A FAN’S NOTES

Not the Same Old Song

The Rolling Stones last Friday re-released 1973’s Goats Head Soup. At the time it was considered something of a louche and lazy follow-up to its predecessor Exile on Main St. which was considered a sprawling, incoherent mess compared to its predecessor Sticky Fingers. Still, the Stones were the biggest band in rock ‘n’ roll in the early 70s and those years coincided with my elevation from elementary to secondary school and the awkward onset of puberty. There was bound to be a chemical reaction, an eruption.

The music industry these days doesn’t sell a whole lot of physical product. Perhaps that is an O. Henry-like statement, a gentle irony about moving air, filling silence. But don’t old ways always die hard? Elaborately packaged re-issues, Goats Head Soup redux for instance, are, on the surface of the vinyl or CD, simple cash grabs from blindly loyal fanatics. But these re-masters, enhanced by outtakes, demos and live tracks add what was then contemporary context thereby transforming a simple album into something of a document, a ghost sign from its prime time. The sheer gravitas of most of these boxed sets encourages critical reassessment and historical revisionism: positive re-takes as opposed to the current fad of cancel culture.

Always the vanguard, His Bobness began the trend with his ‘Bootleg Series’ which was likely inspired by the success of his Biograph set from the 80s. Springsteen has subsequently released an entire parallel universe canon and alternative career whilst hawking collectible editions of his classic albums. Even for hardcore fans there are overly documented instances of overkill. I imagine an ‘Immersion’ edition of a Pink Floyd album would be both blue sky and pain. There are plans for a six disc reissue of Lou Reed’s seminal New York album. Take the straight razor to the strop.

I’ve been buying albums with my own money since I was 13, 1973. There are some I don’t listen to much anymore. That’s not because they were bad records or haven’t aged well, but because I love them so much I make the mistake of taking them for granted. Why listen to Born to Run again even though it changed my life the first time I brought it home and played it all the way through? We have been intimate; we are intimate. I know that album backwards and forwards and inside and out.

The pricy joy of a boxed reissue is that it compels the lover to revisit those initial crazy days of bliss, to remember. Goats Head Soup originally had a gatefold sleeve. Gee, wasn’t peeling the cellophane from the 2020 edition similar to the 1973 release, that anxious need to know what was under the cover? The audio was upgraded at source. Here at home too, thankfully I’m no longer a slave to my crappy little teenage bedroom stereo. The first plays have revealed sounds and nuances I’d never heard or perhaps ceased hearing. My true revelation lies with the lyrics. The words haven’t changed but their meaning has. Their message is necessarily transmitted to an upgraded receiver; I’m no pimply Catholic schoolboy these days. I’m all grown up now and able to superimpose myself, my experiences, listen differently and enjoy the songs all over again in a brand new manner.

There is a particularly lovely and forlorn ballad on Goats Head Soup called ‘Winter.’ “It sure has been a cold, cold winter, my feet been draggin’ ‘cross the ground/the fields has all been brown and fallow, and springtime take a long way ‘round.” I came of age on the urbanized island of Montreal. Now, all I can picture is the scrubby, arable land along Highway 2, the road between Edmonton and Calgary. And Alberta’s first covid-19 winter is coming on. Labour Day signals the end of summer. The nights are shorter and chillier. There’s a fresh nip in the morning air.

If that prospect isn’t depressing enough (the furnace just turned on), Jagger then conjures “the bell, book and candle,” a malevolent ritual of excommunication of the Catholic Church’s framed to frighten the faithful. Toll the bell, shut the Bible and kill the flame. Only really nasty people get fast-tracked to Hell prior to Judgment Day: “When the lights on all the Christmas trees went out.” The song possesses a doomed tenderness which suggests novelist Graham Greene’s The End of the Affair on cocaine and downers. “Sometimes I wanna wrap my coat around ya, but I can’t afford ya.”

‘Doo Doo Doo Doo (Heartbreaker)’ is a raucous complaint about police brutality, deadly illicit drugs and young people not getting a fair shake. Nothing’s changed but those tragedies are neither rare nor abstract now. I can see them all around, way too close to home. ‘Star Star’ could be about a social media influencer or a reality television meat puppet, a 21^st century groupie, desperate for a brush or something like it with fame or at least account feed followers of some sort.

The Goats Head Soup deluxe box hook for me is the inclusion of Brussels Affair, an astounding live portrait of the band at their absolute apex. The set list is weighted toward Exile on Main Street and Goats Head Soup because the Stones were in fact promoting two recent albums on their 1973 European tour. I’m overjoyed to finally own a cleaned up copy of what may be their most sought after bootleg. The other notable blessing of the new Goats Head Soup, the recipe card aside (two heads are better than one), is that there’s only one version of ‘Winter.’ Thank God.         

             

meGeoff has been your most unreliable, unbalanced and inaccurate alternative source of musical musings since 2013. Don’t sign up for e-mail alerts from the Crooked 9, stay safe.