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| The Stones: gathering no moss! |
9/11/2005
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The Rolling Stones
“A Bigger Bang”
The Rolling Stones are getting ready to tour, so the band put out a new CD. Ho Hum.
What’s unusual is that it’s a pretty good album.
Not pretty good. Really good. Sixteen songs. More than a hour long. Only one sappy post-Angie ballad.
This ain’t no lightweight excuse for a new album like “Bridges to Babylon.” It’s not as foregettable “Emotional Rescue” or “Undercover.”
This one is all classic grinding guitar mutant post-blues Stones. No more, no less.
I was listening to the album, and all those blues characters wandering and cheating and fighting and carrying on in all the classic rock and roll ways, and I had a vision. An Epiphany, if you will.
Nothing that Jagger sings, or that Mick and Keith have written has anything to do with the Stones themselves.
They are merely actors, living out the roles which the public has come to appreciate and respect.
They model their songs on the feelings espoused by all the old blues guys. There’s pain enough go around. There’s cheating and anger and swagger all there all the time.
Then I had that realization.
The Stones are merely actors playing out the roles which have developed for themselves. Think about it. Did you ever want to see John Wayne film where he’s an urban florist? Would have wanted to Cab Calloway trot onstage in later years without going “Minnie the Moocher?
The Stones are captives of their own success.
: No, the essence of the Stones isn’t actually the blues although they play them
The band is not about rock and roll either, although they’ve been billed as the greatest rock and roll band in the world for years.
The band is about money. Financial success.
A few years back in story in “Fortune” magazine, reporter Andy Serwer cut through all complexities of the band’s business dealing. The fact that “Fortune” magazine was interested says something by itself.
The biggest, most visible revenue source is the band’s frequent touring which is run as an ever-increasingly sophisticated contracts to maximize income.
The article described four interrelated basic legs of the financial package. As well as touring there’s there’s merchandising of the multitude of products wearing that tongue logo. On top of that there’s corporate sponsorship of the tour. Over the years they have been sponsored by everything from beer to fashion. Operating as what some have described as a corporate whore, the band is not too proud to link with all those products.
Then there the steady stream of performing rights payments.. Every time a radio station broadcasts a golden old Stones song, it generates a payment.
All of this success is predicated on the product. The music is the product. Mick and Co. makes sure it’s a high quality product.
“A Bigger Bang” raises the bar creatively. It’s best new product the band has put in years
It’s a “product” though, Mick and Keith deliver the good..
There’s o reason in particular for Stones to wrap it up. Drummer Charlie Watts was treated last year for throat cancer, so they are all drifting up there in age. As a corporate identity, the concerts are still being well-received. The new album is some fresh meat for grill. If the lads are wrapping things up, it’ll be on a high note.
Read Mike online at www.music-syndicate.com
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