The sex police are out there on the streets

Continuing my trip back in time through the album charts

13/11/83 : Undercover - The Rolling Stones

When I were a lad, there was this group called The Rolling Stones who would appear in the charts every few years and everything they did was either terrible or exceedingly average, but it was still (to my mind) surprisingly successful.  I had to wait to become a wiser older man to understand that they had actually done some pretty decent stuff back in the dim and distant past - but I also learned they had done some pretty terrible stuff back then as well.  To me, they are almost the very definition of "trading on past glories" so I am not expecting much from this.  And I say "almost the very definition" because there is one man who puts them to shame on this front - and we will be hearing from him very soon...

And well - hmmm.  To be fair, it's pretty tight musicianship and some of it is acceptable blues-tinged rock, but a lot of the songs are a bit of a mess.  I can imagine it would be fun if you saw them in a dive bar with a few beers, but sitting down and listening to a whole album?  No, that was not fun.  It was intriguing to wonder who was singing on “Wanna Hold You” (Keef, apparently), who thought the reggae feel on "Feel On Baby" was a good idea (Jagger, apparently) and who thought any of "Too Much Blood" was a good idea (unclear).  I can't say I think it all works, but it wasn't as dull a listen as I was expecting - it's not an album I'll be revisiting though.  This is another one that neither of us have ever owned (running total is now 4/7). 

We're at #3 in the charts this week with a new entry starting an 18 week run, never to be seen again after March '84. The top 2 were unchanged from our last visit with Culture Club and Lionel taking the top two spots and the next new entry in the charts was Adam Ant's Strip at #20 - unfortunately, the glory years were already well over for the lad. 

Wikipedia tells us it wasn't the happiest of recordings, with all the band members wanting to take things in a different direction and the results weren't overly successful, with it being the first Stones album in a decade not to reach #1 in the US.  There's an amusing comment from Robert Christgau (who's back on the scene because we're back in olden times) - calling it a "murky, overblown, incoherent piece of shit" (to be fair, he does have a point).  It still sold over a million copies in the US though, so it was hardly a failure.

"Customers also listened to" "no similar recommendations" - which is odd, to say the least.  It is viewed as one of the weaker Stones albums, but I've had far worse experiences - to be fair to them, they are at least trying some new stuff - unlike someone else who we'll be hearing from very soon...

06/11/83 - An unsurprisingly poor album
20/11/83 - Not the album I'm looking for