Compared to the Stones' career, that of the Beatles - a mere ten years - is almost the blink of an eye.
Unbelievably, the Stones' latest tour - predictably called "Sixty" - celebrates sixty years in the music business.
Invariably, how you look back over a sixty year career is a matter of subjective interpretation, but I see it as having four main phases.
1. The early R&B years, with the Jagger/Richards songwriting team beginning to emerge as a major force.
2. The experimental years, with Jagger/Richards originals to the fore, increasingly sophisticated use of the recording studio, attempts at psychedelia and a rekindled interest in roots music.
3. The Mick Taylor years, which saw the band touring extensively and winning a well-deserved reputation as one of the greatest live rock acts of all time.
4. The Ron Wood years, which saw the band lose Wyman and Watts, as well as a great deal of their creative energy. It's also the longest phase, knocking on five decades.
Recently, I've been revisiting the Stones' back catalogue and one album really stood out, and it's one I've neglected for far too long - "Aftermath".
.jpg)
Unused shot from December 1965 album cover shoot
According to my Stones career timeline, it sits right at the beginning of phase 2. It was the first album of all original material, with no R&B covers, their first true stereo release, and it also marked the increasing use of more unusual instruments and studio effects. Recorded at RCA Studios in Hollywood in late '65 and early '66, over a couple of sessions between touring, the album saw marked progress in production values, helped by ace engineer Dave Hassinger who encouraged the band to experiment. Added to this, the participation of Phil Spector's right-hand man Jack Nitzsche served to galvanise Brian Jones into using non-standard rock instruments such as the marimba, dulcimer and koto to vary the band's sound.
RCA Studios - Dave Hassinger standing in the middle - no Brian
UK fans were far better served by the release prepared for the domestic market, with 14 tracks and no previous hit singles. The US version had only 11 tracks and one of those was "Paint it Black", which most fans would have already bought.
But what of the music itself?
It's fair to say that the tracks cover a wide range of styles, some of which were touched on earlier in the band's recordings, but not expanded on until "Aftermath". So, we have the inevitable nods to R&B, but also to more acoustic folk and country stylings, although now in the context of original compositions. There's a hint of soul and also Spectorish vibes, helped by the use of studio reverb and panning to create space and depth.
I'm not going to write about the album in detail, but here's a few of my personal standout moments...
"Think" is a very clever production job. It combines an acoustic guitar and a very clean electric with a fuzz guitar that plays horn lines, rather in the manner of the Satisfaction riff, but taken a bit further.
Keith with Paul
Several tracks have fuzz bass - courtesy of Keef - which adds texture but never intrudes.
"Flight 505" kicks off with Ian Stewart's bluesy piano panned hard right and drenched in reverb - a cheeky nod to "Satisfaction" then brings in the rest of the band.
Then there's "Going Home" - on sheer length alone (11+ minutes) it's a ground breaker. OK, it's a bit of a jam at the end, as the tape was allowed to run on after the song was due to finish, but it just shows how risks were taken and how they paid off.
Above all, the album shows an awareness of how instrumental tones and textures are so important - the touches of marimba on a couple of tracks illustrate this perfectly.
Rather than just celebrate the album with the original UK or US version, here's something a little different. It's the Mickboy interpretation - "Only When it's Frozen" - which has the original album plus a few extras. This comes with a second CD which has a selection of mostly pre-Aftermath tracks presented in stereo. How "true" the stereo is is beyond the scope of this article. That's a whole separate rabbit hole to go down...
Aftermath? Sounds more like a watershed to me...
Getting your own high quality 320kbps copy of Mickboy's magic couldn't be simpler.
ReplyDeleteJust tell us what you think is one of your favourite musical watershed moments.
Miles Davis "Bitches Brew"
DeleteBack when I was rather ignorant of Miles music, I found Agharta in a charity shop while on holiday. A few days later when I got home, putting it on the player was a bit of a mindblast, I wasn't sure if I liked it at first, but have since purchased quite a lot more including BB.
DeleteI was never allowed to stay up past 9 pm so I never had any watershed moments. As to the Stones, never liked them much after they killed Brian. My favorite is Between the Buttons, which directly followed Aftermath. The original 67 mono version is IMO the best.
ReplyDeleteJeez, I thought you meant watershed TV time. We don't really have our water in sheds out here. What do you mean?
DeleteA turning point in someone's musical career or, on a personal level, what really made you sit up and take notice of someone.
DeleteI grew up in northwestern Pennsylvania in a small burg twenty miles from the New York state border & twenty million miles from civilization. Beantown (not Boston, just Beantown, named after the Bean family that originally settled there). We used to call it Bum Fuck, Egypt but that was doing a disservice to Egypt. The greatest thing about living in a cultural vacuum like that was that it somehow as if by magick sucked in radio signals from far & wide.
DeleteI lived by The Radio. I worshiped at the Church of Radio. It was my only salvation. I had a tiny transistor radio (originally AM, but after a while enough stations had gone for that NEW thing, FM that I got a new AM/FM transistor). At night after I’d go to bed, I’d crawl under the covers, pull the pillow over my head, stuff the earplug into my ear & start scanning the dial to hear what I could hear. I even wired up the plug end with two ear plugs so I could hear heavenly music & nothing else (it was still monaural but two ears were better than one).
On clear, crisp nights I could pick up stations from the real world that was out there to be sampled. Someone told me about something called skywave or skip that is the propagation of radio waves reflected back toward Earth from the ionosphere or sporadic E propogation for FM. Since it is not limited by the curvature of the Earth, skip can be used to communicate beyond the horizon. Whatever…all I know is that I was living in the skip zone for a lot of good music.
I lived only about 90 miles from Cleveland, Ohio, so it was plenty close enough to pick up if their wasn’t a lot of interference. I listened to Wicksee (WIXY) & WHK (Alan Freed was long gone by this time, but Cleveland almost always came in good). Some of the further stations skipped into my ears even better & were much more desired. About the furthest & one of the best was WBZ in Boston, a favorite of mine until they got too heavy into live play-by-play sports (Bruins – Celtics, I don’t know). By that time, though, my favorite had become CKLW in Detroit (really in Windsor, Ontario…Canada’s southernmost city & Detroit’s sister…they played the Hitsville USA/Motown greats but because of Canadian fair-play laws, also Guess Who & other Canadian acts). I also listened to WLS from Chicago & several New York City stations. Early on I listened to Cousin Brucie on WABC or Murray the K on WINS, but by the mid 60s they were so into the Beatlemania thing that I searched elsewhere around the dial (spoiler alert - I’ve never been a Beatle’s fan). Also in New York was WMCA with The Good Guys. In 1960, led by Ruth Meyer, the first woman radio programming chief in New York City history, WMCA began promoting itself by stressing its on-air personalities, who were collectively known as the Good Guys. The Good Guys outdid the other stations by playing the top 25 (as opposed to the top 20 elsewhere) along with Sure Hits & Long Shots which were not on the charts yet. They were also always a few weeks ahead of the other stations at airing new music.
DeleteThere was one other station that I came to love out of New York that eventually led to this long-winded tale & my “watershed” moment. That station was WBAI, a listener-sponsored, non-commercial radio station. Their signal reached only a hundred miles or so from NYC usually, they just were not as powerful, but on a clear night, it was the cat’s pajamas. In 1963 Bob Fass's program Radio Unnameable first aired. From the beginning the show featured the work of & impromptu interviews with counterculture figures such as Paul Krassner, Bob Dylan, & Abbie Hoffman. A long list of musicians have appeared on Radio Unnameable, including Townes Van Zandt, David Peel, Richie Havens, Jose Feliciano, Joni Mitchell, The Fugs, & Phil Ochs. Jerry Jeff Walker & David Bromberg introduced the song “Mr. Bojangles” on the show. The Incredible String Band came over from Scotland & stopped in to chat & play music. The first performance of Arlo Guthrie's “Alice's Restaurant” was on WBAI.
Late one night in mid-summer 1966, I was listening to WBAI ("Good morning, cabal"). It had been coming in unusually clear & it was cracking me up. Fass was one of the creative genii of free-form radio, each night creating a program with no format, an improvised mélange of live music, speeches, & random phone calls. Radio Unnameable was a forum for eyewitness reports from war zones & urban conflicts, recitations of poetry & prose, solicitations for political causes, testimonials for illegal drugs, & experiments with noise & silence. As I was listening, I heard an 11+ minute long song called “Virgin Forest” by a band named The Fugs that blew my mind.
By the end of “Virgin Forest” my life had changed. I had never bought a record before in my life. I told you I lived by The Radio. But my parents had a stereo console record player/AM/FM radio unit (the Hi-Fi they called it) in the den & they had records, mostly religious (I remember Tennessee Ernie Ford was my mom’s favorite & my dad was partial to Vic Damone). I listened to some of their records sometimes, Nat ‘King’ Cole, Harry Belafonte, & Glenn Yarbrough (“Baby, the Rain Must Fall”), but until I heard The Fugs I had never wanted to buy one myself. After all, I listened to the radio. New music every week, every day, every hour.
DeleteI didn’t really know how to go about buying this record. There were no record stores where I lived & anywhere that did sell records sure wouldn’t have The Fugs, but where there’s a will, there’s a way, it is said. I called Radio Unnameable late one night a few days later, after my parents had gone to bed. I snuck downstairs, dialed the operator, she connected me to the number, & after not too long of a wait, I actually got to speak to Bob Fass. I told him I lived in Bum Fuck, Egypt but listened to his show on my transistor & wanted to buy my first record album, The Fugs – The Fugs. He gave me the information for contacting ESP Records & I did. I found out the information, sent them cash (well concealed in a letter, as we were not to send cash in the mail), & waited.
My uncle Dean was post-master in a nearby town that had the closest Post-Office. I had the album sent there for him to hold for me so my parents wouldn’t find out if it got delivered to our house. I told my uncle it was a surprise for my parents to insure his silence. When it finally arrived, I snuck it up into my tree-house & ripped it open. Even before I read the liner notes by Ginsberg, I read the song list in awe: “Skin Flowers”; “Group Grope”; “Dirty Old Man”; “Kill for Peace”; & at the end of Side 2, the incredible 11:20 (who had ever heard of an eleven minute song?..I listened to the radio…songs were three minutes) “Virgin Forest”. Now all I had to do was wait until my parents were gone with my younger brother & sister & I could actually listen to it.
In the meantime I read Ginsberg’s words so many times that I knew them by heart. “It’s war on all fronts. ‘Breakthrough in the Grey Room’ says Burroughs – he meant the Brain – ‘Total Assault on the Culture’ says Ed Sanders…On one side are everybody who make love with their eyes open, maybe smoke pot & take LSD & look inside their hearts to find the Self-God Walt Whitman prophesied for America…Who’s on the other side? People who think we are bad…”
Finally I got the chance to listen to the whole album, cranked up as loud as I dared. By the time it was over, I was certain which side I was on…I wanted to make love with my eyes open & all those other things. Every opportunity I got I listened to this record, eating it up in big bites. But of course, the inevitable finally happened, but it was beyond my imagination & led where I could never have known.
One day as I was listening to Side 1 at maximum volume, I failed to hear my mom return. She came into the den in the midst of “Group Grope”. She had a look of rage on her face that I had never seen. She picked up the album cover, looked at it, looked at me, & went into action. I had never seen my mom do anything in the least bit violent, but I had unwittingly found that button, pushed it, & she snapped. She yanked the record from the turntable & I heard the scream of the stylus ripping through the fatally wounded vinyl. Then she gripped the record in both hands & began furiously twisting it left & right, back & forth, shaking with rage, veins popping out on her neck & the sides of her head, her eyes wild with…HATRED. Somehow she managed to rip the record into several pieces. Then she started in on the cover. When she was finished, she stared at me for a moment with sweat & tears running down her face. “Don’t ever bring that FILTH in our home again,” she said so quietly I almost missed it. Then she turned, walked out, & threw all the pieces of my first record into the trash.
DeleteI was embarrassed. I was dumbfounded. But I was on to something here. This was musick. She HATED it. She called it FILTH. I knew in an instant which side she was on.
The next album I bought was The Virgin Fugs. This was the one that ESP had originally rejected for being ‘obscene’. Oh, boy.
By then I had met a friend who had a record player in her bedroom. Her name was Isabel. She wore only black, wore heavy black make-up. This was before a style called Goth. This was the era of Munsters & Addams Family. We listened to The Fugs & other tastes. We smoked pot. We made love with our eyes open.
Tuli, Ed Sanders and Isabel opened your third ear. I love this story. I picture her looking older than Wednesday, but younger than Morticia or Lily Munster.
DeleteNO/ I've just read your great story. I guess because it was so hard to get hold of records, you must really have valued every one. Unlike the kids of today who have access to millions of different musics, yet probably just take them for granted.
DeleteReading David Toop’s Ocean Of Sound and listening to the accompanying double CD was certainly a watershed moment for me! https://mega.nz/file/WBdV3RJR#2Qe9DrPTlkVgj8t1oxy7Jg3ms8T_0vSVDJXhsFo-jJI
ReplyDeleteJoe Pass - Tudo Bem. Very hard to find lp these days. Released in '78 with Oscar Castro Neves. Been a huge fan of guitar based latin jazz since.
ReplyDeleteJoe was amazing, and a stand-out guitarist of the 20th century. Probably, my favorite after Django.
DeleteSame. Django is quite literally a genre unto himself. Those Pass solo albums make you wonder if he was human though.
DeleteJOE PASS THE STONES JAZZ. bought it when it was released out of curiosity as i had never heard of joe pass. completely turned me off to jazz/rock to this day.
Deleteme and my pals would play it to annoy each other. i'm sure he was forced to do it for commercial reasons but jesus!
Hmm...I can certainly admire Joe's stunning chord melodies, but it's just a little bit too smooth for me. I certainly prefer him as an accompanist (with Ella) where there's often an "edge" to set himself against.
DeleteSee what you think of Joe Pass with bassist Niels-Henning Orsted Pederson (often affectionally shortened to NHOP), live at the Northsea Jazz Festival from 1979.
Deletehttps://mega.nz/file/0W0XUIwK#MQbz1RGf1TQn1dHH2QDDn2dc5YsAiJ5CNmTAGbIkDG8
my own watershed was seeing Robert Gordon and Link Wray on OGWT - I suddenly saw rock and roll! It remained a memory seared into me for many years, and could never find on the web. Then a few years back playing a gig met someone who worked for ITV reckoned he could get hold of, and sure enough (a couple of months mind) later a VHS dropped onto my doormat. I had to get the VHS out of the garage to play it. I was actually really nervous as it had become so iconic in my mind - would it be a disappointment when I finally saw it again?? But no! Still fantastic... I manged to make my own digital copies...
ReplyDeleteThe moment that comes to mind was about 15 or so years ago when my son asked me to play one of his cd's in the car for a change. 28 seconds is all it took for me to realise that me and Slipknot were never going to be a thing. Mindblowingly awful. My son still snarls at me for my threat to chuck the cd out of the car unless he switched it off. Miserable git me.
ReplyDeleteHere's Mickboy's "Aftermath". I think he did a great job, but YMMV.
ReplyDeletehttps://workupload.com/file/6JBVwyXcYCv
To my ears, it's far superior to any ABKCO CD release.
DeleteAgree sounds great many thanks,loved this Stones era.Great car music too.
DeleteIt's hard to discover what Mickboy did to produce his remasters.
DeleteThere's no remixing involved as he didn't have the multitrack masters. All I can find are references to finding the best pressings he could and then playing them on good equipment and experimenting with the EQ.
Other standouts of his are the Goats Head Soup remaster - posted by Babs on the IoF - and Exile, which totally blows away the recent(ish) official remix and remaster.
not sure what watershed means but i'm up for aftermath. i had the british purple cover version. always thought it was way better than the woosh american cover release.
Deleteaftermath is truly the brian jones stones. masterpiece.
looking forward to hearing this.
Watershed - a sort of turning point which saw significant progress or, in terms of personal participation, really made you sit up and say "WTF???" when someone just did something different that blew you away.
DeleteOther Mickboy releases will be the subject of future screed.
DeleteIn the meantime, here's Mickboy's "Get Your Kicks On This Vol. 2-3", which is two CDs of "Rolling Stones No. 2" and "Out Of Our Heads", expertly EQed, and in superb mono.
https://mega.nz/file/UWUmxD7T#9L6cgG3rTUyXhnoejfqmdVAp8cXgpItFvzTvmeY301U
Ah, jeez, the Ramones. April of 1976. Out here in the San Franciscan suburbs we'd been hearing rumors about New York. In November of '75 I'd bought Patti Smith's "Horses" LP. I liked it, and it was definitely different than what was going on in mainstream rock, but it didn't seem like a watershed moment.
ReplyDeleteThe Ramones album...It was confounding. There were no guitar solos, the tempos seemed ridiculously fast, the lyrics...there were NO pretensions to "poetry."
I could do this. Or at least I thought I could. This lead to me dropping out of UC Berkeley (a very good school) by 1978 and eventually playing at the Mabuhay Gardens in '82-'83 before lack of talent actually brought my extended adolesence to an end. Or at least that part of it....
Kenny Burrell's Midnight Blue. Started the exploration of cool jazz for me.
ReplyDeleteHearing the DJ play the JBs' "Doin' it to Death" at a gig we played at sometime in the mid 80s. It opened my ears to a lot of funk and led me on to the whole PFUNK scene.
ReplyDeleteMy watershed was hearing my grandfather tell me that if you like it, it's good music. It was liberating. Similar to Justin Wilson on the Cajun cooking show saying that "the kind of wine to drink is the kind you like."
ReplyDeleteNever mind the critics or the sales charts. If it doesn't move you, find something that does. The subjective experience of pleasure is as valid as virtuosity, authenticity, or originality as a measure of worth.
That's the acid test - if you like it. you like it.
Delete