I road tripped this past weekend 1100 miles round trip...NC to NY and back...in 60 hours.

I grabbed a variety of CDs for the car...among them, B2B.

What an amazing album!! Flip The Switch is god-awful and a horrible opener...and the closer "How Can I Stop?" is slightly out of place, a bit awkward even,  but a nice Keef ballad...but the rest of that album is done right!!

OOC, and SOM are two songs that deserve to be among the RS canon as much as any other war horse or Stone's masterpieces.

Gunface and Might As Well Get Juiced are The Stones moving out of their comfort zones and I think they pull it off effortlessly.

"Anybody Seen My Baby" a great single (sans Biz Markie would have been better), "Too Tight" a great little ditty.

2 other stand outs are "Always Suffering"...Jagger singing almost aCapella like in Lady Jane and the Ska influence of Keef's "You Dont Have To Mean It" are pure jewels.

and the rest....

Dust it off...Give it a good spin or two...I think you might find it a good listening, refreshing even. I know it made my 1100 miles a lot more enjoyable!!

I think its a terrific album and has stood up as their best post-Tattoo you effort.

The fact that it was conceived and gestated in less than ideal circumstances for a Stones album (two solo album projects evolving into a Stones record, multiple producers, several bass players, Mick and Keith working on songs simultaneously in different studios, Waddy Wachtel playing on more or less every song) doesnt matter a damn if the end product works out  - and it does.

Disagree with you on the opening and closing songs though. Love 'em both. Especially 'How Can I Stop' - in fact, I'd go as far to say it's the best song on the record.

'Saint of Me' and 'Out of Control' when played live in 1997-99 totally disproved the theory that the Stones could no longer wow an audience with a new song. Both were absolute showstoppers, night after night. Its a shame that they've given up trying to capture that magic again since then.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qv9nhWxYG84


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

(the version from 'No Security' from a different night in Buenos Aires is even better - the guitar duel near the end of the song is fabulous)

So Gazza...let me get this straight...you think B2B is the BEST Stones album of the last 33 1/3 years?!? Is that what I am taking away from all of this??

:booze :keithpunky :booze

Ooc kills so hard live that listening to the record version is kind of a disappointment. Saint of me and too tight are two of my faves. Gunface and lowdown are cool and I like anybody seen my baby quite a bit, but have yet to hear a live version I like. Juiced blows. And the ballads, while ok, sound way too similar to be on the same record. But yeah it's a great record!

I don't think I've ever managed to finish might as well get juiced

Paranoid Android wrote on May 6^th, 2015 at 7:53pm:

So Gazza...let me get this straight...you think B2B is the BEST Stones album of the last 33 1/3 years?!? Is that what I am taking away from all of this?? :booze :keithpunky :booze

Yes. They've only made six. And one of those was Dirty Work.

So, it's not as dramatic a statement when you look at it in that context.

Its a very solid album with several very good songs, a couple of gems and no duds at all.  And as often with Stones albums, when they pushed themselves musically and experimented a bit the results were generally pleasing.

Holden wrote on May 6^th, 2015 at 8:15pm:

Ooc kills so hard live that listening to the record version is kind of a disappointment. Saint of me and too tight are two of my faves. Gunface and lowdown are cool and I like anybody seen my baby quite a bit, but have yet to hear a live version I like. Juiced blows. And the ballads, while ok, sound way too similar to be on the same record. But yeah it's a great record!

there arent any. I loved the studio version (especially the last couple of minutes and Waddy's magnificent outro) but when played live the song went down about as well as a fart in a space suit. It absolutely plodded and Mick couldnt get the vocal delivery right at all.

No Stones song has ever been performed so poorly on such a regular basis.

I did the same thing about a year ago, road rip and put in Bridges for some reason.  Probably had not listened to it in 10 years prior.  Great album, one song after another has some nice piece to it.  Jagger singing and writing like he hadn't in a long time.

I'm going to go listen to it now!

This album is decent, but in no way better than Voodoo Lounge.  Here is my ranked list of albums post Tattoo You:

1) Voodoo Lounge
2) Bridges To Babylon
3) A Bigger Bang
4) Steel Wheels
5) Undercover
6) Dirty Work

I suppose I haven't thought about this topic all that much, but as I'm looking at this list of records I feel that it's pretty fucking pathetic to be honest.  I love Voodoo Lounge, but other than that and the DVD sets they haven't really put much effort into really stellar new releases since 1981.  That bums me out.

The magic of the Stones, at its true core, are Mick and Keith's songs. Bridges sounds like what it was, a disjointed set of separate songs. There are moments I enjoyed tremendously, but I really can't put the album on and listen to it straight through, unlike every post Tattoo You effort apart from Dirty Work. A Bigger Bang I can't really get straight through either.

Gazza wrote on May 6^th, 2015 at 8:24pm:

No Stones song has ever been performed so poorly on such a regular basis.

Mixed Emotions

Undercover. Not so's you'd notice; more of a nice accident really. Like not stepping in the dog's DIRTY WORK. I hate that album.

I am a huge Undercover fan. Not sure if they were trying to be shocking...relevant, become relevant, or what...but for me, it works and the album RAWKS! But lets leave that for another thread!

The thing about the studio version of Flip the Switch is that they tweaked the speed and pitch so it would play frenetically fast, artificially.  I remember that when I put B2B back on after listening to 1997 live CDs for a couple months, hearing Flip the Switch made me panic that the CD player was broken.

not ready to revisit.

Lately I like this record a lot.  I hated it when it came out and didn't listen to it again until this year.

That said, I'm not even sure it's as good as A Bigger Bang, never mind the best in the last 30 years.

I'll go with this (with very little separation between 3-4-5):

1) Undercover
2) Voodoo Lounge
3) A Bigger Bang
4) Steel Wheels
5) Bridges to Babylon
6) Dirty Work

Oh and I actually like the Biz Markie bit.

I love Flip The Switch, and I love these late eighties-nineties albums. Some of them could have been better, if Jagger and Richards had't had that infamous split by the middle eighties, but I can declare that I do like Dirty Work.

And "Flip The Switch" is great.

I've said this many times, many years ago, all the way back to Black And Blue. People, and I mean fans, critics, reviewers, LesterfuckwitBangs, the punks, and contemporaries, all expected too much of the Stones. They're not the messiahs. They are very naughty boys. All the albums hold up, with the exception of EMORES 1980, and DIRTYWORK '86.

Emotional Rescue holds up just fine...in my Top 5 and usually in my Top 3

been listening to everything on a massive playlist of all the studio stuff and studio boots…, BTB is a strong record… The only thing different from it and Voodoo, is the writing and production that pushed the band experimentally… VL is a Stones record… BTB is a different kind of Stones record… more or less a tie on which I like ore, but like them a lot, I do!!!

Paranoid Android wrote on May 7^th, 2015 at 5:50pm:

Emotional Rescue holds up just fine...in my Top 5 and usually in my Top 3

Emotional Rescue is a great fucking album. The song is incredible too. Any doubters need to listen to it outside on a late summer night.

leonid wrote on May 8^th, 2015 at 3:22am:

Paranoid Android wrote on May 7th, 2015 at 5:50pm: Emotional Rescue holds up just fine...in my Top 5 and usually in my Top 3 Emotional Rescue is a great fucking album. The song is incredible too. Any doubters need to listen to it outside on a late summer night.

Something that you can't do with A Bigger Bang.  At my house, people asked me to take it off.

Emotional Rescue does more before 9am than most albums do all day.

Paranoid Android wrote on May 7^th, 2015 at 5:50pm:

Emotional Rescue holds up just fine...in my Top 5 and usually in my Top 3

Hijacked my own thread... :wtf3

Some Guy wrote on May 8^th, 2015 at 7:44am:

Emotional Rescue does more before 9am than most albums do all day.

This.

Emotional Rescue is utter rubbish. It's a throw together. The poor man's Some Girls. A piss poor follow up to Miss You, faux cockney accents on songs like Where the Boys go. Ughh! "Ill be down the pub I'll be playing pool and drinking." And; " I'm playing football there's nothin' on the tele'" An album that shows the attitude "Let's just use the left over Paris stuff we left off Some Girls."Let's face it, weren't those who went out and bought it in 1980 really fucking disappointed? Compared to Pete Townsend's 'Empty Glass', released at about the same time; 'Empty Glass leaves Emotional Rescue for dead. When Tattoo You was released in August '81, I breathed a huge sigh of relief.

Everything about Emotional Rescue is awful, their worst album cover ever, the attempt to reproduce a 'Some Girls' clone, 'She's so Hot', 'Indian Girl' shit! That is bollocks. 'Send it to me'. It goes on and on. I think some people only see it in light of retrospect, nostalgia. Nah, it was crap in 1980, and it's still crap but, Dirty Work is worse by far.

This thread has turned into ... Bridges To Babylon and on...

gypsymofo60 wrote on May 12^th, 2015 at 4:50pm:

Emotional Rescue is utter rubbish. It's a throw together. The poor man's Some Girls. A piss poor follow up to Miss You, faux cockney accents on songs like Where the Boys go. Ughh! "Ill be down the pub I'll be playing pool and drinking." And; " I'm playing football there's nothin' on the tele'" An album that shows the attitude "Let's just use the left over Paris stuff we left off Some Girls."Let's face it, weren't those who went out and bought it in 1980 really fucking disappointed? Compared to Pete Townsend's 'Empty Glass', released at about the same time; 'Empty Glass leaves Emotional Rescue for dead. When Tattoo You was released in August '81, I breathed a huge sigh of relief. Everything about Emotional Rescue is awful, their worst album cover ever, the attempt to reproduce a 'Some Girls' clone, 'She's so Hot', 'Indian Girl' shit! That is bollocks. 'Send it to me'. It goes on and on. I think some people only see it in light of retrospect, nostalgia. Nah, it was crap in 1980, and it's still crap but, Dirty Work is worse by far.

I bought ER and Empty Glass in 1980 and I enjoyed them both equally...probably played ER twice as much tho.  So, NO, I was not disappointed at all.

Well I have listened to Beggars Banquet, Let It Bleed, Exile [Sticky things make me feel bad], and I have to decide if Emotional Rescue -the whole album- is good or not.

It's a great party album.

It's not "bluesy," it's not "edgy," but the opening minutes of this thing makes me wanna shake the thing with some hot negrita in Brazil.

job wrote on May 13^th, 2015 at 12:09pm:

gypsymofo60 wrote on May 12th, 2015 at 4:50pm: Emotional Rescue is utter rubbish. It's a throw together. The poor man's Some Girls. A piss poor follow up to Miss You, faux cockney accents on songs like Where the Boys go. Ughh! "Ill be down the pub I'll be playing pool and drinking." And; " I'm playing football there's nothin' on the tele'" An album that shows the attitude "Let's just use the left over Paris stuff we left off Some Girls."Let's face it, weren't those who went out and bought it in 1980 really fucking disappointed? Compared to Pete Townsend's 'Empty Glass', released at about the same time; 'Empty Glass leaves Emotional Rescue for dead. When Tattoo You was released in August '81, I breathed a huge sigh of relief. Everything about Emotional Rescue is awful, their worst album cover ever, the attempt to reproduce a 'Some Girls' clone, 'She's so Hot', 'Indian Girl' shit! That is bollocks. 'Send it to me'. It goes on and on. I think some people only see it in light of retrospect, nostalgia. Nah, it was crap in 1980, and it's still crap but, Dirty Work is worse by far. I bought ER and Empty Glass in 1980 and I enjoyed them both equally...probably played ER twice as much tho.  So, NO, I was not disappointed at all.

[b]Totally off subject I know but 1980 was a crap year for rock anyway. Empty Glass is one of my favourite lps though, Uncle Pete's best solo effort by far. But my real fav' of 1980 was The Jam's 'Sound Affects'. Still EmoRes or, anything for that matter has to be better than Hazy Fantazy's 'Battle Hymns For Children'. Worst album ever made.

Oh! And speaking of 1980, how could I forget the debut LP from INXS. I predicted they'd be big but, even I was surprised at their global success. Oh! Micheal, such a sad and pointless way to exit stage left. Why do rock stars always choke,(pardon the pun) I really didn't mean to do that. at around the same age? Can you really get so world weary so young?

Well...if we are goinfgto fully hijack this thread AND we are going to talk 1980...

http://www.besteveralbums.com/yearstats.php?y=1980

A FUCKING MONUMENTAL YEAR for music!!!

Adam and The Ants
Split Enz
Police
Clash
TalkingHeads
PiL
X
Ramones
Rockpile
Pschedelic Furs
Patti Smith
Cure
Devo
Specials
Squeeze
B-52s
Gary Numan

There's something, down in the hole,
dow’ down down in the hole,
something down dow’ dohhhn,
down, in the hole

Happy days

1980 was awesome for music.  I've always said that 1984 was the apex of society.  Everything has gone downhill since then.

Paranoid Android wrote on May 13^th, 2015 at 10:41pm:

Well...if we are goinfgto fully hijack this thread AND we are going to talk 1980... http://www.besteveralbums.com/yearstats.php?y=1980 A FUCKING MONUMENTAL YEAR for music!!! Adam and The Ants Split Enz Police Clash TalkingHeads PiL X Ramones Rockpile Pschedelic Furs Patti Smith Cure Devo Specials Squeeze B-52s Gary Numan

Agreed. And to add :

Scary Monsters (one of my top 10 albums ever)
The River
Sandinista ('London Calling' was Dec '79)
Dirty Mind

Patti Smith had quit by 1980 though. No albums between 1979 and 1988.

A final great year for rock n roll before all those awful synth bands took over the mainstream - even though it ended badly with Lennon being shot.

Unfortunately some legendary acts like the Stones, Neil Young and Dylan all released what were by their standards sub-par albums, though.

Gazza wrote on May 14^th, 2015 at 7:30pm:

Paranoid Android wrote on May 13th, 2015 at 10:41pm: Well...if we are goinfgto fully hijack this thread AND we are going to talk 1980... http://www.besteveralbums.com/yearstats.php?y=1980 A FUCKING MONUMENTAL YEAR for music!!! Adam and The Ants Split Enz Police Clash TalkingHeads PiL X Ramones Rockpile Pschedelic Furs Patti Smith Cure Devo Specials Squeeze B-52s Gary Numan Agreed. And to add : Scary Monsters (one of my top 10 albums ever) The River Sandinista ('London Calling' was Dec '79) Dirty Mind Patti Smith had quit by 1980 though. No albums between 1979 and 1988. A final great year for rock n roll before all those awful synth bands took over the mainstream - even though it ended badly with Lennon being shot. Unfortunately some legendary acts like the Stones, Neil Young and Dylan all released what were by their standards sub-par albums, though.

still some great music in those records.
also enjoy

empty glass
gabriel "melt"
doc at the radar station
grace and danger
remain in light

Bridges to Babylon was an excellent record. A total turn from Voodoo Lounge (<which in the end I liked better ...but still).

Bridges was a colder, darker, personal album. Odd, in how it twisted in how it runs. A very different type of album from them but still had quality songs and some interesting, tricky production techniques all through.

The one song keeping it still categorized as a Stones album is "Too Tight". This one late in the album made it to the point where BTB while different and off the beating path a bit for them, could still be labled as a Rolling Stones album. If Too Tight would not of been included ...it may of been just a tad too much in another direction, or tooooo different all together. It gave it Juuuuuust enough to not be 110% too much the other way.

Low Down is a great track. Naturally, Anybody Seen My Baby was an R & B influenced great song.

Album exists at slowed pace. Nothing real fast or happy. No You got Me Rockings ... No Sparks Will Fly here in this one. Keiths two ending songs that run together make it very interesting in the closing. This album doesn't rock .. it just exists. It grinds, at times burns ... but doesn't rock like Voodoo Lounge or a Bigger Bang.

Mick was right ... Voodoo Lounge 2 would of been sort of stupid and it would not of worked.

BTB is ... mmmmmm.. "complex" but in an intriguing way. It also is an album that ages real well.

**As one revisits it today or years later you realize more how quality and credible it actually was / is. While I do favor Voodoo Lounge ..  BTB was darn strong ... just in another direction entirely... which kept The Stones from repeating themselves, and relevant.

Bridges To Babylon while very different and tricky at times, is a credible, strong Rolling Stones album that has it's own end spot on the shelf... (as well ...it has Gazza's strong stamp of approval lol ... seems as though he was /is really impressed with this one)

Ian

job wrote on May 14^th, 2015 at 11:19am:

1980 was awesome for music.  I've always said that 1984 was the apex of society.  Everything has gone downhill since then.

Absolutely. A great year and, as you say in not so many words, a pivotal point in modern cultural society. Then maybe I'm just a tad nostalgic where '84 is concerned. But, lo and behold no Stones album. Strange days indeed.

Gazza wrote on May 14^th, 2015 at 7:30pm:

Paranoid Android wrote on May 13th, 2015 at 10:41pm: Well...if we are goinfgto fully hijack this thread AND we are going to talk 1980... http://www.besteveralbums.com/yearstats.php?y=1980 A FUCKING MONUMENTAL YEAR for music!!! Adam and The Ants Split Enz Police Clash TalkingHeads PiL X Ramones Rockpile Pschedelic Furs Patti Smith Cure Devo Specials Squeeze B-52s Gary Numan Agreed. And to add : Scary Monsters (one of my top 10 albums ever) The River Sandinista ('London Calling' was Dec '79) Dirty Mind Patti Smith had quit by 1980 though. No albums between 1979 and 1988. A final great year for rock n roll before all those awful synth bands took over the mainstream - even though it ended badly with Lennon being shot. Unfortunately some legendary acts like the Stones, Neil Young and Dylan all released what were by their standards sub-par albums, though.

Isn't that when Patti Smith fell off stage and had to retire? Or was it because she married 'Sonic'? Wave's one of her better albums anyway. More music and less, what did Jagger call it, Intellectual posing? All that Rimbaud rubbish.