330. The Rolling Stones, "Aftermath"

 


This album - the US version, anyway, which is the one on this list, not the UK version - kicks of with "Paint It, Black," one of the most iconic psych-rock songs in history, and personally one of my favorite Stones songs.  There's been a thread on Twitter recently of "TV shows that only you remember," and although I didn't enter this one, how about "Tour Of Duty," a Vietnam War drama which ran on CBS in the late 80's and featured this song in the opening credits?


"Under My Thumb" and "Lady Jane" are also on this record, along with "I Am Waiting," which memorably appears in "Rushmore," one of my favorite movies, so a lot of favorites going on here.

The album itself is remarkable, for a couple of reasons.  It's the first Stones album in which the songs were all written by the band, and that means Jagger and Richards, essentially, although the soon-to-be-dead Brian Jones contributed some of the weirdo instrumentation that makes a bunch of the songs.  You know the main riff in "Under My Thumb," the thing that sounds like a xylophone?  That's actually a Mexican marimba that somebody left in the studio and Brian Jones starting playing around with and basically made the song.  Bassist Bill Wyman said, "Well, without the marimba part, it's not really a song, is it?"

The other songs, the not-as-famous ones, are pretty great too, really showing that shagginess that the Stones made into their style in contrast to the increasingly fussy Beatles.  The Stones were always amalgamators, tossing a little bit of blues, folk, country, pop, whatever crossed their horizon, into their songs and that really comes across here.

You also can't listen to it, today anyway, without being struck by Jagger's casual misogyny.  Like the title "Stupid Girl" didn't tip you off enough, here are some of the lyrics:

Like a lady in waiting to a virgin queen
Look at that stupid girl
She bitches 'bout things that she's never seen
Look at that stupid girl

It doesn't matter if she dyes her hair
Or the color of the shoes she wears
She's the worst thing in this world
Well, look at that stupid girl

Shut up, shut up, shut up, shut up, shut up
Shut up, shut up, shut up, shut up, shut up
Shut up, shut up, shut up

Not great.  There's been some speculation that Jagger is paying a part here, posing as a character.  I'm not a Stones historian by any means but I find that hard to believe.  

Anyway, gross lyrics aside, this is undoubtedly an important album, and a good one, except for a few rough patches (as you know by now, 11-minute jams like "Going Home" are not really my faves).

Does this album deserve to be in the Top 500? Yes.  They probably all are going to be at some point soon, which will make this part increasingly useless.

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