Worth the Attention?

Goat’s Head Soup, recently given the full-reissue shebang, has its moments, but in ’73 it was a disappointment coming on the heels of the super-human Beggars Banquet through Exile on Main Street run.  A recent review on Pitchfork sums up how I feel about it:

This would suggest Goats Head Soup’s true significance is that it marked the moment where a new Rolling Stones record ceased to be a game-changing cultural event, and more like a fresh pile of coal shoveled into the engine room to keep the show on the road.

11 Replies to “Worth the Attention?”

  1. Pretty much sums it up. It has some nice songs, but it does feel like a step down from their big run. Bitchfork description is pretty apt, but Some Girls stepped it up. And the second half of Tattoo You is great make-out music. Not that anyone makes out anymore.

    1. I’d argue that Some Girls is overrated and Tattoo You is underrated. Anyway, those are the last two Stones records I can listen to from start to finish.

  2. Yes, Some Girls was a huge improvement, especially over their previous album, Black and Blue, which was pretty terrible. They also got their live mojo back at that time. Two things had happened: Keith got off heroin, and punk came up and bit them in the ass.

  3. Nah, not the end of rock’n’roll, just the end of the Stones as a great band and their beginning as reliably good arena rockers. Interestingly, the same thing happened to the Who at some point. They kept on being a great live band (greater than the Stones ever were) long after their records became disappointing.

    Lester Bangs was always fun to read, but he seemed unaware that no band gets to be great forever. When the mojo’s gone, all they can do is retire or keep going and pretend they’re still great. As for the Bowie comment: yeah, Bowie’s glam phase was wearing out by ’73, but he had several great records ahead of him. But of course LB had no way of knowing that in ’73. At that point, as glam wore thin and the great 60’s bands vanished or became institutions, there were doldrums before punk came along in ’76.

    As for Bowie having “no ideas of his own,” who does? LB worships at the common boomer altar of “originality.” All artists pretty much try to copy their various idols. The more creatively they fail, the better the record, and the luckier we are.

    As always, the opinions stated herein are entirely my own and not necessarily those of losbastardosreunidos.com, Los Bastardos Reunidos Media International INC. LLC/PLC, or any of its domestic or international affiliates.

    1. All this talk about the Stones got me thinking about when I saw them back in 1989. At the time, I thought they were ANCIENT and that I wouldn’t have many more opportunities to catch them on tour.

      I did some Googling, only to learn that I’m now almost six years older than Jagger was on the Steel Wheels Tour. I don’t know whether to laugh or cry.

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