That Pussy Galore record was a holy grail of my teenage. Reading about it made it sound so amazingly raw and exciting. Now it is 2026 and I can stream it (actually I have owned it for years, but anyway), and it turns out that it is just a tepid "raw" version of the original. Pussy Galore replace the Stones' sloppy looseness with stiff self awareness. Its a pretty rubbish record. And it is embarrasingly tame! Unlike me as a teen, your readers can now listen to it for themselves and see how tame it actually is compared to the Stones', really not particularly wild, original. Anyone who thinks Pussy Galore's is the wilder version is someone who is better at talking about music and ideology than actually listening to music.
Bravura music writing throughout, deeply felt and finely wrought. One note from a perhaps more racially-fixated American Withnailhead: surely, in Danny’s quotation of Presuming Ed—aka “the big spade in the bath”—society’s failure to paint it Black had different, and more hegemonic, connotations?
Oh, that’s an excellent point, and would have resonated nicely with the way The Stones, along with other British bands of the period, revitalised the careers of Black American musicians. Wish I’d said that, in other words.
That Pussy Galore record was a holy grail of my teenage. Reading about it made it sound so amazingly raw and exciting. Now it is 2026 and I can stream it (actually I have owned it for years, but anyway), and it turns out that it is just a tepid "raw" version of the original. Pussy Galore replace the Stones' sloppy looseness with stiff self awareness. Its a pretty rubbish record. And it is embarrasingly tame! Unlike me as a teen, your readers can now listen to it for themselves and see how tame it actually is compared to the Stones', really not particularly wild, original. Anyone who thinks Pussy Galore's is the wilder version is someone who is better at talking about music and ideology than actually listening to music.
Bravura music writing throughout, deeply felt and finely wrought. One note from a perhaps more racially-fixated American Withnailhead: surely, in Danny’s quotation of Presuming Ed—aka “the big spade in the bath”—society’s failure to paint it Black had different, and more hegemonic, connotations?
Oh, that’s an excellent point, and would have resonated nicely with the way The Stones, along with other British bands of the period, revitalised the careers of Black American musicians. Wish I’d said that, in other words.
A lot more people have heard https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Exile_in_Guyville and I wonder if the legacy of the Stones will endure as well as Gerry and the Pacemakers.