poptimists | The Friday Canon: THE ROLLING STONES

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The Friday Canon: THE ROLLING STONES

They're still not dead yet! Mick & Keef and the boys are still very much alive and kicking, despite the best efforts of various illicit pharmaceuticals, Mars Bars, Winnie The Pooh statues, Hells Angels, falling coconuts etc. Out of their 43 UK Top 40 hits, you get to pick your favourite FOURTEEN! Well go on then!

[Poll #952249]

NB I only realised that Satisfaction was on the front page of Wikipedia after I'd typed out the poll! Spooky!

Comic Relief: (link)
1. "Mama/Who Do You Think You Are" - The Spice Girls
2. "Living Doll" - Cliff Richard and the cast of The Young Ones
3. "Absolutely Fabulous" - Absolutely Fabulous (Pet Shop Boys, Jennifer Saunders, Joanna Lumley)
4. "Help!" - Bananarama & La Na Nee Nee Noo Noo (French and Saunders with Kathy Burke)
5. "Is This the Way to Amarillo" - Tony Christie & Peter Kay

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I ticked, what, nine of these? For most of this poll, track names are familiar but I have no idea how they go.

I blame Whoopi Goldberg for prevalence of Jumpin Jack Flash in popular culture.

I ticked fourteen straight off and HURRAH! It was the right number of ticks. God I want to listen to Get Off My Cloud now.

(Hhahhaa we were playing a GENERAL KHAKI song at rehearsal last night ;))

Jebus! :-0 which one?

Err the instrumental one that was like the punctuation/your theme song during your gigges = you know, der der der der de-de-de-der di der di derrrrrr surf guitar scissor kicks a go go. I don't know the name of it sorry.

Oh that one. That's "GK Stomp".

Man I have forgotten how to play all of our old songs.

Khaki Kanon ?

Animal and 45 Not 33 clearly get ticks!

Lalalalalala I can't hear you...

Blimey! The only Rolling Stones songs I really like are 'Sympathy for the devil' and 'Gimme shelter', and I'd always presumed that they'd been huge hits!

I just noticed they weren't on the list - I wondered why this poll wasn't harder!

You nearly gave me a heart attack as I thought "WAAHH I MUST GO BACK AND TICK I CANNOT BELIEVE I LEFT IT OUT etc etc"...

I thought 'heart of stone' was a hit as well (i've seen the video on vh1 classic!), but it seems to have been a single only in the US? Different releases by territory is a funny thing: I wonder how much impact it has, whether in the long run it all evens out.

Tell Me (#24, 1964)
Time is on My Side (#6, 1964)
Heart of Stone (#19, 1964)
As Tears Go By (#6, 1966)
Mother's Little Helper/Lady Jane (#8/#24, 1966)
Ruby Tuesday/Let's Spend the Night Together (um, #1, 1967)
Dandelion (#14, 1967)
She's a Rainbow (#25, 1967)
Wild Horses (#28, 1971)
Happy (#22, 1972)
Doo Doo Doo Doo Doo (Heartbreaker) (#15, 1973)
Ain't Too Proud to Beg (#17, 1974)
Beast of Burden (#8, 1978)
Shattered (#31, 1978)
Hang Fire (#20, 1982)

1989 was the last time the Stones hit the Top 40 in the US.

"You Can't Always Get What You Want" appears to have been a double-A w/"Honky Tonk Women" in US and UK

Was Under My Thumb not a single then?

Most U.S. Top 40 stations refused to play "Let's Spend The Night Together," which was actually the A-side, and its presence on the single probably had a lot to do with "Ruby Tuesday"'s hitting number one. Of these, "Mother's Little Helper" and "Heart Of Stone" would have been sure-thing ticks, and "Shattered" and "Rainbow" would have been under consideration. ("Dandelion" is on the U.K. list, and in the U.S. it was the leader of a double-sided single w/ "We Love You," the latter of which got airplay and was my reason for the tick.)

Checking with allmedia.com: "Play With Fire" scraped into the Hot 100 as the B-side of "The Last Time." "Lady Jane" got to 24 as the flip of "Mother's Little Helper." "In Another Land" was the first U.S. single from Their Satanic Majesties, climbing all the way up to 87 on the Hot 100 (I'm damned if I ever heard it on the radio). I definitely remember "2,000 Light Years From Home" getting airplay as a double-A with "She's A Rainbow," though apparently it didn't make the charts.

Of songs released in both Britain and the U.S. that only went Top 40 in the U.S., "One Hit (To The Body)" is the most significant. Also, "Dance Pt. 2" was a small hit on the rock charts without ever having been a single as far as I know, and "Little T&A" was a much bigger rock hit as the flip of "I'm Waiting On A Friend." (Of course, if Billboard had been compiling statistics for FM radio play in the late '60s, "Sympathy For The Devil" and "Gimme Shelter" and "You Can't Always Get What You Want" would have registered as huge hits, probably, and "Monkey Man" and "Live With Me" as minor hits.)

Big Hits (High Tide and Green Grass) was one of my favourite records as a child, although my mother (second time in as many days i've mentioned her on pmists!) didn't let me listen to the Rolling Stones until I was of a suitable age, I'm assuming because she thought the sexuality would be a little problematic for my young mind. I did go through quite a period of hating Mick Jagger for the persona he adopted in a lot of the mid-sixties stuff, before I managed to get my head around the concepts of characterisation, irony, subtleties, enjoying problematic emotions, &c &c.

About the only thing that saves me from having a completely conventional, canonical view of the Stones is that 'come on' remains my favourite of their songs, no matter how well I recognise that it's lightweight, derivative, just a cover, absent of the genius of e.g. 'paint it, black', etc etc etc.

14 ticks exactly on first run through. And there were only two, "The Last Time" and "Miss You", that narrowly missed the cut.

I ticked 14 sequential singles, which struck me as kind of extraordinary. I don't think Sympathy or Shelter were singles at all. They are my favourite rock band ever, and I could have ticked several more. They've not done much of interest in 30 years now, but their stuff before then is just about untouchable.

when martin sez "They've not done much of interest in 30 years" i wd rewrite that as "i have not found interesting the idea of checking out anything they've done in 25-odd years" (which is not quite the same)

has anyone actually heard any of the things getting zeroes?

I have heard the one that has the Amazong women lounging around cities, but I don't remember which one that is.

pretty sure that's 'love is strong', currently on two ticks.

Yes, you are correct I think.

I've heard (and still vaguely remember) 'She's So Cold'

Yes, of the songs currently on 0, I've heard "Respectable" (so what), "She's So Cold" (tremendous groove comic-desperation track, would have gladly ticked if there hadn't been too many others; friend of mine changed the lyrics to "I blow snot for her but she's so cold"), "Going To A Go-Go" (very strange and ratty and good live track, feels not at all like Smokey's original, somehow Jagger forgets himself and inserts the anger/hauteur of his great early years, despite - or maybe because of - the anger/hauteur's having nothing to do with the song), "Like A Rolling Stone" (think I heard and forgot this; live?; doesn't say much for the performance that I can't remember their version of one of the most intense songs of my life), "Streets Of Love" (slow sentimental shit that actually sounds reasonably good and has a clench-your-fists-and-emote chorus I could imagine Celine doing), "Rough Justice" (hard propulsive rocker, seizes you by the throat, excellent, and Mick says "cock," though not the best song on A Bigger Bang, which is "It Won't Take Long," which would have added life to side four of Exile, though I know you won't believe me), "Rain Fall Down" (godawful sentimental ballad about making love in a low-rent flat).

haha awesome THE MAN CAN'T TAKE OUR MUSIC

They made him change it for his half-time performance at the Superbowl.

I'm amazed at the number of songs I'd expected to be hugely famous Stones singles that are absent from this poll.

Also blimey Kat you're brave for attempting this. But I suppose you did do Cliffcanon.

You wait till the Elvis canon.

I know. Unbelievable absences:

Gimme Shelter
You Can't Always Get What You Want
Under My Thumb
Sympathy For The Devil
Wild Horses

Cocksucker Blues

(er, perhaps that absence is believable)

Mark, I think Robin's stereotyped Jagger into the category Individualism rather than seeing the "individualism" as I do, as one pole of an unlivable tension whose unlivability Jagger acted out in music and lyrics while (presumably, since he's still alive) compromising/sidestepping the tension in his actual life. (I mean, I personally find it hard to see the midnight rambler as the prototype of a Thatcherite's entrepreneurial self-image of self-sufficiency.)

i think there's also the problem of treating "the stones" as if they were just jagger writ large -- even if you take any given member as somehow unipolar, they are a group not an individual

(by countercarmodic i meant i differed from robin here, if that isn't clear)

(haha not that i was trying very hard to be clear!)

was clear

I often want to put up the warning SPOILERS when I discuss the Stones, since Jagger's so good at pulling the rug out from under himself, and a first listen works best when you're unprepared.

Solo s/d

Search: "Memo From Turner"
Destroy: everything else (though I haven't heard the most recent Jagger).

Search: (Si, si) Je suis un rockstar!

Destroy: Dancing In The Street w/Dame Bowie.

Haven't heard it. Haven't heard the Charlie Watts jazz album either. Or any of Mick Taylor's six albums (two of which got four-and-a-half stars from allmusic.com).

I.e., haven't heard Je Suis...

I'd have ticked them if they'd been singles:

Definitely: "She Said Yeah," "Under My Thumb," "Stray Cat Blues," "Gimme Shelter"
Possibly: "Back Street Girl," "Route 66," "Midnight Rambler," "Play With Fire" (which might have gotten airplay as a B-side)
Would have wanted to but out of ticks: "Carol," "Complicated," "I'm All Right" (second live version), "Citadel," "Around and Around," "Sympathy For The Devil," "Everybody Needs Somebody To Love," "Talkin' About You," "Ventilator Blues," "Turd On The Run," "Dance," "Surprise Surprise," "Good Times," "Doncha Bother Me," "Think," "2000 Man," "Spider To The Fly," etc.

I can't believe 'Under My Thumb' wasn't a single, I genuinely thought that must be one of their biggest hits. In the glory days of the pub across the road from me I used to get smashed on 50p vodka shots and then stick it on repeat on the jukebox, no doubt helping to fund said pub's transformation into something that looks like a cross between a trendy wine bar (smooth black tables, pine flooring) and an Amsterdam brothel (red lights, leather seating) and which now has a huge canvas with the lyrics of 'Angels' by Robbie Williams above the formerly much-loved jukebox.

I'm aware it's hideously wrong of me but I actually really love 'Laugh, I Nearly Died.' It's just so wank on some levels and so louche-y jaded but also still has that thing Red Hot Chilli Peppers think they can do but don't.

Get Off My Cloud is their best song.

I like "she talks to rainbows" too, well the Cub cover.

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The Friday Canon: THE ROLLING STONES

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US but not UK singles, Wiki sez

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Well, that was easy

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Mick says "cock"

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Solo s/d

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If they'd have been singles

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