Tuesday, November 23, 2010

Tuesday Tuneage
The Rolling Stones - "Please Go Home"
1967


When I was twenty-one and living with my parents post-college, I came across a copy of The Rolling Stones' Between The Buttons at some chain - Musicland, maybe - on Wayzata Boulevard near Ridgedale. It was a German pressing, and with it being a Stones album from the sixties, I snapped it up. I gave it a spin or two, but with no blues-rock raveup like "Street Fighting Man," "Jumpin' Jack Flash," or "Brown Sugar" on it, I quickly filed it away, both in my vinyl crates and in my mind: This album was no Beggars Banquet or Let It Bleed, it was more akin to the crappy Their Satanic Majesties Request - just another Stones sixties experiment gone wrong. Or so I thought.

A couple of weeks ago while flipping through my vinyl, I pulled Their Satanic Majesties Request and decided to give it a spin. While I was at it, I pulled Between The Buttons also. But while Majesties still largely stinks, Between The Buttons was a revelation. Sure, it didn't have the blues-raunch associated with classic Stones, but this wasn't the flimsy attempt at folk rock I had thought it was. This was a first-class collection of great songs, one after the other ... "Yesterday's Papers," "Cool, Calm, And Collected," and (especially) "All Sold Out." And I've been playing this LP over and over since. (The AllMusic review sums the album up best.)

My German pressing is the UK version of Between The Buttons. The USA version includes the hits "Ruby Tuesday" and "Let's Spend The Night Together" and kicks "Back Street Girl" and "Please Go Home" off its edition. Good thing I got the UK version, as if I had the USA edition I would have been thinking: "Oh, that's that mediocre album except for the two hits" all these years. But now that I get this album, I'm loving its collection of non-hits. And "Please Go Home" is a must-listen for anybody who loves those old Rolling Stones songs you never hear on oldies or classic rock radio. It's a psychedelic take on their fantastic Bo Diddley stance, better than any of the acid experiments of Their Satanic Majesties Request, and over in three minutes, fourteen seconds. So while the twenty-one-year old me was pretty clueless (and not just in regards to old Stones albums), I'd like to thank him all these years later for grabbing the gem that is Between The Buttons at that almost-forgotten chain store. Rock on, Minnetonka.