What are your opinions on the Stones' trio of mid '70s albums:

Goat's Head Soup (1973)
It's Only Rock N' Roll (1974)
Black and Blue (1976)

I like them all as albums but I feel like if you'd taken all the best songs from those albums and released one album say in 1975, it'd have been amazing:

Side 1
1) Hand of Fate
2) If You Can't Rock Me
3) Angie
4) Winter
5) Doo Doo Doo (Heartbreaker)
6) Luxury
7) Memory Motel

Side 2
8) Dancing With Mr. D
9) 100 Years Ago
10) Fool to Cry
11) Silver Train
12) Hide Your Love
13) It's Only Rock N' Roll
14) Hey Negrita
15) Time Waits for No One
16) Star Star

Never a fan of greatest hits albums myself...I enjoy the album as a whole and consider it like a footprint of the moment in the bands state.

I put it akin to saying you like an artist ( ex/ Matisse ) but only like his shades of green in all his paintings...JMO...

I LOVE Black & Blue...LOVE GHS...really, REALLY like IORR

ps...not to include Fingerprint File in your compilation...well...let's just say, you should have... ;) ;) ;)

I would love to see other list from later trisms...or duos, considering the time between releases...many ëras"only have two or less releases in them, I would think...

Agree completely with Android. That period may be my favorite Stones era.

A lot of people think their greatest era was '68-'72 - 'Beggars Banquet' through 'Exile on Main St.' I'd add those three albums as well. As a matter of fact, 'Black and Blue' may well be my favorite from that whole timeline, nutty as that may sound (it was one of the first two albums I ever bought with my own money, from my paper route, when it came out. I was 12. So yeah - it has sentimental value, but actually I think it sounds better today than it did then).

I have to admit i am not a big fan of black and blue. Though i consider it the best ever recorded Stones album, it's just not very good (IMHO). No real "stones" songs apart from the quite woeful "Crazy mama". Some shining lights like Hey Negrita for me, but it just doesnt sit right to my ears. Needs 1 or 2 more songs, and rockers at that. Hot Stuff is fucking boring. Cherry oh baby just drags. Memory motel has awesome drum sounds, but goes on and on and on and stops and starts and fool to cry has those dreadful robot strings and melody is GAY!!!!!! Everyone goes on about hand of fate, and i guess its more of what i wanted, but i just dont dig the song that much.

"Rehearsing guitar players" was Keith's answer to what the album meant. A re-released version with some killer outtakes would maybe change my mind.

But i LOVE the album cover!!

GHS i like very much though i think the original murky recording was trying to out exile exile. Apart from can you hear the music (and maybe hide your love), a great album.

IORR is my fave of the 3. A very brave album at that time. Totally into black music & funk whereas everyone else was amping up the distortion and having double neck guitars and singing about trolls and wizards and beasties. A diverse album with Taylor & Preston really more or less taking over (good and bad for some people i guess). Jagger's accents are all over the shop and the songs have a great diversity. It's as far away from that horrid "California" sound as you can get, and thank bloody Yahweh for that! Its more Sly & the family stone than rolling stones in many ways. yes, i think it was a bold album for them in an era like that. Yanks had mellow shit, Poms (and Aussies) had glam. Pretty hard balancing act for a world wide act to straddle. Kudo's to them for going blacker than they ever had. funky, fun, motown - i love it!

But i can understand teen white middle class kids in Adidas Romes and white t-shirts tiring of them and going for 20 minute drums solos. Of course, us convicts had Angus & co. And Skyhooks. And Mobbsy's fave, Sherbet.

That looks like a double album to me.

It sure does. It's too long for one vinyl record.

They are great albums. I particularly love GHS.

Who has not had a terrific dance/wank/wonder to these lovely 12+ mins of Ney, Hegrita?

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

"Black and Blue" is awesome. It sounds like a group having fun in your living room, plus the vocals sound clear.

By the time of "discmen" I traveled nearby in order to purchase a CD of that album.  I was so happy to hear "Memory Motel" --the studio version--  that I almost checked into a motel..   Well, no, but a pretty girl looked at me, and gave me sort of a wink.  That is why I am still single and childless.

Want to see a good movie.  Watch " Last Resort ".   Forget all those Tarantino Oscar Lincoln crap, and try something decent.  A bit melodramatic, but very very satisfying. (And it only lasts 75 mins!)

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aCBtnaxd8GU

My favorite Stones era.


Sadly, I keep rewatching the Newark PPV show thinking that if I watch it enough times maybe Mick will actually shout out "Dis next one goes out to all the freaks in the pit!!!" and then they bust into DANCE LITTLE SISTER.

Did it actually happen?? Did I miss it?? Should I put the pipe away?

:smoking