How do you listen to music? With the rise of things like Spotify – and ITunes etc., I am not sure how music is consumed nowadays. Lately, I just go to my iTunes library, pick songs, shuffle and then play. Before, I would wait until a friend passed me on an album – ‘listen to this – they will be greater than the Rolling Stones in a few years.’ (He was taking about the rise of U2 back in 1980). I moved to a small kampong on the west coast of Malaysia in 1981 and as a result I don’t know when I listened to a complete album – just shuffled songs from different genres and artists. Most music now is streamed, I suppose – God knows when I last bought a CD or – God forbid – an LP or a single 45rpm disc – but last night, I was sitting in a beach-front bar on one of the Gilli Islands off Lombok in Indonesia (more about the islands in a later post) and I listened to The Midnight Rambler by The Rolling Stones’ Let it Bleed album from 1969. God, it sounded fantastic, so much so that I played the whole album from start to finish.
I’ve always been a Stones fan from when the Beatles wanted to hold my hand but the Stones wanted to spend the night together, much to my father’s disgust – ‘you wouldn’t know if those lads were men or beasts, would you look at the hair on them,’ he used to humpf.
Anyway, for music that is more than 50 years old, it has managed to not only withstand the test of time but to surpass (in my view) much of today’s music. That is not to say that I understand any of the lyrics, let alone actually hear some of the words but in that I know I am not alone. Who on earth can understand Jagger’s voice when he gets into his groove. I remember an old Whoopi Goldberg movie (was the movie actually called Jumping Jack Flash?) where she replayed the track of the same name, desperately trying to understand or decipher the words where she had to give up in frustration (C’mon Mick, speak English please). Next to impossible in my case last night despite being ably assisted by moonlight on the waters of Gilli Air and a few large bottles of Bintang. For years I used to sing along to Little Red Rooster ‘I am the little red rooster, two legs across the bay’ until I discovered the lyrics were actually ‘I am the little red rooster, too lazy to crow the day’!
God knows what I thought I was hearing last night with the Midnight Rambler (and why on earth do we all have to go – and to where? – but the underlying tone of violence ‘I’m going to stick my knife right down your throat’ was unmistakable along with a half reference to the Boston strangler but beautifully tempered with the lyrics from Love in Vain and ‘You got the silver, I’ve got the gold’.
What an amazing song writing duo Jagger and Richards were under the moniker of Nanker Phelge (along with other members of the band), as far as I remember.
Red Branch Chronicles 