Off: Da Stones

[John A Swartz]

My $0.02 on the Stones...

They've put out some pretty good tunes over the years, and have
influence a lot of musicians that followed them.  I've never been
overly impressed with their musicianship, but they've had a knack
for writing some catchy tunes.  I haven't paid much attention to
them in the last 15 years, but I doubt that all of their commercial
success in that time can be considered based on their previous
successes - that is, if they've sucked for the past 15 years, they
wouldn't be as successful today as they are.

As for their live sound, I remember thinking back in the early 80s
that the stuff I heard from them live sounded pretty bad.  I had a
little band in high school and we were trying to cover a Stones song
or two, and the guitarist remarked how they did the song live - it
was very sloppy and untrue to the original -- I remarked to him that
"well, WE can't do it that way 'cuz we're not the Stones - they can
get away with that, but no-one's gonna listen to US play that way".
I saw a brief clip on TV of Mick "singing" (if you can call it that)
"Satisfaction" on the current tour - none of the song's original
melody was evident.

John