Friday Utilitarian Music — Dueling Rolling Stones

Posted on by

We had a long thread about music, and Bert Stabler praised this song, so I thought I’d check it out again. I’m still not entirely sold…but decide for yourselves.

I prefer this one, I think.

What have you all been listening to this week?

Mick+Jagger++Keith+Richards+Keith+and+Mick

 

30 thoughts on “Friday Utilitarian Music — Dueling Rolling Stones”

  1. Also listening to Edge of Attack (ridiculous retro powermetal) and Pink Floyd’s More…and Continental Drifters, who I wish I liked more. They’re kind of eh.

  3. My favorite Stones tune from Satanic Majesties is “2000 Light Years from Home.” If I were making a playlist of 60s and 70s-era tunes which mapped out the territory for the shoegaze bands of the 80s and 90s, I’d have to include this along with The Byrds’ “Lady Friend” and Eno’s “Needles in the Camel’s Eye.” I love the sounds on this one (and, along with “Planet Caravan,” it might be my favorite “we are now traveling in interstellar SPACE!” rock tune):

    http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=U6o2ZpHZWos

    This week I’m still listening to Johnny Marr and the new Bowie, but I’m also in love with Piramida from Efterklang. Just an amazing record. I hope I have time to see them when they play Lincoln Hall next week. The bass part that comes in on the second verse of this one, “Hollow Mountain,” the record’s opening track, is a model of smart, melodic, economical playing:

    http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Qwgs5R97X4M

    And I’m listening to Richard Hell and the Voidoids as I read his new book and get ready for his visit to my Punk lit. class in May:

    http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=alR3OBBMPKs

  4. Drawing a Jules Verne-inspired update of the Capt. Nemo novels this week, so it’s Bach and Buxtehude on the organ, Ton Koopman and Bernard Lagacé. Plus, Hawkwind, for the hoi polloi in steerage. The synergies are amazing.

  5. I’ve been really reluctant to comment on this — as Noah knows, I can be violently intemperate in comments.

    But shit fire, “She’s like a Rainbow” is a marvel!

    Now, find another song that celebrates a woman in such a way — despite the Stones’ reputation as misogynist brutes — a song that so tenderly and so awe-struckedly sings the beauty, the transient beauty — like that of a rainbow– of a woman.

    So there’s the odd stupid line — “She combs her hair” (wowee!) So there’s the sort of pretentious orchestration that plagued Britpop at the time: the Beatles were criminal in their kitsch deployment of baroque trumpets in ‘Strawberry Fields’ and of violins & strings in ‘Eleanor Rigby’– yes, these were hanging offences.

    But, by the d____ ,She’s a Rainbow overcomes this schmaltzy, kitschy syrupy cynical stew by its sheer youthful awe– do you remember, guys, how your young horniness transmuted into AWE of those Godesses who walked the Earth?

    And who turned out, as we aged and ‘matured’, to be the same dumbass confused mortals as we males were…
    ———————————————-

    She comes in colors everywhere;
    She combs her hair
    She’s like a rainbow
    Coming colors in the air
    Oh, everywhere
    She comes in colors

    Have you seen her dressed in blue
    See the sky in front of you
    And her face is like a sail
    Speck of white so fair and pale
    Have you seen the lady fairer

    She comes in colors everywhere;
    She combs her hair
    She’s like a rainbow
    Coming colors in the air
    Oh, everywhere
    She comes in colors

    Have you seen her all in gold
    Like a queen in days of old
    She shoots colors all around
    Like a sunset going down
    Have you seen the lady fairer

    She comes in colors everywhere;
    She combs her hair
    She’s like a rainbow
    Coming colors in the air
    Oh, everywhere
    She comes in colors

    She’s like a rainbow
    Coming colors in the air
    Oh, everywhere
    She comes in colors
    ————————————-
    What I love about this song — with all its stupidity — is that here’s a young man driven nuts by desire, and his impulse is to worship!

  6. Yeah, it’s what being an adolescent male (which lasts until roughly age 35) in love feels like. It’s great, as is the Light Years song. But I really love “She’s Like A Rainbow.”

    And of course it’s stupid, as I mentioned when I brought it up the first time. Who cares?

  8. I love “She’s a Rainbow” and was in fact listening to Satanic Majesties earlier in the week. But of a mmixed bag of an album (I’m not big on “2000 Light Years from Home” myself, though I do like “2000 Man” a fair bit, and the Wyman song is an interesting oddity), but “Rainbow” alone makes that album essential. Currently, It’s Only Rock ‘n’ Roll is in the CD player in the car, replacing Leonard Cohen’s Live in London, which I finished off this morning, and I’m pretty sure I listened to Some Girls within the last week or maybe two. So it’s been a bit Stonesey here lately.

    What else have I been listening to lately? Hmm…. Alison Krauss & Union Station, New Favorite; several Bob Dylan boots a friend sent me–Gaslight Tapes plus a couple of live shows, plus Basement Tapes, Freewheelin’, Pat Garrett & Billy the Kid, Blood on the Tracks–as well as the legit album Tempest; Eno’s Ambient 4; O Brother Where Art Thou? soundtrack; Iggy Pop, Heroin Hates You; Beatles, Hard Day’s Night and Past Masters Vol. 2; Great Big Sea, Safe upon the Shore; Be Good Tanyas, Hello Love; Kate and Amma McGarrigle’s Tell My Sister set; Flogging Molly, Float … probably a bunch of other stuff, as I tend to have something or other on in the background most of the time.

  10. Toxic is amazing.

    I love staring and drooling music! Carpenters, John Denver, Donovan, Ivy, Nick Drake, Kinks, blank shoegazy ambient nothing — I’m for it!

    She’s a Rainbow just doesn’t send me, is all. Maybe it’s Mick’s voice, maybe the orchestration is just too self-conscious (I’m not a big Sgt. Pepper fan either)…I dunno.

    I do like some Stones psychedlic beatlesy goofiness from their first few albums….

  13. I like Rainbow, but I wouldn’t call it one of their best songs. I’m a sucker for their country-ish stuff…Dead Flowers, Far Away Eyes, Wild Horses…Country Honk…and Honky Tonk Women too, though it’s overplayed.

    And please, give me the baroque/kitsch Strawberry Fields as many times as you like.

  15. I’ve been listening to a lot of Kurt Weill, after watching the film version of the Three Penny Opera. I’m really taken with it, and it makes me understand the Danny Elfman soundtracks of my childhood a little bit better…

  17. At SXSW! Have become a big Dessa and Eldren fan. Mykki Blanco, Kiler Mike and Lianne La Havas are the biggest acts I’ve seen so far. Lots of great, hilarious stuff here.

  20. Thanks for that link Joel. I’m a little sad that the comments there head right for Britney bashing….I guess kind of inevitable, though….

    I think I probably like the crazy super-produced version (by Bloodshy and Avant, apparently.) But Naim shows there’s a solid song under all those effects…even the lyrics work pretty well in the slowed down melodramatic version….

  21. I’ve been digging up as much Peter Banks as I could… he’s the original pre-success Yes guitarist. The first Yes member to get fired, and the first to die (a few days back). I’ve read a couple of interviews with him in which he made it clear he’d had a lot of near misses in his day. I think the death of this luckless talent saddens me more than the death of some other Yes guys who got to enjoy success.

  22. Noah, I agree with your assessment of both versions. It is fascinating to compare the two. I also like Britney’s version. I actually like it better each time I view it. Watched it again today after reading the thread, and laughed about the inversion of the dramaturgy of pornography. The man is ruthlessly subjugated and must receive the (toxic) cumshot in the end.

  25. That makes is sound like I did a musical act!

    I didn’t; I just married him with my trusty officiant powers, obtained via internet.

    Afterwards I threatened to marry my son to a chair if he didn’t behave. He was unimpressed though; he pointed out the chair couldn’t sign the paperwork.

  26. “I’ve been really reluctant to comment on this — as Noah knows, I can be violently intemperate in comments.”

    As everyone knows. After all, how many times were you banned from the TCJ mess board? Countless times. And you even trolled Eddie Campbell’s blog one time last year.

  28. “As everyone knows. After all, how many times were you banned from the TCJ mess board? Countless times. And you even trolled Eddie Campbell’s blog one time last year.”

    Alex didn’t say anything on this thread that was even remotely troll-like.

    Lord knows I’ve said things in various places that I wish I hadn’t. Let’s not bring up everybody’s old baggage and every thread, huh?

  29. Thanks for the recommendations, Bert! Octant don’t seem to be on twitter and STITSR seem to have played yesterday, but have added both to tagwatch list and will definitely go if a show pops up.

    I saw Zebra Katz and Ninja Reid (sp?) and it was a crazy good show. The whole showcase, also featuring Underachievers and some very good DJs, was crazy/good.

    Shooks Twins (folk twins from Portland) are today’s highligt.

  30. a vote for “rainbow,” i think it’s a lovely song, orchestration and all.

    yes, a minor oddity in the stones’ canon, but i like it better than a lot of the Exile on main St mainstays, such as, since it’s been mentioned, “loving cup”

    and to whoever said the beatles revolver orchestrations were kitsch, i’ve got to call contrarian overload

Comments are closed.