Prompted by Zala’s call for extra special earworms, i figured it might be time to check out the new tunes on the Some Girls re-release. Had no expectations, as i was generally underwhelmed by the bonus tunes on the Exile re-release. Well blow me down, some of the tunes are fucking great. (And seem to lack the tinny sound of the Exile remasters too). Now i can maybe see why they didn’t include these on Some Girls – they didn’t fit with the disco / punk aesthetic the Stones seemed to be shooting for, and maybe they wanted to look forward musically instead of back. But guys, if it ain’t broke, no need to fix it. Lotta baby got tossed out with the bathwater there.
Keep Up Blues, Petrol Blues, and the (Ron Wood penned) When You’re Gone are wonderfully sleazy little blues numbers. Tallahassie Lassie is a Freddy “Boom Boom” Cannon cover which trumps the original, imho. And a pair of country covers to round off this little sampler – Hank Williams’ You Win Again, and Waylon Jennings’ We Had It All (sounds like Keith on vocals). Enjoy.
1. Keep Up Blues
2. Tallahassie Lassie
3. Petrol Blues
4. You Win Again
5. When You’re Gone
6. We Had It All
That first track is so Stonesy, it’s almost parodic! Just the right side of knowing to be fun rather than embarrassing, I think. I’ll give it the benefit of the doubt anyway! Nice handclaps on the second one. And a good rock ‘n’ roll feel. (What does Mitch feel about the Stones?!) Sounds like The Hippy Hippy Shake to me. Not sure about the ‘poor me, I can’t afford to fill up my posh motor’ whining of “Petrol Blues”… coming from multimillionaires, like. “You Win Again” is my favourite so far. I do love a bit of bluesed-up country. Yeah, “When You’re Gone” is fun too – goodness, for bonus tracks they really are pretty good, aren’t they?! I quite like the lack of ‘strut’ to “We Had It All” after all that Jagger though! Nice to hear something understated and heartfelt. Yep, I enjoyed those. Thanks Amy.
My heart is warmed! Mitch totally hates the Stones. But I think the original was pretty anemic compared to this one. I liked those handclaps too, and it seems they’re courtesy of Don Was and John Fogerty. And that was Fogerty’s only contribution, can’t imagine that’s all the use they found of him.
I was curious as to who played piano on Petrol Blues – thought it might have been Stu as their go-to blues pianist. Nope, it was Mick – color me impressed.
Snickering a bit as they still seemed to have been in a yank phase for these tunes – but we don’t call it petrol, we call it gas. But i guess Gas Blues doesn’t have quite the same ring to it.
-amy
*snigger*
don’t think that didn’t occur to me.
Blimpy – what up with the blog gremlins? Posts eaten, usernames eaten.
Anyhoo – listened to a lot of versions of We Had it All – Waylon, Dolly Parton, Tina Turner. I’m probably a bit biased so i’ll take Keith’s, but for a very close runner up – and one for tfd – Bob Dylan and TPTH
‘Preciate it.
Lovely gospelly feel to that one. Couldn’t find a Tom Petty without Bob for that one though. Thought he might have given it a go himself. Gorgeous song, no matter who takes it on.
Well, if he has, I don’t know about it. I do have five versions of the song by Bob’n'TP&TH on that 1986/7 tour though.
that is really nice, thanks for posting it.
Should you care to see Bob in leather trousers (and TP in his famous hat), here’s the song from a different concert. Very poor visuals though.
They are really very good tracks. I think my favourite was You Win Again. It just captured my imagination somehow and it feels like they really had fun making it ! ! !
That was Bish’s favorite too. Here’s the original for comparison – (which tbh is probably better than the Stones.)
darn, I got a copy of Some Girls for Christmas, but it didn’t have the extra tracks, they’re really good!
You was robbed! Here’s a full list of the bonus tracks, they’re all on youtube -
1. “Claudine”
2. “So Young”
3. “Do You Think I Really Care?”
4. “When You’re Gone”
5. “No Spare Parts”
6. “Don’t Be a Stranger”
7. “We Had It All”
8. “Tallahassee Lassie”
9. “I Love You Too Much”
10. “Keep Up Blues”
11. “You Win Again”
12. “Petrol Blues”
well, it was a nice present anyway, but I do like those you’ve highlighted especially Keep Up Blues and We Had it All. Somehow country is slightly more tolerable to me when the Stones do it, but a few of them were still a bit much for my allergy.
Me too. The Stones generally do it right, i like my country with a good dose of irony – Girl with Far Away Eyes and Sweet Virginia.
Or all the covers they seem to have mooted, Some Girls went with Imagination. Decent enough cover, and a good song so tough to screw up, but don’t really see a reason for it as the original is so wonderful.
I really liked all of these, but I’m afraid I prefer Hank on You Win Again I did prefer the Tallahassie Lassie cover. That’s my favourite of these lot.
I think Hank is better too. Bit more feeling in that one. My own personal faves of the bunch – the first one – (“That first track is so Stonesy, it’s almost parodic!” – Bish – snap!) and the last one.