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2fs - 2008-04-21 00:03:46
"is there any boot more simple and perfect than Doc Martens 1460s?" Okay...but they're like $20 more expensive than other brands that basically look the same.
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Bina - 2008-04-21 01:18:41
I never bought DMs exactly because of their assocation with skinheads and their specific use to kick the heads in of so many of my fellow Asians in the UK... a friend, though, once said that everyone should wear them so that they could be disassociated from that reason. Here in Pakistan, it's far too hot to wear boots, and I envy how cool the weather is in NYC that allows you to be shod in such style!
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Paula - 2008-04-21 08:59:58
everyone should wear them so that they could be disassociated from that reason.
I agree!
Okay...but they're like $20 more expensive than other brands that basically look the same.
According to the Work Boot warehouse site, similar boots are all pretty much priced in the $99-150 range.
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Philip - 2008-04-21 12:31:20
Now that Marlon Brando is dead and Muhammad Ali is a whispering ghost, Keith Richards is surely the coolest man left alive on the planet, even if he does look like your Polish grandmama. But how sad that it has come down to where positive reviews of Stones endeavors come in spite of Mick, or with grudging approval of his contributions. Poor Mick, who was once so beautiful and so cool, who single-handedly invented being a (white) lead singer in a rock n roll band, and who wrote and sang and was utterly integral to songs of mesmerizing decadence and carnal power. But it's not a complete mystery what happened to him. You can see the relatively open and innocent young Mick Jagger begin to shut down right before your eyes onstage at Altamont in the (yes, perfect) Gimme Shelter. As if having been so badly burned, and terrified, he vowed never again to let his true feelings show, to be forever after strictly an entertainer. After that you can follow the inexorable progression of his creeping superficiality in interviews, films and of course in the music -- Exile was the last time Mick was the best in the world at what he did. Ten years later (by 1981, that is) Mick's transformation was pretty much complete. (Tattoo You is the last great album, but why oh why do you give such short shrift to its remarkable, moody second side?) Shine a Light is great because musically the Stones remain so true to themselves -- so tight and so raggedy at the same time, both sides of their yin/yang deepening over the years, and Scorcese gets that as well as anyone. Less clear is whether he still buys Mick's act, but at this point there is something very poignant about the lead singer's flat out refusal to crack, to stop dancing, to show any genuine feeling whatsoever.
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Paula - 2008-04-21 14:22:22
Keith Richards is surely the coolest man left alive on the planet
What about Ron Wood???
As if having been so badly burned, and terrified, he vowed never again to let his true feelings show
This is an eloquent explication. I'm not sure there was ever a time when he wasn't...how-you-say... Jaggeresque, but I think you may be right about the "innocence" part.
why do you give such short shrift to its remarkable, moody second side
How can anyone explain these things? "Waitin' on a Friend" is ok, but nothing else much made an impression on me at the time, and I doubt that'd change now. Although I have to say that I liked some of the more recent numbers in Shine a Light more than I expected to.
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Sharon - 2008-04-21 16:30:19
Great insights, Philip.
Not to forget some other interesting Stones, notably Brian Jones and Mick Taylor. I guess as one gets older, it's easier to accept the fact that some people who have made great art are nonetheless assholes. geriatric misogynist pricks? Why am I so angry? It took me a long time to get out from Mick's spell. maybe because I'm older than most of you "snippersnappers" on this blog? or am just naive. I believed "I Can't Get no Satisfaction". It's hard to hear it now, knowing how the stones would come to be the Captains of Corporate rock. When they performed in China about 3 years ago, the Chinese government forbade them from singing Let's Spend the Night Together. And they said No problem... so corrupt and decadent. (paula's brother, who should do stand up, at that time revealed some of the government's other changes in lyrics: Tumblin' Rice and Waiting on a Comrade. // I used to have a treasured picture of Jagger form the cover of a Greek magazine in the 70s. He had a red poppy flower in his teeth. (poppies and other flowers grow wild all over Greece)Anyway, my sister stole it and hung it in her NYU dorm room and lost it! damn! // I like stories of the formation of the stones like when he an Keith met on the train from Dartford to Sidcup. MIKE Jagger had a bunch of import albums under his arm --Chuck Berry, Little Walter,and Keith couldn't believe this LSE student liked that music too. By the time they reached Sidcup, Keith was joining Little Boy Blue and the Blue Boys.
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Delicate Bob - 2008-04-22 02:15:50
I gotta say, I for one found the Gimme Shelter doc "perfect"ly dreadful... and not in execution so much as in subject matter. Aside from the original "whatever" kid, KR, they just seemed unbearably geeky. I do not think Chuck Berry, for instance, (even in his ding-a-lingiest period) could have ever come across that puerile. I think maybe some people (though I don't pretend to truly understand) give them too many points for being earnest, even though earnest puerility is still the latter. Its geekiness even tainted their music for me for a while (plus I thought the renditions in the doc were BAD), until I was able to forget most of it. And here you had to go and mention it again....
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Bob - 2008-04-22 02:47:29
Then again, whatdoo I know... I never knew until recently that "Junco Partner" was not written by the Toads' countrymen the Clash, but instead is a New Orleans song, and thus did not come to realize until tonight, at the skate park, that its line "I was born in Angola" dudn't refer to that country, but instead is just hype-anating about a Louisiana State Prison sentence.
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Philip - 2008-04-22 20:22:06
Ron Wood is an amazing utility player and he seems to have been everywhere (read his recent bio! and Patty Boyd's, for that matter...) -- but it's hard for me to take him seriously as the coolest man in the world. Also, I'd like you to name one signature guitar part from his entire tenure with the Stones. (Whereas, for example, his guitar in Maggie Mae is as beautiful as anything played by anyone ever...not to mention Ooh La La and his Jeff Beck stuff...)
And Sharon, isn't part of getting older realizing that one can have meant "Satisfaction" (or "My Generation" or whatever) at the time with all one's heart, whatever one becomes in future?
I love that you break out the train story, like reciting the liturgy... I am a sucker for MOJO and every ridiculous rock book that recapitulate all the well-worn tales that I now find as comforting as mini-creation-myths (Mick and Keith on the train; the bust at Redlands; the 60s deadend at Altamont; the nonstop party at Nellcote...). And it's not just the Stones, of course. There's the palsied hunchback teenager with bad skin and worse teeth lip-synching to an Alice Cooper song on the juke box of a King's Road bondage boutique; or the gay, jewish proprietor of a provincial, post-war English music store taking a shine top some rough lads with guitars down at a local beat club...
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2fs - 2008-04-23 00:49:34
Re DM prices: they've come down, then - I remember years ago noticing that they were considerably more expensive than most of the other boots at the shop. Re Philip: not to quibble...except, oh wait, I'm quibbling: what's with the parenthetical "white" there? Were there lots of *non-white* lead singers of *rock* bands before Jagger? (Answer: no. The first British invasion was arguably the first time rock bands were bands in the modern sense. Before that, they were pretty clearly backing musicians, or they weren't rock bands (R&B acts, etc.) Anyway: obviously Jagger's style was strongly influenced by black American singers - has he ever denied that? But (pet peeve time - not personal) this little gesture of appending "white" to appease some sort of vague feeling that white boys like Jagger haven't done enough to acknowledge the roots of their music, or have received more credit than others (primarily black musicians - obviously true), but it's hardly Jagger's fault, and frankly, if it's anyone's fault, it's ours - by which I mean, my impression is that most readers here are college-educated folks, mostly white, whose music purchases have a large percentage of stuff by primarily white bands. There's not a thing wrong with that...but add us all up, and it's why Jagger's a rock star and Arthur Alexander (say) is not. Anyway, here's one to appease anyone pissed off about my apparent refusal to gesture in the direction of yr white librul's genuflection toward black rock roots (and I iz a white librul): how come no one gives Chuck Berry credit for his influence on Mr. Robert Zimmerman? Berry was the first rock'n'roll lyricist to say anything beyond "moon June spoon," to tell stories, to make his words worth paying attention to, to use clever metaphors. (By "rock'n'roll" I mean merely "regarded as part of the mainline history of rock'n'roll": there are some (other) '50s R&B guys who began the metaphorical conceit tradition that a lot of Motown writers later used, for example.) But Zimmy instead always gets mentioned with Woody Guthrie, with white lit guys, with Europeans even...the black influence on his music is construed as exclusively musical. But I submit that Dylan never would have become Dylan w/o Chuck Berry. (And recall that the very young Dylan was definitely a rock'n'roller - he got into folk later, leaping into a trend in fact.)
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Philip - 2008-04-23 09:32:12
2fs: I say, touche. You're absolutely right about Mick, and I agree. I should not have put that lame "white" qualifier in there. It's actually only there because I anticipated what I am so used to hearing when similar topics are raised, and I wanted to head off exactly those kinds of tiresome arguments.
As for the opportunistic Bobby D, he's apparently never yet come across a potential influence he couldn't devour. Thank god for him he's a genius. (You listening to Theme Time Radio?)
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Paula - 2008-04-23 11:13:27
to use clever metaphors
Hang on there--Hank Williams was usin' clever metaphors and tidy, economical conceits since back when. His lyrics are brilliant.
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Paula - 2008-04-23 11:21:40
As for the white singer thing....
One of the comments I made to my SHINE A LIGHT companions after the movie, is that, you know, the Stones may have started off by ripping off R&B artists, but they fairly quickly morphed into something else altogether, which is what happens with all artforms.
You can see this so clearly when Mick duets with Buddy Guy. Buddy Guy's voice is so much better than Mick's, but Mick is doing this whole other thing, communicating in his own Mick Jagger signifiers. It's really all ok. They are both good.
And 2fs, are you suggesting that Chuck Berry isn't famous/respected enough? I can't agree with you.
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2fs - 2008-04-23 21:47:55
Paula: Agreed re Hank...but he's not a rock'n'roll singer. (I mean, obviously, he's influential on rock'n'roll, and there are those who'd claim him after the fact as such...but you know what I mean. I was limiting the discussion to "*rock* lyricists with halfway decent lyrics." As to your question: No, I'm suggesting only that Berry's influence on Dylan's lyrics isn't famous/respected enough. Speaking of Chuck: you know, I can't help but cringe a little when his song "Wee Wee Hours" comes on, ever since those revelations of some of Mr. Berry's recreational activities...
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