The Rolling Stones

The BBC reports a small advertisement was placed in the Hackney and Islington Gazette newspapers for the services of a company called Hackney Diamonds (in London Hackney diamonds means broken glass.) In looking at the font, layout and mentions of Rolling Stones records you might deduce that it isn’t a glazing firm. Follow the links and you’ll establish that the Stones have a new album slated for September. This will be their 31st.

As if by some coincidence I came by a copy of the Rolling Stones’ eponymous Mono debut in 1964. This gem came via son-in-law Matt’s grandmother, Janet. She asked him if he wanted some old LPs she was getting rid of. Folding notes changed hands and I was the proud owner of this lively and early rock n’ roll and blues set. I’m relieved that this wasn’t a sound that Janet liked as the LP hadn’t been played much; it’s in terrific condition nearly sixty years after her purchase. She liked The Beatles and sadly all those LPs Matt received show all the hallmarks of wear and neglect.

The line up has, obviously, Jagger, Richards and Watts but on bass is Bill Wyman who left the band in 1993 and Brian Jones who died in 1969. When asked why he left the band Wyman commented that when Jagger and Richards went into a periodic hiatus, possibly due to Richards serious drug issues, he didn’t have any income and had to look elsewhere for money. When informed in the early nineties that he was required for band practice he advised them he’d left! Jagger and Richards always had a steady income from the royalties they made as songwriters.

Richards met Jagger when they bonded over LP ‘s Jagger was carrying under his arm on Dartford’s railway station platform. One was by Muddy Waters and the other was by Chuck Berry. In 1961 American black blues music was not popular or widely played in the UK or even the USA. It’s easy to imagine the bond they must have felt when they met this way. In fact in later years many US blues artists who were very much the architects of British blues or rock credit the interest and later promotion of their sound by British bands like The Rolling Stones. It’s only after the British interest American white artists picked up on the sound of these originals. It’s arguable that without British interest Muddy Waters, BB King, Howlin’ Wolf, John Lee Hooker et al might never have reached a wider audience or even made it off the Mississippi plantations where, at least, Waters and King worked.

So it comes as no surprise that blues legends Willie Dixon and Jerry Reed are covered here along with Chuck Berry. Other soul songwriters, Holland, Dozier and Rufus Thomas are similarly covered. The latter’s Walking The Dog is so fabulous that it’s impossible to sit in your seat without gyrating. What the Stones achieved was to take an established song and to interpret it faithfully but often faster and with a greater excitement and incendiary vitality.

The sound is bright, vibrant and a complete toe tapper. Not only do the band sound tight with a dense sound but Jagger’s unique drawl stand out over and above the complementary sound of Jones’ harmonica. Keith Richards’ guitar playing is sophisticated and note perfect: by 21 years old he was the real deal. I’m A King Bee is epic as the two sit over an incessant beat. The danceable energy is palpable and you can imagine the excitement if you played the record loud, or even better saw them live. I’ve tried to imagine how revolutionary this sound must have been after the smoother and harmony laden fare of other chart toppers such as Billy Fury, Brenda Lee and The Ronettes or The Searchers in 1964. Chuck Berry’s sound is now well known with his signature riffs and rhythms but the band lay into Carol with the addition of hand claps throughout and Richards expertly replicates Berry’s picking.

You can hear the template for their later original compositions with similar bluesy arrangements but Tell Me sounds like 60s British chart music with acoustic rhythm guitar and a pop friendly tune. Over the five days it took to record these twelve songs there’s only one exclusive band composition. I could only wish that today I could come across such a remarkable album with not a wasted second of sound. The album sat proudly at Number 1 in the charts for 12 weeks. This was a clear statement of intent and the Stones had truly arrived.

New music from the Stones has been sparse of late and as they all approach their 80’s it’s easy to understand, not least with Watts passing, but their last album Blue & Lonesome, released in 2016, was a superb blues cover outing. Clearly they haven’t forgot or lost the love for their roots. It’ll be interesting to learn if Hackney Diamonds is more throw backs or a continuing paean to rock music. Either way I’ll be in the queue to find out.

Gabe Lee – Drink The River

His 2022 release The Hometown Kid was worthy of many ‘end of year’ lists. It didn’t make mine because I felt I hadn’t listened to it sufficiently but I knew it contained a selection of great tunes and interesting lyrics. In the intervening year Lee has continued to build a growing reputation and this is his eagerly anticipated fourth release. It’s very good.

Here Lee throws his lot in with an acoustic sound that’s less country and more roots in arrangement and instrumentation. It’s unfussy and allows Lee to delve deep into some heartfelt and reflective lyrics. Drink The River declaims his on going search and failure for a ‘pot of gold’ by concluding that he ‘can’t drink the river to dry the land / Or bury the ocean beneath the sand / But I can love you’. Musically there is considerable craft in the varied and alluring melodies that make each song something to return to.

Complementing the words many songs are wistful. However, Even Jesus Got The Blues is brighter where fiddle, banjo and mandolin dance away. Jason Roller on various stringed instruments with Eamon McLaughlin on fiddle provide a great foundation and it’s McLaughlin’s wistful violin that provides this strong lachrymose thread to the sound. The subject of cancer is touched here and Lee talks of its devastation in Merigold. Elephant on Jason Isbell’s 2013 Southeastern talks of the illness and it’s impact: this seems a very similar song.  Throughout there are parallels with Isbell, who he’s opened for, in the voice, arrangements, emotion and sentiment.

Lightening the severity briefly Lee ends the album with a song John Prine might have written, Property Line. He sings of a couple of situations, where boundaries should be respected, including the error of chatting up a tall lesbian’s ex-girlfriend with subsequent violent consequences!

There’s something that exudes quality and class here and he’s building up to be important. However, you come away feeling that this album is more of a commiseration than a celebration; for me a little less shoe gazing and a quick sweep of the horizon would have made it five stars.

Buddy & Julie Miller – In The Throes

Considering I write three record reviews a month for Country Music People I post very few ‘Records Of The Week’ on my site during the year. I simply don’t think many of the albums I write a review for the magazine are worth your time. They’re often not bad but I will never think to listen to them ever again.

One of the liberal things about my editor is that I can write what I want: I could never waste time on false platitudes or misleading the magazine readers. I’ve bought too many records, historically, that some erudite scribe has praised to the high heavens only to play it once as it’s so poor. Below is a review that I wrote; it’s highly uncomplimentary and is the most extreme illustration of my disdain but not necessarily an outlier of some of my negative write ups.

I did approach the editor before placing my quill on the parchment to suggest that this shouldn’t be reviewed. (Fwiw, I have some of their earlier and much better records.) He disagreed and knew what I might write. Enjoy!

The Millers have been pre-eminent in Americana for decades and it’d take a paragraph to list their awards and who’ve they’ve played with or produced. So approaching their fourth collaboration wasn’t maybe the worst writing project to turn up through my inbox? Wrong.

You can’t polish one or add glitter to it and the lasting impression is of an understated plodding low energy affair without a memorable tune. The songs with a Buddy lead vocal are the better ones (e.g. Tattooed Tear and I’ll Never Live It Down) but the majority of Julie’s vocals are something I wouldn’t care to listen to again. Her nadir is the execrable I Been Around where over a muffled guitar and plodding beat she releases her inner Yoko Ono (but maybe less in tune.)

Miller arranges the songs with occasional interesting instrumentation and it’s always well produced. Niccolo has a light acoustic arrangement that was worth half a star. Lyrically I Love You informs us that their love ‘is stronger than cement, too strong to ever get bent…’ It must have taken a couple of days to work this poetry up. And don’t get me started on the epic The Painkiller’s Ain’t Workin’. A more sparky electric affair that mines some deep mental states that may be personal but who wants to pay for this cathartic four minutes?

Their copious PR emits the sentence that this is ‘a deeply soulful collision of mournful gospel, dusty country, cosmic blues, ecstatic R&B and anything else that crosses their mind.’ Frankly, ‘collision’ tells you all you need to know. It gives me no pleasure to be so mean but life’s too short and money’s too tight to waste on this.