I’m listening to Hackney Diamonds the new release by The Rolling Stones as fed to me by Tidal’s FLAC version. It’s stunning considering the age of the performers. I get a little bit of Black and Blue out of some of it, but several of the tracks just rock, straight ahead, ma’am, thanks. I hear a nice big fat and fuzzy bass on “Bite My Head Off” and whaddaya know? It’s Sir Paul McCartney on that one! I like that Keith Richards gets to sing “Tell Me Straight.” Lady Gaga joins them on “Sweet Sounds Of Heaven”…and Mick Jagger sounds just as good at bending a blues note as he ever did. (Reminds me a bit of JJ Grey & Mofro.) Look at the credits for this one! Stevie Wonder on piano? Ronnie Wood on guitar and backing vocals? Keith is playing bass? Oh HALE YEAH! And what a great tribute to their roots at the end of the album: “Rolling Stone Blues” by Muddy Waters, most of it performed with just an acoustic guitar and a harmonica.
When the album was announced, I read that this is the first studio album of original material since A Bigger Bang. “Surely that can’t be right,” I thought. “I listened to a new album in the last ten years or so.” Ah, but that was a bunch of blues covers, not original stuff (Blue & Lonesome, 2016). Shee-it. I was stuck in yet another unsatisfying job in 2005, the year that one came out. I had no inkling I was headed to North Carolina, that two more tension-producing jobs awaited, or that I would score a professional jackpot by entering the consulting world. Eighteen years is a long time, even for old people…like me and the Rolling Stones. (Maybe I should write a memoir called that–except I came to the Stones late.)
Whatever. It’s Rolling Stones Retrospective this afternoon. Streaming Aftermath which starts with these: “Paint It, Black”, “Stupid Girl” [the B-side to Paint It, Black if I recall correctly], “Lady Jane”, and “Under My Thumb”. There are signature movements in the music industry–Big Band, Rock N Roll, Hip Hop–and I’m glad to have grown up with one. Cheers, folks.
all the voices in my head 