Peak Music

I've always thought "Paint It Black" is a peak Stones song, too.

 

i watched it the other night and noticed a couple of things:
1. Almost no banter on stage. I’m not sure if that was normal back then for other musicians, but it surprised me.
2. They played like the they sounded on their records. I almost thought it had to be dubbed, but apparently because they used almost no effects or other musicians in studio, they could recreate their sound on stage.
3. They were tight. They only seemed to jam once or twice. It was fascinating.

It also was fun to see them as being so low key.

 

That's the Eagles, too. They stand up there and match every song to the album version.

ZZ Top was much more fun in concert. They would jam for five minutes in the middle of each song.

 

I love “Let it Bleed.” Especially Monkey Man and Midnight Rambler. And I’m not sure there’s a better song in their catalog than Gimme Shelter. And I admit Sticky Fingers has two of my least favorite Stones hits (Brown Sugar and Wild Horses). But songs like Sway, Can’t You Hear Me Knocking, Sister Morphine and Moonlight Mile just nail it for me.

Fuck. It’s hard to say one is better than the other. They’re both better than Exile, which is obviously still a masterpiece in its own right. But what a run they had in the Mick Taylor years.

 

Bone Machine is a better listen.

 

Heart of Saturday Night.

 

For me, peak musicianship outweighs peak popularity. And I'm basing my choices on what I remember thinking the first time I heard these albums all the way through and the "wow" factor. I can remember immediately wanting to reset the needle for these.

Rubber Soul and Revolver
Chicago Transit Authority and Chicago II
The Cars and Candy-O
Turn of a Friendly Card and Eye in the Sky
Double Vision and Foreigner 4

And Hal Ketchum's Past the Point of Rescue is so damn good from start to finish. A very underrated talent.

 

You CANNOT be Sirius ...

(*silly grin emoji...*)

 

— Pearl Jam, Vitalogy: I think musically and lyrically this is their best album overall. Musically, they have better songs on some albums. Same lyrically. But top to bottom, beginning to end, this is their best work.

— The Milk Carton Kids, All The Things That I Did And All The Things That I Didn't Do: Just love this album. “Mourning in America” may be my favorite song from them.

— Wilco, Yankee Hotel Foxtrot: I love a lotta Wilco, and this is definitely the popular pick, but it has more great songs than any other album to me.

— Live, Mental Jewelry: Their biggest hits came off Throwing Copper, but I’ll take “Pain Lies on the Riverside” over “Lightning Crashes” every day. A compelling album from beginning to end.

— Weezer, Weezer (1994): I could buy arguments for Pinkerton or the Green Album, but for me Weezer peaked on their first album. And most of their stuff has been at a helluva high level since.

 

Peak music overall was probably reached before the start of the SoundScan era in 1991, which progressively led to the high fragmentation of music genres we see today.

 

Whatever album this was on was peak Weezer.

Still not RnRHoF (hi, Dick Whitman)

 

There was a thing in the '90s where bands made videos with slo-mo visuals. Weezer above with slo-mo hackeysacking ('94).

And Supergrass with slo-mo pogo-sticking in Late in the Day ('97). I've seen it in other videos from that era.

The wailing in the guitar solos is as good as it gets.