----- Original Message -----
From: "Stewart Mason" <flamingo@theworld.com>
> I think of the '65-'67 Stones as being the Real Deal.  Revisionist history
> has done the Stones no favors -- everyone acts like they were these
> degenerate rock and roll badasses who spent all their time pissing against
> garages and sucking Mars bars out of Marianne Faithfull, but in the
> mid-'60s, they were doing the same kind of pop-art exploration as the
> Beatles, the Kinks, the Who and all the other most worthwhile groups of
the
> era.  It's hard for me to see the '68-'72 era, no matter how much I like
> those records, as anything but artistic calcification.  "This is what our
> image demands we do.  This is what we shall do, with diminishing returns,
> for the rest of our lives."

To me-- and clearly this is all subjective-- those Stones records all sound
dated.  60s Stones conjures for me an image of Brian Jones in a funny hat
playing a sitar.  I'll take "Moonlight Mile" over Nineteenth Nervous
Breakdown" any day of the week.  Of course, maybe you had to be there...