then they switch around, take the ferocious rock of the Stones’ “I Can’t Get No Satisfaction”, and turn it into a wailing, lunatic soul-stomp extravaganza. And then they do straight-up blues on “Rock Me, Baby!”. There really are a lot of covers on this album, but they’re all quite successful, so it’s not something to complain about. And, as opposed to what was the case with all of those Beatles and Stones albums, here the covers selections are well-chosen and used purely to augment a selection of equally brilliant originals – including the very first version of “Respect”! Granted, the Aretha Franklin version is better, but most things come-up short in such comparisons.

The interplay of a host of different elements is really what makes this album work. I think someone described this album as a “dictionary of soul”, and you really couldn’t come-up with a better term for it than that. Every song on the album is unique in style, and yet, everything comes-out sounding like Otis Redding. Of course, a great deal of credit for the success of this album rests with the band, but Redding’s voice is another key element in the album’s success. It’s not really the sort of voice I’d tend to favour – a sort of wild, raving voice that tends to wander off into gospel-esque, lunatic frothings and manic-depressive asides – but when buried in amidst the rock-solid playing of the MG.s it creates the perfect contrast. This is the sort of thing Al Green would do very well in the 1970s, playing his strange little voice off against these immaculately-assembled backing tracks. Add to this the fact that Otis Redding is, unlike someone like Mariah Carey, actually credible as a performer as well as a technician and, well, it’s enough to convert even this finicky old grouch (I am actually only 23). Granted, it gets a bit much when he starts rambling about biology in “Wonderful World”, but what are you gonna do?

To many people, this is the greatest soul album of the 1960s, if not of all time. I don’t know if I agree with that assessment, but then I’m hardly qualified to judge. It’s certainly brilliant, however – not a bad track on it, all performed wonderfully. A unique sound that proved influential on generation after generation of recording artists... Fun party jams like “Down in the Valley” following the mournful introspection of “A Change is Gonna Come”, and not a seam showing... What more could you ask from in an album? Well, maybe the ranting on “You Don’t Miss Your Water” could go – because damned if that isn’t just embarrassing. Oh, also this album does not contain a single song as good as “Having a Party” or “Lost Someone”. There, I said it.

A word on formats, however – This is available in a 2 CD set featuring mono and stereo mixes. Unlike The Piper At the Gates of Dawn, which sounds great in stereo and terrible in mono, or Pet Sounds, which sounds amazing in both, this is very much an album that should be heard in monophonic presentation. I’m sure someone could make a decent stereo mix out of this, but that someone apparently isn’t the Rhino Entertainment Company.

9/10

Download:

Otis Redding - My Girl

Bob Dylan – Bringin It All Back Home (1965)

Tracks: Subterranean Homesick Blues // She Belongs to Me // Maggie's Farm // Love Minus Zero/No Limit // Outlaw Blues // On the Road Again // Bob Dylan's 115th Dream // Mr. Tambourine Man // Gates of Eden // It's Alright Ma (I'm Only Bleeding) // It's All Over Now, Baby Blue

Analysis:

Another side of Bob Dylan, with the man this time trading-in his folksy raconteur persona for equal parts rock-freak and philosophical balladeer. Since these two qualities were given a side each on the old vinyl, I might as well discuss the whole affair in two parts.

Side A:

The album opens with “Subterranean Homesick Blues”, which is just a great song – a weird, surrealistic torrent of 1960s fringe-culture wrapped around a pounding blues-rock beat that just EXPLODES from the speakers like something in the process of exploding. Skipping-out on conscription; brewing-up acid in the basement; shady dealings in back streets; living in clapped-out tenements; hippy jerks. It’s just such a cool song, really, encapsulating most of what people think they know about the 1960s in America, while at the same time being cynical enough about it to avoid falling into a Ginsbergian transcendentalist bullshit-fest. Makes sense that the Weathermen would swipe a line from it.

The cynicism of the opening song carries through the album, and it’s probably the most appealing thing about it. A lot of people take this as the album where Bob Dylan gets well-and-truly fed-up with all the god damned hippies and the counterculture movement in general and just said “Damn it man I’s a-gonna do my own thing”. And really, in makes sense. “Maggie’s Farm” has Dylan quipping that he “ain’t gonna work on Maggie’s farm no more”, and delivering the rather pointed observation that

Well I try my best to be just like I am
But everybody wants you to be just like them.
They say “sing while you slave,” and I just get bored;
I ain’t gonna work on Maggie’s farm no more”.

It’s a pretty good touchstone for anyone who’s ever gotten fed-up with the sort of bullshit, pseudo-intellectual, quasi-political nonsense which infests any gathering of bright young things seeking legitimacy for their anti-establishment railings.

This “Fuck off and leave me alone” vibe carries pretty well in “Outlaw Blues”, which is a fun song but not much of anything to go on about beyond it’s being pretty rocking. Although it does have the great line “Don’t ask me nothing about nothing – I might just tell you the truth”. Oh, and Dylan talks about wishing that he were somewhere on an Australian mountain range, which is something that I feel obligated to mention out of feelings of misplaced patriotism. He doesn’t seem to enthusiastic about the prospect, though, so eh. Anyway, this leads into “On the Road Again”, in which Dylan delineates the various reasons why living in this one place sucks, and why on Earth he should ever desire to stay there, finishing up with the question “You ask me why I don’t live here? I oughta ask why you don’t move!”. It may be a metaphor. And then the side ends-out on “Bob Dylan’s 115th Dream”, which is just a silly song about a silly story, and I don’t really care about it all that much.

Anyway, so side one seems both pretty rocking and pretty mocking, right? Well, I think I said something about Dylan being a burnt romantic, and you get this coming through in the two songs I hadn’t dealt with yet – “She Belongs to Me”, and “Love Minus Zero/No Limit”. These are both very pretty and very delicate love songs which could be pin-pointed as the exact point of origin for every ballad that Tom Waits ever did. In contrast to his rather bitter and isolationist views on politics and such, Dylan still seems quite happy to play the complicated and confusing games of love. I suppose any port in a storm.

Having gotten Side A out of the way, let’s focus on the good stuff

SIGHED BEE

Where the first half of the album is effectively Dylan just playing about with everything-at-the-wall rock music, the songs on side two are something completely new. Delicate folk-inspired music presumably put-in as a consolation prize for his pre-electric fans, this is four songs all over five minutes long, playing with abstract poetical concepts in a way which hadn’t really been done before. “Mr. Tambourine Man” is absolutely beautiful. His voice is beautiful, the guitars strum in these little, hypnotic ways, and the lyrics really are poetry. It’s really just the narrator reflecting on the act of reflection, yearning for some sort of beautiful place outside of anything. It’s probably about drugs, then maybe it’s not.

Then you have “The Gates of Eden”, which, if I were in a symbolical mood, I would argue was a strange rumination on the loss of the American Dream. Then again, that seems to cover 90% of American art, so who knows? I do know that it has an incredible melody, with the vocals climbing up the scale and then dropping down seven semitones and a whole scale (if I’m correct) for a marvellous effect. It’s neat.

Also neat is the opening riff on “It’s Alright Ma (I’m Only Bleeding)”, which is a somewhat terrifying song where Bob Dylan does that thing where he stretches-out the verses for as long as possible, a few bars longer each line, with no real harmonic variation except perhaps for a slight slide up by a semitone or somesuch, before breaking into the hook, and then taking forever to finally get into the chorus, which is a very small and simple “It’s alright ma, I’m only etc...”. It may be apparent at this point that I have trouble explaining the theoretical concepts of music. Which doesn’t matter, because this is a frightening song. The whole thing is underpinned by a bouncy, shuffling sort of rhythm. It’s fascinating, what Dylan does vocally on this track, singing everything behind the beat on the verses and then shifting into a smoother style for the bridge and chorus. Structurally, it’s a marvel. Oh, and lyrically it’s good too, railing against the impossible unpleasantness of modern life, all the hypocrisy and such at present, in a very fiery and worrisome manner. It’s a masterpiece on all levels.

Darkness at the break of noon
Shadows even the silver spoon
The handmade blade, the child's balloon
Eclipses both the sun and moon
To understand you know too soon
There is no sense in trying.

Chipper!

And then the album ends with “It’s All Over Now, Baby Blue”, which is both a much softer song, and a similarly depressing one, this time kind of a break-up song I guess. I suppose it helps to ease the listener out gently, rather than having “It’s Alright Ma” drive them to suicide. After all, if everyone who listened to the album were dead, then how would it get good press by word-of-mouth. Still, it’s sad.

So, a pretty neat album. The first half is quite good, but not necessarily brilliant, while the second half is maybe the most consistently excellent thing Dylan ever did. I liked it! I didn’t at first, but then I did, and there you have it.

So should I bother rating this? What's the point to ratings? The point is that it makes me feel like I've pinned this album and can finally move on with my life.

It's a 9.5/10

Download"

The Gates of Eden.

49. The Sonics - Here Are The Sonics (1965)

Tracks: Witch // Do You Love Me? // Roll Over Beethoven // Boss Hoss // Dirty Robber // Have Love, Will Travel // Psycho // Money // Walkin' The Dog // Night Time Is the Right Time // Strychnine // Good Golly, Miss Molly

Review:

Well this album is loud. I mean, really loud. Elephant stampedes, air raid sirens and atomic bombs are called to mind. Seriously, parts of this album would leave Guitar Wolf clutching their (his?) ears and moaning; I can only imagine the impact it made in Seattle in 1965. And of course I mean this all in the best possible way. The Sonics play 50s-style rock with a 1970s-style punk mindset, and the result is an album which is almost as hard, groovy and insane now as it must have been back in 1965. The singer can't sing, the band can't really play their instruments, and as a result everything the group has is thrown into a Neanderthal rhythm section and the ability to be as loud, dirty and wild as possible. And did I mention loud? These guys were really loud. L-O-U-D. Louuuuuuudddddddddddddddd

d.

The music itself is mostly just a mix of 1950s standards in the Chuck Berry/Little Richard mode, but it's all elevated to the next level by putting all the emphasis on groove. The version of "Do You Love Me" include here, for example, is the most infectiously propulsive thing on the list up to this point. I can't not dance to it. The version of "Money" is better than the Beatles', and the version of "Walking the Dog" leaves the Stones so far behind it's not even funny. And while the material is mostly shop-worn, the band throw-in a couple of original compositions which are easily the best things on the album. "The Witch" is a bizarre song about, well, a witch and the inadvisability of trying to make it with her, and it has this great stop-start rhythm that goes "BAM-BAM-BAM-BAM-BAM!

COZ SHE'S A WITCH!"

Seriously it's like Louis Prima meets the Stooges.

In addition to this you get "Strychnine", which is a weird and wild and feral song about getting your kicks by drinking strychnine, that doesn't quite sound exactly like anything else. Interesting lyrical conceits these guys have - an obvious influence, far down the line, on weirdo punk bands like the Misfits and the Cramps. A welcome addition to the musical lexicon! We'd live in a sadder world without kitschy horror-punk.

Given how cool these two songs are, it's a pity that the only real weak note on the album is an original composition. "Psycho", while not without its charms, is basically just a rewrite of "Do You Love Me" with none of the elements that made it work (although it does boast one really, really cool Can-style drum break). I don't mind it, but it's far below the level of the rest of the album, which is a real pity.

So, there you have it. This isn't great art. The Sonics are puerile, juvenile, atavistic and technically inept - and those are their good points! Seriously, as garage rock goes it'd be hard to better this. You've got the rockin'; you've got the groovin'; you've got the hedonistic abandon of youth... An all in an album that sounds like it was recorded through a cardboard box in a hurricane. Sure, it might get wearying after a while, but the whole album's only thirty-five minutes long! Talk about "purity of vision"! It's amazing what you can do with three chords, a few overloaded amps and a complete disregard for the integrity of your ear-drums.

9/10.

Download: The Sonics - The Witch MP3
Download: The Sonics - Strychnine MP3

Oh, and here's the Cramps doing a pretty good cover of Strychnine, too:

48. Jerry Lee Lewis - Live at the Star Club, Hamburg (1964)

Tracks: Mean Woman Blues // High School Confidential // Money // Matchbox // What'd I Say Part 1 // What'd I Say Part 2 // Great Balls of Fire // Good Golly Miss Molly // Lewis Boogie // Your Cheating Heart // Hound Dog // Long Tall Sally // Whole Lotta Shakin' Goin' On // Down the Line

Review:

My complaints about this album are basically the same as those I had about the Little Richard album a while back - yeah, it's fun and all in small doses, but Jesus Christ is this album a chore to sit through. Forty minutes that feels like four hours, in which Lewis slams (and I do mean slams, and with a frequent disregard for whether his backing band can keep with him) his way through a selection of originals and standards. The performance is great, I'll own - Lewis' lunatic speed-freak sexually deviant nature has been well-documented, and it's all on display on this record. This is probably the rawest and most sexual album we've had up to this point. Unfortunately, it's pretty hard to carry an album on rawness alone and, as much as I hate to sound like a whiny 1950s father figure, most of the songs just sort of sound the same - and not in a good, Bo Diddley sort of way. It's good, but I really have to be in the mood for it - and given that lately I've mostly been listening to ambient house and folk music, it's fair to say that I may not be at my most receptive just now.

So, for what it is it's pretty good. Lewis is wild and crazy, his song selection is good, and the Nashville Teens do a great job on the backing tracks. I think my main problem is that the guys seem to favour a "smash and howl" approach where I would generally be more in favour of a chugging groove. "What'd I Say" and "Money" both have neat rhythms, though, and really a lot of the songs have somethng to recommend thems. I tell you this, though - I'd better pick-up the pace, because I'm getting might impatient for the advent of funk music.

So what deep insight do I have to offer into this album? It's really good, but also really wearying. If I were a tipsy German dude sitting in the audience then I bet I would have had the time of my life. As it stands, though, I just.

Don't.

Care.

7/10.

Download: Jerry Lee Lewis - Whole Lotta Shakin' Goin' On MP3

47. Buck Owens and His Buckaroos - I've Got A Tiger By The Tail (1965)

Tracks: I've Got A Tiger By The Tail // Trouble and Me // Let the Sad Times Roll On // Wham Bam // If You Fall Out of Love With Me // Fallin' For You // We're Gonna Let the Good Times Roll // The Band Keeps Playin' On // Streets of Laredo // Cryin' Time // A Maiden's Prayer // Memphis

Review:

Buck Owens looks just like my brother! He really does! My brother is only thirteen, granted, but if 2020 rolls around and his portrait doesn't look just like the one above then I'll eat my genetically-modified space hat. It's really quite uncanny. Whether my brother will then go-on to host a successful revival of Hee-Haw is another matter entirely.

You know what else is weird? The music on this album. Well, maybe not, but I don't really know all that much about country music. I just know what I hate - and I don't hate this. It's a little bit rockabilly, but it's mostly just hard-edged, old-timey hillbilly music. Apparently this was the "Bakersfield Sound", which was a hard-edged reaction against the over-produced "Nashville Sound" that was doing quite well at the time? Apparently. What this all translates into is an album where all the music is quite stripped and raw, with a prominent back-beat and lots of twangy guitars and unadorned, yokel vocals yodelling about how a man's only true friend is his dog. Actually, the lyrics on this album are generally pretty good - nothing spectacular, mind, but they're often quite funny, although not always in a very PC way. For example, "Wham Bham" (and thank you mam), which is basically about exactly what you'd expect something with such a refrain to be about, and "We're Gonna Let The Good Times Roll", which is about a man's baby finally coming home to stay and includes lines about the pair locking themselves in the house and barring the windows and doors. Credit to Mr. Owens - it never quite crosses the line from ridiculous and funny to "weirdly threatening". On the other end of the spectrum, there are songs like "The Streets of Laredo", which is about sad, dead cowboys, and "If You Fall Out Of Love With Me", which comes right after "Wham Bam" and features antithetical lyrics requesting that, if a girl fall out of love with the man, she not let him know about it.

So all in all this is a pretty neat little album. There's a nice bit of stylistic variation between the raw and rockin' tracks and those that boast subtler, fiddle-and-slide arrangements, and Owens himself displays an impressive vocal range that covers everything from deep crooning to a high-pitched "Yeeha!" sort of spruking. I can't really see myself listening to it all the time, but I don't really listen to anything all the time - not even Kate Bush, and I love Kate Bush.

I'm not sure what to say about this. It's very good, but I don't really know enough about country music to offer an intelligent appraisal of it beyond saying "I really like "I've Got A Tiger By The Tail"". Incidentally, I really like "I've Got A Tiger By the Tail". It kind of reminds me of "Everybody's Somebody's Fool" by Connie Francis, although this time around the lyrics are about marrying a troublesome woman. Actually, that's one thing about this album that irks me somewhat - there's a sort of casual, low-key misogyny running through the proceedings, the kind that's never bad enough for it to ruin a friendship, but which is always enough for you to view the friend a little bit askew. Actually, even calling it misogyny might be a bit much. It only pops-up on a few tracks, always in a humorous context, and it's really just more of a bum attitude than anything, and meant in good fun. I don't want to give anyone the impression that this the country equivalent of an N.W.A. album. Although they were probably joking too... Anyway, if I want to avoid getting tangled-up in a web of semantics then perhaps I should just try and avoid saying anything at all. Ignore the last hundred odd words, if you will. This is what happens when you spend four years at university looking for patriarchal subtexts in everything.

Anyway! There you have it. Not a bad album. Apparently it's considered a genre classic, but I wouldn't know. All I know is that, from the small time I've spent with it, I really like it.

8/10

Look at this:



A bit ostentatious, honestly.

46. Dusty Springfield - A Girl Called Dusty (1964)

Tracks: Mamma Said // You Don’t Own Me // Do Re Mi // When the Lovelight Starts Shinging Through His Eyes // My Colouring Book // Mocking bird //Twenty-Four Hours From Tulsa // Nothing // Anyone Who Had A Heart // Twenty-Four Hours from Tulsa // Nothing // Anyone Who Had A Heart // Will You Love Me Tomorrow // Wishin’ and Hopin’ // Don’t You Know

Did you know that Dusty Springfield once punched-out Buddy Rich? Apparently they were on tour together, and he made a snide comment about her being a woman after she had the temerity to ask if she could use his band (which, incidentally, was booked as the shared band) to rehearse. A few hackles raised, a strong word said, and then BAM! That alone makes Dusty Springfield alright in my book.

Anyway, I spent this evening listening over A Girl Called Dusty, and had a very pleasant time with it too. That’s right, not only was Miss Springfield a talented pugilist, she was also one hell of a singer, and she put together a pretty cool album way back when. I think a lot of this has to do with the fact that she had a really good ear for the right material. With A Girl Called Dusty, we finally get a full-fledged, crazily-produced album in the Motown style, and there are quite a few times when the production gets a little off the wall. Thankfully, all the material (with the exception of “My Colouring Book”) is good, all of Dusty’s performances range from fair to excellent, and the insane Phil Spector-ish walls of choirs and drums and strings and horns are often actually a lot of fun, and in the end this is just a really cool soul album. It’s pretty darn good!

Still, it’s kind of a pity that the arrangements are so overboard at times. Even on Dusty in Memphis, which is often praised as the album where Springfield finally realised that she was a good enough singer that she didn’t need to bury herself under layers of arrangements (and which is the only other album of hers that I’ve heard - only $9.99 at JB-HiFi! What a steal! Oh, and I suppose a cassette of one of her disco albums too), there’s still far too many strings and backing vocalists. Can someone tell me if she ever cut and album that was just her and a little four-person blues combo or some such (aside, obviously, from “The Look of Love“)? It seems like it would be something worth hearing.

Which isn’t to say this isn’t worth hearing. “Twenty-Four Hours from Tulsa” is fantastic, what with the big groovy rhythm section and the chorus that just keeps getting bigger - I was OOOOOONLyyyyyy TWENty FOUR HOUrrrssssss froooMMMMM TULLLLSAAAAAAAA!!!! as it were. “You Don’t Own Me” not only has freaking amazing vocals but is just a freaking amazing song - scary, sexy, stern and empowering all at once (somehow). “When the Love Light Starts Shining Through His Eyes” swings so lovely, and the version of “Anyone Who Had A Heart” is all creepy and melodramatic and really good, even if not as good as the original. It sounds, I swear, like nothing so much as early-70s Bowie. “Will You Still Love Me Tomorrow”, however, is one of those clear examples of producers mangling Dusty’s vocals. The backing track on the song is great, and sells the thing as a whole, but then you have Dusty’s vocals piped right into the middle awfully quite as though they’ were being played back via a P.A. system. Very odd. And unfortunate, since Dusty had such a wonderful and versatile voice. I mean, she does big balladeering, and then she turns out and closes the album with a rocking Ray Charles number complete with proto-rapping. The woman had talent! The woman knew how to make a knee turn to jelly. With hair like that, I suppose it would have helped o have been able to sing.

In the end, this is a nice, if not exactly earth-shattering, little album. It’s a very fine bit of African-American pop music being done by a bunch of pasty British people and that, after all, is what the 60s were really about. Yes, forget Kennedy and Vietnam and putting people on the Moon - the 1960s were about the growth in popularity of female British soul singers. I thought everyone knew that. After all, I think the fact that Dusty Springfield inspired Roisin Murphy’s Ruby Blue is at least as important a contribution to world culture as Robert Frost crapping on about his road trip at the Presidential inauguration. I may be wrong, but then I may also be half-asleep. I bet it’s both. I mean, if I can't even remember that the Rolling Stones were suppose to come after this then what hope have I for anything as complex as 20th Century History. Professor Prudence Flowers, your student has failed you.

So this is good. Quite good. The next one is better, though.

8/10

I’m not sure if I’m going to keep putting tracks up for download, since they went and deleted my Genius of Ray Charles entry just the other day on account of the MP3s I mean, I could repost it but I'm really lazy. Then again maybe I can work around it.

As a compensatory gesture, here she is singing a couple of her songs in German:

45. The Rolling Stones – The Rolling Stones ( 1964)

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: