Wednesday, November 21, 2007

Did Everybody Pay Their Dues?



















I was browsing one of the usenet groups the other day and came across a multi-volume set, seven in all, called The Rolling Stones Unsurpassed Masters. One my favourites recently is Unsurpassed Masters Vol 3. Near as I can tell, after doing a bit of poking around, it's compiled and was 'remastered' by someone apparently called JWB in the accompanying notes. Some of the tracks appear on other Stones' bootlegs, such as Black Box, but after reading feedback about the set, some of these songs haven't been heard at all, or at the very least, in a long, long time. The quality is actually quite good and the songs are goddamn remarkable. I'd never heard some of these before and it's like hearing the Stones for the first time on some tracks. "Blood Red Wine" is one of the best I've heard from the Stones, sinister and lovely, I first heard it recently on the bootleg Unplugged (It can also be found on a number of bootlegs listed here). "Still a Fool" appears on the Black Box set and is 10 min of blues heaven; the alternate take of "Memo for Turner" actually improves upon the original. There's an guffaw during that song when Mick utters the words 'faggy little leatherboy' that just makes it. And then of course, 'Did Everybody Pay Their Dues?', which is 'Street Fighting Man' set to a completely different set of lyrics. My buddy Dave over at Egg Noodles and Ketchup thinks Street Fighting is the worst Stones song ever, so I'm curious what he thinks about this one. It's hard to hear this without thinking about 'Street Fighting Man', but this one is starting to work its way in so I'm barely thinking about commm-pro-mize sal-ooo-shunnnn....


All the braves and squaws and the maids and the whores

Did everybody pay their dues?




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