Tuesday, July 13, 2004
Christgau's review of the new Faces' box set, "Five Guys Walk Into A Bar" makes me want to get it, and is worth quoting in full: "I'm not claiming there's much competition, but the greatest box-set name ever is perfect for a band that was never as great as it should have been. Their music was so loose and that was such an up; their music was so loose and their songs fell so apart. Come to think of it, bar bands are generally tighter. But if five straight hours of shambolic garage rock is what you seek, you couldn't do better—the four CDs maintain a raucous level that crests rather than peaks and never gets boring. Ron Wood you know, Ronnie Lane you should. But above all, here for the hearing—why old-timers think Rod Stewart had something to sell out."
Listening to "Stay With Me" not long ago I was musing on the notion that when you listen to The Faces or The Stones you could easily find yourself thinking that there must have been a bunch of bands back then that had that same quality. The sad truth is that there weren't: the only other one that I can think of just now was The Band, and even at that The Band seems to me to have been trying to mostly make a slightly different point. Without Keith would Mick have become Rod Stewart? Who says he didn't?
Listening to "Stay With Me" not long ago I was musing on the notion that when you listen to The Faces or The Stones you could easily find yourself thinking that there must have been a bunch of bands back then that had that same quality. The sad truth is that there weren't: the only other one that I can think of just now was The Band, and even at that The Band seems to me to have been trying to mostly make a slightly different point. Without Keith would Mick have become Rod Stewart? Who says he didn't?
// posted by Bill @ 3:56 PM 
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