A Year of Blind Spots: It's Only Rock 'n Roll

We have reached the end of the road for Phase I of my "Year of Blind Spots," and I have to think that this was the perfect album to end on. I guess I'm mainly thinking about the title track: "I know it's only rock 'n' roll, but I like it." Let it serve as a reminder that what we do here at Puke on Your Birthday—the list-making, the amateurish music criticisms, all of it—is really not that important at all. The music we listen to isn't necessarily changing the world or changing your internal world; it's just rock 'n' roll. But still, nevertheless... I like it. I like it a lot. And I like exploring music I've never heard before, week after week after week.

It's Only Rock 'n Roll was also a great album to end this column for the year because I always have some shit to say about the Stones. There's always more to learn about these guys. That's why I spent my week listening to the Rolling Stones instead of watching the Beatles—I feel like I already know all I need to know about the Beatles. I don't need eight more hours of them. With the Stones, though, I'm way behind, and I love trying to catch up.

Okay, so here we are, another new (to me) Rolling Stones album. It's Only Rock 'n Roll (god, I fucking hate that they are missing an apostrophe in that title) is their fifteenth studio album. It immediately follows Goats Head Soup, which itself immediately followed the Stones' famous imperial four-album run of Beggars Banquet, Let It Bleed, Sticky Fingers, and Exile on Main St. So in my mind, I see Goats Head Soup as half a falling-off, and half a "indulging in the weirdness" success. So that would mean that It's Only Rock 'n Roll is their "back to basics" routine. Maybe the title track is a response to any less-than-immaculate album reviews they got for Goats Head Soup—relax, everybody, it's only rock 'n' roll, all you have to do is like it.

So what does "basics" look like for the Rolling Stones? There is the hard-strutting album opener, of course—"If You Can't Rock Me" is bangin'. There's the lighter but still fun mid-tempo rocker in "Dance Little Sister." There's the big, grand ballads that still have swagger, like "If You Really Want to Be My Fried." There's the slightly uncomfortable reggae-esque "Luxury," in which you ask, "Should the Stones be doing this?" There's the actually uncomfortable juvenile sexual imagery, in which you don't need to ask "Should the Stones be doing a song like 'Short and Curlies,' and all that you can infer from such a title?"

 

Then there's the cover song—which is really going back to basics, since soul covers were the Stones' whole bread and butter before like 1966—in "Ain't Too Proud to Beg." Here's another reason this was a good album to end our (first) Year of Blind Spots on. "Ain't Too Proud to Beg" is my go-to karaoke song! So it was really cool seeing it pop up here. It was also really, really frustrating that Mick Jagger doesn't quite get the syncopation of the line "Ain't to proud to plead, baby baby." C'mon man! Come to Les and Doreen's and let me show you how it's done!

 

And don't even get me started on how the second line of the entire album is "The drummer thinks that he is dynamite, oh yeah." Fucking hilarious. I don't even know if Charlie Watts thought he was "dynamite." I don't even think he gave a shit at all about anything. The dude might as well be playing solitaire on the snare drum for all the care and love he put into the art of drumming.

I'm half-joking, but that brings us back to the whole idea of rock 'n' roll, and how I like it. I may wince at the Stones on occasion, but there is always so much to think about, and there is always so much to dance to. I love the idea of rock 'n' roll, and the Rolling Stones embody that idea better than any other band in history.

 

 

Thanks for joining me on the first leg of this multi-year misnomered blog project. I have another 50-album list all ready to go, but we're not gonna dive in until January 8, 2022. I'm really excited to start that list, honestly; even more so than this year's list, next year's was compiled with the needs of "A Year of Blind Spots" in mind. The vast majority of the albums are from artists who are the blind spot, as opposed to all the albums I listened to this year whose creator I was already pretty familiar with. So there's that. For the next four Saturdays? Who knows. Probably a "Song of the Day" or something. See ya next year.