She comes in colours everywhere

Continuing my trip back through the 1968 album charts.

25/02/68 : Their Satanic Majesties Request - The Rolling Stones


Our ninth visit with the Stones -  I think it's fair to say that their output has been somewhat variable over the years.  Generally, I've preferred their stuff from around this time, but I believe this isn't viewed as one of their finest efforts.

And with good reason - for the most part, it's just a sludgy mess.  "She's A Rainbow" and "2000 Light Years From Home" are OK, but apart from that, there's not, at first listen at least, a lot here to recommend it.  It feels like they were trying to be Beatles-ish with experimenting with unusual rhythms and sounds (and album covers!), but for me it's even less successful than when the lads from Liverpool tried it.  Just no.

We're at the dizzy heights of #15 in the charts this week on their eleventh week of a thirteen week run, with it having peaked at #3 in its fourth week (bizarrely, their follow-up Beggars Banquet only spent 12 weeks on the chart and that's far superior in my expert opinion).  The top five this week were The Supremes best-of (it's been ten weeks since Bob was not at #1), TSOM, The Four Tops best-of, British Motown Chartbusters and The Monkees (really?!), the highest new entry was Bob, and we have yet another new named woman in the charts!  Mireille Mathieu, on what is her only week spent in the UK charts EVER - which wasn't a huge surprise to me because I'd never heard of her but Wikipedia tells me she has recorded over 1200 songs in 11 languages, selling over 120 million records globally (and I bet my mum loved her!).  But not so many over here I guess, but she managed one week to take the running totals to 10 named and 8 featured.

Wikipedia has a reasonable amount on the album (156 milliPeppers) but a lot of it is talking about how much of a mess it is.  The recording process was chaotic, often due to band members being unavailable due to court appearances or jail time and it wasn't well received at the time with the view being that it was a Beatles' rip-off (although it still got to #2 in the US).  It has undergone a bit of a retrospective reappraisal by some critics - but not by me, I can assure you.  Apparently the initial album cover was a lenticular image - I bet they're worth a bob or two these days (I found one for £500 if you fancy it!).

"Customers also listened to" The Kinks, The Who, The Velvet Underground and The Doors - all of whom have extremely variable output for me (except for The Velvets, where I think everything they've done is terrible).  The Stones are probably the variablest over the years and have undoubtedly produced some great stuff - but this ain't that.

18/02/68 - Who was buying this?
03/03/68 - A very peculiar album

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