हैवी मेटल इस अ जोके

I'm listening to "Exile on Main street" right now and reading Bill Janovitz's 33 and 1/3 mini-book about the record. This will be my first time listening to the album in it'e entirety since the very first time I brought it home from Good Vibrations back in 1975. I've got headphones on to drown out whatever horrible television program is blaring in the background. It's the final high-quality Stones recording. Some Girls was a decent last gasp, but this album has that magic of a band still in the game. "Happy" is starting now, the "Keith" song. I used to get goosebumps as a kid hearing this song, thinking about how absolutely cool he was,the big reason I loved the band so much. I saw a picture in a magazine of him once passed out backstage with a bottle of Jack Daniels next to him and a mushroom patch sewn on the crotch of his jeans. I begged my Mom to sew a patch on my jeans just like his, and she was nice enough to do it. After my first listen to this record I never listened to it again all the way through. The dirty blues jams and lack of hit songwriting insured that I wouldn't embrace Exile Like I had "Sticky Fingers" or "Get your ya ya's out". I was just not equiped with the sort of deep musical appreciation to dig what the Stones were doing on this album. I was still, just a kid. 34 years later I am finally able to enjoy the full spin of this glorious celebration of ragged beauty.

It's funny about music. I'm having a sound flashback from all those years ago. The way the guitar gently falls apart at the end of "Let it loose" then jumps into "All down the line". It's like syrup dripping to a flame. I'm thinking about the black girls singing back-ups; I bet Mick fucked one, if not all, of them. Thinking about how Keith, all junked up, was more fun for them to hang around with , too wasted to even consider asking any of them to bed.This record makes me want to play electric guitar with a band that can really play some shit.

Now I'm listening to Suicide live at Max's Kansas city. Drum machine bleating and hissing, the sound of 3 people clapping. How were we born with the ability to accept this sort of musical expression? Maybe one out of 100,000 humans are somehow drawn to this sort of anti-social behavior set to music. I know I'm supposed to love the people of earth as much as I possibly can, but sometimes I wish records like this could just kill all the assholes of the world. At least just make them go away for a long time. Maybe there would be less war, less halftime shows. People have been hurt for playing music like this. It's the same thing that makes small town hillbillys beat up someone who's gay. It scares the fuck out of some people and makes them consider the possibility that they don't know what the hell is going on. It's apparent within moments of the needle hitting the groove. Thank God Suicide went out and played music like this in public and made those early records.