Their Satanic Majesties Request

i think the only actual awful track on "Satanic Maj." is the long long long reprise of "Sing This All Together" at the end. altho i am usually in bed in the dark when i listen to this record & i don't remember having heard that song when i wake up in the a.m.

Does anyone know if there's any truth in the rumours that The Stones back catalogue will finally be re-issued properly this year? You know - powerfully remastered, proper UK tracklistings restored, extra tracks..... I've noticed that they're trying to flog off the last lot of Stones re-issue CDs in many of the big chains. Is this in preparation?

I like a lot of Their Satanic Majesties Request. A lot of nifty songs. I imagine this is one of those you have to have been there to hate it albums.

That's not to say there aren't some juicy outtakes, live cuts etc. from the post-Klein years that haven't been legitimately issued either...

Whether these will actually hit the record shops is another matter, as I said, you've heard it all before...

Never mind what The Stones did before or after! TSMR is a must for any psychedelics fan. It just blew me away in 1984, the first time I heard it. Everything holds together, the music, the sleeve (front, inner, back) and the overall feel of the album.

It's my favorite Christmas album of all time! (And I hate Christmas!)

I think the psych album most similar to this is The Piper at the Gates of Dawn.

- Bill Wyman, c. 1982

gareth otm

This is probably my favorite stones album. I don't understand why it's considered a dud.

yeah, i agree it is amazing. i'm especially fond of 2000 man and think it's prediction of the impact of internet porn would have on marriages is somewhat eerie: "though my wife still respects me i really misuse her/ i am having an affair with a random computer."

Recommended bootleg: mono CD version of this album that includes the singles from around the same time (Dandelion, We Love You, etc.).

those are great tracks, from a great identity crisis period in the history of the rolling stones.

Thanks, Pat! It's on Pi&@te B&y, for those interested

*bookmarked it on amazon. thanks for the tips/info

honestly just go to the library and see what books you can find. That's how I was. Amazon reviews can get annoyingly misleading because they get trolled by uptight satanists saying THAT'S NOT HOW IT REALLY IS and recommending lists of dark magik texts to read instead which is just zzz

once you wade through the jokey stuff, you should find some interesting reading.

sorry for the derail :)

no, that's good advice. i should make better use of my local public library. after graduating college and not being in walking distance from an awesome library anymore i've gotten into the bad/wasteful habit of ordering tons of books off of amazon.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bfQ18D84Maw

This is a cool (NSFW?) documentary called "Satanis: The Devil's Mass" and they interview LeVay alot and reinact some stuff. It feels less like a dangerous evil cult and more like a pomo swinger's club. It would be pretty interesting to read about the 60's and the rediscovering/exploitation of occult stuff that went on. Veggie, do you remember the titles of any of the better books you read on the subject?

I will have to dig wayyyy back into my memory banks, I'll see if I can remember any of the others. *creak, groan*

Just popping in to say Thank You Wes Anderson for introducing me to "2000 Man" via Bottle Rocket.

second that

These are 2 others that I recall poring over, but whether or not they hold up in adulthood would remain to be seen :)

Devil's Dominion - Anthony Masters
Raising Hell - Robert Masello

There was a great book about the occult in England, pre Crowley through the sixties but I'll be buggered if I can remember the title or anything except maybe what the cover looked like if I saw it. Amazon hasn't yielded anything. Oh well. Have fun down the rabbit-hole, kiddies :)

http://img.timeinc.net/time/magazine/archive/covers/1972/1101720619_400.jpg

would frame

Would rock that hoodie.

And of course Harry Smith probably subtly influenced the 60s generation w stuff buried in the Folk Anthology.

re: La Vey's church of Satan as swinger's club, I saw an interview with Sammy Davis Jr, where he pretty much made it clear that he got involved cos of the parties.....

Where's that joint!?

no discussion of late 60s occultism is complete without the Process Church of the Final Judgment

this book is great

and they interviewed Mick, were temporarily based in UK etc

Best cult name ever. Literally sounds like a made-up evil cult.

also hands-down best-looking cult newsletters ever

plus, they got tha funk

While I think Satanic Majesties on the whole is a very uneven record, there's a fair few tracks on this album that I rate quite highly: 'Citadel', 'She's A Rainbow', 'The Lantern' and '2000 Light Years From Home' are the four that are up there for me, but I do have a soft spot for Bill Wyman's 'In Another Land' too. I think the mistake people have always made with this record over the years is comparing it with Sgt. Pepper's rather than take it on its own terms. There's also been a lot of talk over the years about how The Stones embracing elements of psychedelia was a mis-step and how Beggars Banquet was an attempt to get rid of all of that and "just be The Stones", but I feel something like 'The Lantern' (for example) could have fit well on Beggars Banquet anyway. It's just as much of a Stones record as the ones that came before it and the ones that came after, IMO.

If I could change anything about the album, I'd just get rid of the 'Sing This All Together' tracks (both of them), and have 'We Love You' and 'Dandelion' on the record (both of which were recording at the sessions and both of which I love).

*recording=recorded.

yeah Dandelion is a great track in particular

listened to this on mono the other day and it seemed to bring out how damn heavily rockin' the rockin' parts actually are; like the ending of 2,000 Man, for example. hearing it in mono also made me feel like i was listening to one of THE BEST stones records for the first time. "sing this song" (the opener, i like the jammy one), "gomper", "on with the show" are forgettable but the rest is top notch

There's also been a lot of talk over the years about how The Stones embracing elements of psychedelia was a mis-step and how Beggars Banquet was an attempt to get rid of all of that and "just be The Stones", but I feel something like 'The Lantern' (for example) could have fit well on Beggars Banquet anyway. It's just as much of a Stones record as the ones that came before it and the ones that came after, IMO.

"child of the moon" seems like the main banquet-era holdover from satanic majesties. and it's awesome. one of my favorite stones songs, tbh. a cheaters version of SM with the less successful experiments excised in favor of "child" and the singles you mention might be one of my favorite stones albums.

xpost:

I'm with you on the mono thing... I usually try and seek out the mono versions of pre-1969 stuff where possible (not just for The Rolling Stones, but other '60s acts too). Early stereo mixes tend to be very interesting, especially in their use/abuse of panning, but 99.9% of the time they're secondary to the mono mixes. I'm not a big fan of stereo mixes which have been done well after the fact from albums that were originally intended to be mono, either. My general rule is that music released prior to 1969 sounds better in mono, and after 1969 in stereo.

"child of the moon" seems like the main banquet-era holdover from satanic majesties. and it's awesome. one of my favorite stones songs, tbh. a cheaters version of SM with the less successful experiments excised in favor of "child" and the singles you mention might be one of my favorite stones albums.

― I have many lovely lacy nightgowns (contenderizer), Tuesday, April 16, 2013 4:43 PM (3 minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

If 'Child Of The Moon' was around at the time of Satanic Majesties, I definitely would have had it on there. Great track!

yeah, moby grape debut mono version is one of my favorite records EVER - but otherwise totally agree based on the monos i've encountered, in general.

i have no idea whether or not "child" is a literal leftover from SM, but it sure feels & sounds like it. i like to think of it that way.

"On With the Show" is the one where Mick's pretending to be an MC or something right? "Good health to you" and all that? It not a Great Stones Song but it definitely has a place in the lineage of British psychedelic rock albums with one goofy music hall bit. Also see Cream's "Mother's Lament" or The End's "She Said Yeah".

Ah, wikipedia has me beat

Earlier in 1967, Frank Zappa had already used the same types of ideas to record "America Drinks and Goes Home" on the album Absolutely Free. The Zappa song parodied his own experiences playing with drunken bar bands in the early 1960s. Other similar songs recorded around the same time include "My Friend" by Jimi Hendrix (recorded in 1968, released in 1971) and "You Know My Name (Look Up the Number)" by The Beatles (recorded in 1967 and 1969, released in 1970).

"On With the Show" is the one where Mick's pretending to be an MC or something right? "Good health to you" and all that? It not a Great Stones Song but it definitely has a place in the lineage of British psychedelic rock albums with one goofy music hall bit. Also see Cream's "Mother's Lament" or The End's "She Said Yeah".

― Emperor Cos Dashit (Adam Bruneau), Tuesday, April 16, 2013 4:59 PM (3 minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

Ngh... I don't think that's reason enough to praise it, though. I mean, how many of those goofy music hall bits of British psychedelic rock albums are actually any good? I mean, 'Mother's Lament' is rrrrreally awful, IMO!

yeah, moby grape debut mono version is one of my favorite records EVER - but otherwise totally agree based on the monos i've encountered, in general.

― making plans for nyquil (outdoor_miner), Tuesday, April 16, 2013 4:54 PM (10 minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

I'd take the mono version of Small Faces Ogden's Nut Gone Flake over the stereo version any day of the week, and I actually don't mind the stereo version of that album at all!

Other similar songs recorded around the same time include "My Friend" by Jimi Hendrix (recorded in 1968, released in 1971) and "You Know My Name (Look Up the Number)" by The Beatles (recorded in 1967 and 1969, released in 1970).

Monkees' "Don't Call On Me", 1967

And Tommy James + the Shondells, "On Behalf Of The Entire Staff and Management", 1969

"You Know My Name" is pretty awesome, at least the intro drum/piano bit and the ska bit they later uncovered. Funny enough, i thought the first verse was the Stones singing the 1st time i heard it.

Yeah, I find 'You Know My Name (Look Up The Number)' highly amusing, but it was definitely a B-side! I couldn't have imagined The Beatles putting it on any album, aside from buried near the end of Side 4 of The White Album (in the 'Revolution #9' slot, perhaps), whereas Cream saw fit to put stuff like 'Mother's Lament' on their albums etc. etc.

Funny enough, i thought the first verse was the Stones singing the 1st time i heard it.

― Emperor Cos Dashit (Adam Bruneau), Tuesday, April 16, 2013 5:11 PM (8 minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

Me too! Well, I thought that Mick Jagger had participated in the recording (because one of the voices in the first verse sounds very Jagger-like), but I don't think he did? I know Brian Jones plays sax on it, though.

I guess I'm just one of these people that loves British '60s psychedelia, but has never been too taken with the 'music-hall pastiche/parody' end of things. I usually find those kinda moments are the weak links of the albums they're on :/

The ending of Something Happened To Me Yesterday kinda fits in here as well

good but often annoying thread ideas

This album is great when you put it on expecting it to be a bad one. But once you've turned that corner and put it on expecting it to be a great one, it is actually annoyingly rambling.

i can see that. it doesn't really accomplish what it seems to want to accomplish, and in this way is way different than basically any of the other stones albums from the period. it has a certain charm to it though.

Revisited this, specifically the original mono mix. I surprisingly liked a lot of it, but the long, pointless jams ("Sing This All Together (See What Happens)" and "Gomper") are fucking tedious. If you swap the former out with "We Love You" to end side one and swap the latter out with "Dandelion," it's a solid, tight album, maybe even a great one. (I kind of miss "Cosmic Christmas" though - maybe that could be the runout groove on side two.)

It's funny how their previous albums were always tweaked in the U.S. market, primarily to wedge in the UK single-only cuts - they stopped doing that with the one album that would have benefitted most from that practice.

no way dandelion totally sucks. nothing needs to be removed from this album. It’s perfect dark stormy dumb fucked up lo budget fantasy film nonsense

I have no problems with the long percussion jam

"Dandelion" is wonderful, WTF?

Low budget fantasy films circa 1967 generally sucked. I'd rather have a start-to-finish enjoyable psychedelic gem.

And yes, "Dandelion" is wonderful.

Sounds like they wrote Child of the Moon after hearing the Beatles’ Rain.

i always wondered if the krautrock bands had been fans of "2000 Light Years from Home"

^That is the fucking jam right there, one of my faves