Rock Journalist Joe Viglione: May 2010

Track by Track song by song reviews by Joe Viglione

Joe Viglione with Mick Taylor, Exile On Main St. guitarist,
chatting with on Visual Radio

LOVING CUP
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ex1nxuM1fU8&feature=related

The piano sound on the opening of this tune, a prelude to Jagger's neo-Gospel plea, and the guitar coming in with subtle urging...I don't know if the kids today know the great memory this music evokes, how when it was released when I was eighteen years of age it made such an indelible effect on my life and my musical journay. Exile On Main Street was more ambitious than even The Stones themselves may have realized...more than just a double live album (which hadn't even really come into vogue yet the way J Geils Blow Your Face Out (1976), Bob Seger's Live Bullet (1976) and Frampton Comes Alive (1976) would four years later; an indicator that The Stones SHOULD have put Get Your Ya Ya's Out as a double-duty set of discs, as they have today)...

My friend Trivial Tony notes that "as for double LPs the era had its share even before the bloated mid-70s. I'm thinking of Joe Cocker's "Mad Dogs & Englishmen," Donovan's "Gift From a Flower To A Garden," The Who's "Tommy" and of course Chicago's first four sets. Trouble is, the Beatles and Stones were among the few bands (maybe the ONLY two) whose musical statements could cross four sides at the time. Easy to forget "Get Your Ya-Ya's" was in a way a response to the "Liv'er Than You'll Ever Be" bootleg reviewed and even selling decently then" ...Tony is right...but I've never forgotten that Liv'er Than You'll Ever Be forced the hand of the powers that be to release Ya Ya's. My complaint was that they didn't INCLUDE Liv'er WITH Ya Ya's as a double CD. And as much as Mad Dogs & Englishmen and The Who's Tommy
were trailblazers (The Bee Gees' ODESSA was not everpresent like those two epics, Bruce Eder on AMG noting "Odessa is one of perhaps three double albums of the entire decade (the others being Blonde on Blonde and The Beatles) that don't seem stretched, and it also served as the group's most densely orchestrated album. ")

See Bruce Eder's ODESSA review here:
http://allmusic.com/cg/amg.dll?p=amg&sql=10:aifoxql5ldae

Back to Joe V's commentary: The White Album (The Beatles) was 1968, four years prior, so this was one of the few times Mick and the Boys didn't copy the Fab 4's business moves, though had Beggar's Banquet emerged as a four-sider it would have been a brilliant maneuver...Miller and the boys were brimming with talent and certainly had enough great stuff in the archives...the inevitable comparisons with "white" covers would have also been made (of course the original Beggar's Banquet artwork being almost as risque as the Beatles Butcher Cover)...but I digress, the conclusion of "Loving Cup" just a wonderful fade. The Stones bringing the music of The Band into the pop/rock world that made Mick, Keith, Charlie, Bill and Mick Taylor so much more popular back in the day...and right into the future.

Jimmy Miller's drumming on "Loving Cup" simply a commanding performance which really cuts through on YouTube...in fact the mix on YouTube is pretty revealing...the piano, guitars, vocal all blending perfectly, those horns come in at a perfect moment.
(Song Review written 1 PM May 21, 2010)

Loving Cup version on YouTube
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PsbSyMNVzLI&NR=1

White Stripes' Jack White and The Stones live with "Lovin' Cup"
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=swV30IHHqvY&NR=1

NEWS FLASH:

I'm reviewing the new EXILE right now, 2:20 PM on Friday, May 21, 2010...Aladdin Song is something I played for Jimmy Miller in the 1980s...they've finally completed it. More soon!

Exiled Genius: Exile On Main Street Revisited

The month of May, 2010 has Mick Jagger on your TV screen…from Jimmy Kimmel to Larry King, with welcome chatter about the greatest band in the world…and the quintessential double album that is now expanded with bonus tracks…EXILE ON MAIN STREET. We’ll be reviewing the Exile On Main Street DVD in the very near future… as well as the new release on Universal Music!

For now we’ll revisit a space in time with the man who made Exile On Main Street, the late Jimmy Miller.

Jimmy Miller remembered

Few people who hear “Honky Tonk Women,” “Jumpin’ Jack Flash” and “Street Fighting Man” realize that the man who put many of the classic sounds into those Rolling Stones classics lived in Medford, Massachusetts for a year or so in the 1980s.

Along with Beatles’ producer George Martin and the once revered Phil Spector, Jimmy Miller rounds out the three greatest producers of the rock and roll era.

The world lost Mr. Jimmy, the man Mick Jagger was “standing in line with” in the song “You Can’t Always Get What You Want” on Oct. 22, 1994, 15 years 7 months ago this week. Strangely, Marianne Faithful, produced by Jimmy on an album called “The Rolling Stones Rock And Roll Circus,” released on ABKCO a year after his passing, told this writer to “give my love to Jimmy” just 13 days before Miller’s death.

I never got the chance.

Medford might be known worldwide for the song “Jingle Bells” having been written on what is now High Street, but it’s also very special that our city was home for a time to the man who co-wrote and produced “I’m A Man” for the Spencer Davis Group and who went on to produce Traffic, Spooky Tooth, Blind Faith, Johnny Thunders, The Plasmatics and, of course, that band called The Rolling Stones.

Miller, in fact, produced more than 100 songs for the Stones. As his business partner and exclusive representative, I had compiled about 93 recordings Jimmy worked on for The Greatest Rock & Roll Band in the world, uncovering more in Martin Elliot’s excellent “The Rolling Stones: Complete Recording Sessions 1962-2002.”

Friday, May 21, 2010

Going Track By Track with Exile On Main Street

NEWS FLASH:

I'm reviewing the new EXILE right now, 2:20 PM on Friday, May 21, 2010...Aladdin Song is something I played for Jimmy Miller in the 1980s...they've finally completed it. More soon!

Exiled Genius: Exile On Main Street Revisited