LISTENING PARTY: Voodoo Lounge

I'm doomed, doomed I say, to associate certain albums with certain periods of my life, to the point that I listen to albums that I know instinctively that I should no longer enjoy. Each summer for the past six years, I've been working/teaching at the summer program I attended when I was 14, and when I bought the Rolling Stones "Voodoo Lounge" album. And so every summer, when the program rolls around, I find myself digging out this album and listening to it, instead of say, "Exile on Main Street" or "Sticky Fingers" or even something by Mozart. I can't help it, you see. It's out of my control.

Maybe surprisingly to people, I've always been a bigger Stones fan than a Beatles fan. A large part of this has to do with my father's influence: I don't even think he ever owned a Beatles record, which seems to be some kind of mean feat for someone who was a teenager when "Revolver" came out. I think a part of it that there has always been more of a cohesion to the Stones as a group, in that they all seem to be part of a band, instead of four (well, let's be honest, three) talented musicians and songwriters who played together. I think if you played a space alien "Here Comes the Sun" and "Rocky Raccoon" and then followed it up with "I Am the Walrus" they would have any idea that they were by the same band. Play a space alien "You Can't Always Get What You Want" and then follow it with "Sweet NeoCon" from the Stones' most recent album, that alien will most likely be able to tell that they are by the same group of people. That alien will then kill you and declare war on the entire human race. Because that's how bad "Sweet Little NeoCon" is.

"Love is Strong"-My father bought me a remaindered copy of Bill Wyman's autobiography the spring of 1994, and so I was hyper-aware that the Stones were going to be playing with a new bass-player. So I paid extra-close attention to the bass playing on this opening track, which turned out to be a blessing, because it made me not notice Mick Jagger's awful harmonica playing. Let me take that back. His harmonica playing isn't awful in that he is playing the harmonica poorly. Even if you play the harmonica perfectly, like a virtuoso, it will be awful. Because the harmonica is one of the worst instruments in the history of the world. I guess the fact that it's small made it a popular instrument, as opposed to the contra-bassoon, but I think I'd rather listen to a contra-bassoon solo on a song.

"You Got Me Rocking" I wonder, sometimes, how bands like the Stones keep writing new songs. Their lyric conceits tend not to be the most clever in the world, and most of their songs tend to focus on "I'm a man, you're a woman, and either a) I'm really into you in a sexual way or b) you broke my heart and now I'm going sing about it" and I wonder how they keep coming up with different ways to say that same thing over and over again. "You Got Me Rocking"? I bet all the money in my pockets against all the money in your pockets that sometime in the late 70s early 80s there was a bunch of high school/college kids who formed a really terrible band, and one of the guys in the band wrote a song called "You Got Me Rocking" and they might have even played it in a bar a few times. That guy is now an orthodontist.

"Sparks Will Fly"- I remember in the pre-release to this album there was a lot of press about Mick Jagger was using the f word on several songs. I remember a pretty irate letter to Entertainment Weekly complaining about this, before the album came out, that it showed that Jagger was leaving behind his true fans to court a younger, hipper audiences. Because if there is one thing that the kids really love it's listening to 64 year old men sing about how they want to "f*** your sweet ass." Especially if that 64 year old man looks like their grandmother and is wearing a red silk shirt unbuttoned to his navel.

"The Worst"- Johnny Depp made it cool to be Keith Richards, but even before that, Keith Richards made it cool to be Keith Richards. In many respects, I like his voice more than I like Jagger's, maybe because Jagger always sounds like he is the consummate actor, taking on a role, a role of being a 64-year old man who wants to f*** your sweet ass, and Keith Richards just sounds like he's being honest and singing from his heart. This song he tells you that he is the worst kind of guy to be around, and as cool and inscrutable as he seems in interviews, I'm going to guess based on the sheer amount of heroin and whiskey he has consumed that yes, he is the worst kind of guy to be around. This is a really nice song, though.

"New Faces"-I don't really know the division of labor as far as songwriting goes in the Jagger/Richards partnership, but I think that some songs are mostly written by Keith and finished up by Jagger, some are mostly written by Jagger and finished up by Richards and then they each write songs entirely separate from each other. And every couple of albums I think Mick comes up with the idea to write a song that has a harpsichord in it. Because even though Jagger has more money than he knows what to do with, he didn't get that way by wasting his money. And you know that some night back in the early 70s, he got juiced out of his mind and bought himself a grand harpsichord. And to justify its purchase he hauls it into the studio every five years and makes the other guys play on his harpsichord song. He's not going to let his money go to waste.

"Moon is Up"- This song is awesome. I think I read that they recorded the drums at the bottom of stairwell, far away from the band. I think this might be because nobody in the band really likes Charlie Watts, because he shows up to play the drums dressed like he's actually come to do their taxes. (And we know how the Stones feel about paying taxes.) So they stuck him in the basement and told the engineers to find a way to record his drums from down there. It makes for a really cool drum sound, and the song is really pretty fun, and there's a moment where you can hear Keith laugh as they're starting it, and I love moments like that, where you hear someone count off, or somebody snicker or cough or laugh. Because then I know it wasn't made by robots. Well, except Charlie Watts. He's kind of a robot. But remember, we stuck him down in the basement.

"Out of Tears"-You know that orthodontist who wrote a song called "You Got Me Rocking" for his lame garage band? Well, his cousin was in a band, and one of those guys wrote a song called "Out of Tears" Jesus, how did we make it through thousands of years of popular music without having a major song called "Out of Tears"? Truth be told, this song isn't so bad. But it is sounds exactly like you think a song called "Out of Tears" would sound. There's a great slide solo by Ron Wood in the song, and damned if I don't always forget that he's actually in the band. When I was a kid, I used to see him and think he was Rod Stewart back when Rod Stewart had darker hair. And, yeah, I know they were in the Small Faces together, and I saw that Unplugged they did together, but I'm still not totally convinced.

"I Go Wild"- This song was actually really fun when I saw them play it live. Jesse and I got snuck into Foxborough Stadium (and were then thrown out, and then were snuck back in) to see the Stones that same summer, and I remember thinking then that this song didn't sound so terrible when played beside their classic tunes. I still marvel at how Mick Jagger can basically write the same song over and over again and never sound that sick of it. How did he spice this one up? He threw the C-word into it. I know that that isn't such a huge crime in England, but man, could you imagine that guy who wrote the letter to EW about him using the F-word? He probably had a heart attack when he heard this song. But you know what? That's what the kids are into these days. The C-word. They totally dig it.

"Brand New Car"- That orthodontist is kicking himself that he never sent those demo tapes into the US Copyright office.

"Sweethearts Together"- This is one of those songs that was written about a man and a woman, but is really about Mick and Keith. You can even picture them singing together on the same microphone together, working out the harmonies together. Well, really, probably their lawyers each worked out what the harmonies were going to be. Edward G. Perlman, Esq: "We will stipulate that Mr. Richards will sing a perfect fourth above Mr. Jaggers." Hugh L. Pressman, Esq: "So stipulated. Conditioned on Mr. Richards being allowed to sing in unison with Mr. Jagger when the melody returns to the tonic in the chorus." (Pause) Perlman:"I'll take it to my client."

"Suck on the Jugular"- I'm going to just skip over this one. The Stones literally have a closet filled with tapes of Keith Richards guitar-licks with generic titles on them, like "Start Me Up" "Satisfaction" "Suck on the Jugular" and when they record an album, they go to this cubbard and pull a tape out, and Jagger just free associates over the riff. I mean, how else can you account for the guy who wrote "Gimme Shelter" singing "Been keeping cool, been lying low,been dancing smooth, been dancing slow" ? He spent less than seven seconds on that.

"Blinded by Rainbows"-Remember how like, five seconds ago, I was asking how Jagger could keep writing the same song about "I'm a man and you're a woman" over and over again. Well, I take it all back. Because when he tries to branch out, all hell breaks loose. What the crap is this song about? It talks about explosions and limbs being blown off, and talks a lot about Jesus, but man alive, what does it mean to be blinded by rainbows? Has Jagger ever seen a rainbow? They're fainter than hell. I mean, seriously, I've been out places after it's been raining, and I'll see a rainbow, and I'll point it out to someone, and you should watch them squint their eyes to try and see it. Can you get blinded that way, by trying to look at something too hard? I have to admit I'm not really sure. I remember really liking this song when I was 14, and musically, it's pretty good. And the vocal melody is really nice, too. So nowadays when I listen to it, I just pretend that Mick is singing in Italian or Portuguese, or something. Then I can enjoy it fully.

"Baby Break it Down"- There are some songs I listen to I'm convinced the singer is getting paid for each time he sings the title. If this song were one of those deals, and Mick Jagger wasn't already a millionaire, he would be by the time four minutes and seven seconds it takes him to sing this song was over. Dear god. He sings it an average of once every 7.27 seconds. If this were a drinking game you'd have killed yourself by the time the song was over.

"Thru and Thru"- The second Keith song, and I think that it got some play a few years ago on the Sopranos. It's a great song, and it has a great vocal performance. I also like how it takes several minutes of just Keith and guitar before it really gets going, which surprises the hell out of you when the song really starts to get moving. I'm just going to listen to it, if you don't mind.

Oh, wait, I forgot, Keith drops the f-bomb into this song as well. Because he says that he has the f-in blues, and then that he has the awesome blues, and I'm not really sure what that means. But if Keith Richards says it, it must be kind of awesome. Or kind of f***ed. Or both.

"Mean Disposition"- I wonder how groups sequence their albums, because Thru and Thru is as close to a tour de force as latter-era Stones gets, and the decision to not only follow it up with a song as mediocre as "Mean Disposition" but also end the album with it? I have no words. This song has been on every single Stones album in one form or another since Goat's Head Soup. It was even on their weird psychedelic album with the lenticular cover. Mick says 'yeah' at the beginning of the song, and despite what I said earlier about those kind of exclamations, I HATE this one. It's like Mick is making fun of us for still listening to this crap. It sounds so fake and forced, like when you see some lame band at a bar late at night and the singer says yeah when the guitar player does a blues lick but screws it up, and the singer is standing stockstill just nodding his head to the music. 'Yeah.' We know you're not excited, dude. We know you're up past your bed time. Go back to your orthodontics practice. Leave the rocking to the professionals.