Aftermath and Between the Buttons

US Aftermath has Paint It Black & Going Home. UK Aftermath has Take It Or Leave It, Mother's Little Helper, What To Do and Out Of Time. The rest of the songs are the same. Obviously Paint It Black is essential. Going Home is classic too, although you've got to be in the mood to hear Mick jerking off for 13 minutes.

The verdict: UK Aftermath, and download the two songs left off. Next up we'll crunch the data on Between the Buttons.

US easily wins this one.

on the other hand, you've heard spend the night and ruby tuesday a million times and maybe you have them on this comp or that comp and quite possibly you've never heard back street girl, and you've really really got to hear that one.

bobby darin has a really over-the-top schmaltzy version of back street girl that's pretty good.

between the buttons is one of the best things the stones ever did. almost a bubblegum record. i too wish they kept with that mid-'60s style for longer.

UK Aftermath has Going Home too.

Good news is I've got sixtiesphane coated mono originals of both. If I nurture them well, they'll fund a grand set of golf clubs on retirement.

US version of between the buttons rules the school.

you can't really write songs about manic pixie dreamgirls anymore (a la ruby tuesday) because of over-civilization. #uncool #conservative #belief #banme

if anybody can undermine the cutesiness of Ruby Tuesday it's the Stones or also Marianne tbh

anyway Connection is the greatest Stones song ever, sometimes the best song ever so

there is a total decaying ice cream vibe to Ruby Tuesday, i know what you mean about mpdgs but the Stones were nothing if not avatars of the rotten

ohmigod Connection just came up fuck everything this is the riff i'm hearing on the way down to hell

I prefer the UK versions for both. I also typically listen to the singles via LP compilations like Big Hits, which is probably why the US versions feel redundant to me. Anyway, it's too bad ABKCO didn't just append the singles (and "Ride On, Baby") to the UK albums, it would give us the best of both worlds on a single disc, but that would be atypically consumer friendly coming from them. (FWIW, I also prefer the mono mixes for both albums.)

i don't even own a mono tbh

jesus don't even start me there are feebs who think rock exists outside or beyond this album, this is the marker and monolith and end of it

your enthusiasm for this album's inspired me, noodle. i've listened to both the uk and us tracklist, buncha times today.

the meanness of songs like yesterda's papers—not just cruel, but also kind of small, and bullying—is always shocking to me.

man oh man I love Keith’s vocals in “something happened to me yesterday”

I wanna say that I don't find the "Ruby Tuesday" lyric to be cutesy. I find myself rooting for the Stones in this endeavor to sing about a female protagonist who has empowered herself. And also to believe in their wistful sentiment about loss in having to say goodbye.

What's harder to get used to with the UK BtB isn't the absence of the singles. It's the inclusion of "Please Go Home" with its aggressive psych noise. What was fine on the patchwork Flowers seems jarringly out of place on Buttons, until you accept it as more Stones-being-Stones than the rather whimsical songs surrounding it.

I don't know, I feel like that fits in with the rock energy on almost half the album - Connection, Miss Amanda Jones, All Sold Out, My Obsession.

(Although it's my least favorite of that group of five, so I don't miss it on the U.S. version I'm used to.)

send up the karl malone signal!!

anyway i was listening to “my obsession” and the vamp they hit near the end with the falsetto “ooh, babaaay”s and that riff just churning woozily along feels so ghostly and perpetual and weirdly modern to me. a dreamy moment of platonically perfect rock. the remaining stones should turn it into an NFT lol

There's something "try-hard" about Between the Buttons after the confidence of Aftermath, everything on the second side feels forced to me, both the whimsy and the frenzy.

FP

I hated Between the Buttons the first time I heard it, and I get the impression the British press hasn't been so kind to it throughout the years, but I love it now. FWIW, the mono mix of the UK version is the one that got me into it - something about the stereo mixes feels too thin and diffuse because they're so damn wide. (Bob Ludwig even tried to narrow them for the 2002 remasters.) The album's a beautiful little pop gem, especially the quieter numbers like "Backstreet Girl," and Wes Anderson really made a perfect choice in featuring the album in his third film because it captures all the shades of his work very well.

man oh man I love Keith’s vocals in “something happened to me yesterday”

"If You Let Me" from Metamorphosis, apparently recorded in early 66, would have been a worthy addition to Aftermath if it didn't sound so close to "I Am Waiting". It would have been good enough for Flowers, anyway.

Flowers is such a weird release. In the UK, it would be redundant or worthless crap burying one gem unavailable elsewhere, but in the US it was "essential."

There's something "try-hard" about Between the Buttons after the confidence of Aftermath, everything on the second side feels forced to me, both the whimsy and the frenzy.

Interesting, I think have almost the opposite impression. I was very into Between the Buttons as a kid, and I just went back to it and found everything about the way I experienced it as a kid there waiting for me, preserved in amber. (I can tell I haven't listened to it much as an adult, because I got to "Who's Been Sleeping Here?" and thought, oh, this is the one where the CD skips. Then I remembered that I have Spotify now and that CD got stolen when I was fifteen.) I remember I found the first three songs affected and difficult to like in different ways, so it felt like those first three songs were a sort of slow on-ramp to the album. Like, I listened to them, but once "Connection" kicked in it was like, "okay, here we go, this is where it gets really good."

I was very into "All Sold Out" as a kid; I think it had to do with how rhythmic Jagger's vocals are, how much he emphasizes the meter of the lyrics, and also (this is something I like about the album in general) how perfectly the lyrics fit together and how little they actually mean. It's like Jagger at this stage of his life has a brain filled with impeccably scanning, vaguely insulting, slightly affected snappy lines and they just flow out effortlessly, no actual thinking required.

I missed
the point of your doing it
your mind
has just jumped a track
I took
a bit different view of it
you sold me out and that's that

It sounds great. It's almost, but not quite, meaningless. And he could probably do this all day. There's something about that ease and confidence that I found very appealing as a kid and still do.

To be honest I don't care for Between the Buttons as a whole, but the track "Please Go Home" stands above the rest as something interesting. It points toward an avenue the Stones could have taken but never did - basically, psychedelic Bo Diddley. And I think this was slightly in advance of Bo Diddley himself going psychedelic, on tracks such as "I'm High Again."

Great post Lily!!

Urm… my copy of Between The Buttons doesn’t have a song called “Please Go Home”??

Is that supposed to refer to “Going Home” on Aftermath?

"Please Go Home" is on the UK version of BtB only

...and eventually appeared in the US on Flowers

I love BTB.

...it's too bad ABKCO didn't just append the singles (and "Ride On, Baby") to the UK albums, it would give us the best of both worlds on a single disc, but that would be atypically consumer friendly coming from them. (FWIW, I also prefer the mono mixes for both albums.)

Turns out, they're legally bound to keep the original album configurations as-is (whether it's the U.S. or U.K. version) per the infamous contract that got them ownership of the Stones catalog in exchange for severing their ties to the group.

Speaking of ABKCO, has anyone read the Allen Klein bio?

Love this version.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OA2loJAO-xo

(I might have said this before on ILM but I recommend Harry Nilsson checking out this part of Bobby Darin's career.)

LOL ... I recommend Harry Nilsson fans checking out this part of Bobby Darin's career. I reckon Harry was already familiar with Bobby Darin.

UK BtB is probably my favourite Stones album, all that effete loucheness, it was made for me