January 19 - Dead Flowers

Before I start today's post, I do need to post a caveat: Yesterday's song and quip towards the Eagles was chosen and written before I heard that Glenn Frey had died (which I just found out). The start of this year has been rough - really starting with the death of Lemmy, which ended last year and appears to have set the tone for this year as well. However, I will leave Glenn Frey and The Eagles for a little bit.

One of my favorite trends in music is reissues - especially when they come with bonus content. There is so much to be learned from different studio versions - or even more so when early demos of songs are included. And then there are the reissues that include concerts from the time period, so that we really get to hear what the artists sounded like (and hopefully they are not too heavily overdubbed).

Yesterday, I chose Alice Cooper, who released a box set named The Studio Albums 1969-1983, including all the band and solo albums released on Warner Brothers (who also distributed the albums originally released on Frank Zappa's Straight/Bizarre label). That collection did not have any bonus tracks, but it did house all the album in cardboard sleeves representing the old vinyl covers. Today's track is from another album that was reissued last year with great bonus content: The Rolling Stones' Sticky Fingers. To me, this is the best Stones album released. It's become very popular to talk about Exile on Main Street, but I really think they peaked with Sticky Fingers.

My relationship with Stones probably did start with my dad, who proudly claimed to have been part of the crowd going to parties chanting "We want Rolling Stones, Beatles go home." I had heard some of their hits, and I liked them, but truthfully, my interest was peaked by my cousin Ingrid, who had Let It Bleed in her record collection. I really liked the cover, and I was curious about what they sounded like outside of their singles, which really were the ones I knew.

However, I was still not necessarily hooked. Not until I saw Sticky Fingers. Not long after I got my first CD player, I found a copy of Sticky Fingers with a replica of the original cover. And that cover REALLY drew me in, because it had the metal zipper the way Andy Warhol had designed it back in 1971. So I purchased it, and I listened to it. I really hadn't heard too many of the songs before, but the mix of country, blues, and rock and roll, all dragged through the dirty backstreets of London, blew me away. This might be why it remains my favorite Stones album - it was the first I loved - but I still think the songs are humongous: Brown Sugar, Can't You Hear Me Knocking, WILD HORSES, Sister Morphine. The songs are stellar all the way through. I could choose just about any song from the album, but today I am in the mood for Dead Flowers. It is a great country song - by a great British band in a creative streak that included Beggars Banquet, Let It Bleed, and Sticky Fingers before the denouement came with Exile On Main Street, which still is a great record. But to me, it is Sticky Fingers personified with Dead Flowers.