Plundered My Soul

Been listening to the remastered version of The Rolling Stones "Exile on Main St." recently. It sounds more or less the same, but the Deluxe Edition comes with a few new/old tracks, including the newly overdubbed "Plundered My Soul". The song itself is a mixture of original instruments from the 70's and then a newly recorded voice and guitar track by Mick Jagger and Keith Richards. There was a BBC Imagine documentary called "Stones in Exile" on recently which piqued my interest in the album again. My Dad says that "Sticky Fingers" might be their best album, and I'm possibly inclined to agree with him, because that album is more cogent that the sprawling mass than is "Exile on Main St." It's The Rolling Stones very own 'White Album', in that it is undoubtedly a fantastic and elongated assortment of tracks, but it doesn't have such a unified voice. In fact, it is the lack of unified voice which gives it its strength. "Sticky Fingers" has a unity and flow that are magnificent, but it is not as eclectic as "Exile". The documentary was pretty good but was mainly comprised of still images and testamony from when the band relocated to Villefranche-Sur-Mer on the Riviera, rather than actual video. Still, it was an interesting watch nonetheless, and it certainly interviewed the great and good.

Best thing of the remastered version though is the extra tracks. In terms of sound the actual album sounds almost exactly the same as the previous CD release, but never before has an album by The Rolling Stones been rereleased with bonus content. It's maybe a slight victim of the Loudness War by being slightly too loud in a couple of places, but overall it's great. And a good knock-on effect of this hype is that their other albums have been discounted in stores and on Amazon, so I'm tempted to get some of the albums I have previously overlooked because they were expensive. Like The Beatles, The Stones can get away with charging over £10 for an album because people will undoubtedly buy them. I'm used to getting my albums for £5 or less, considering most music from the 1960's has now been on general release for approaching fifty years. I consider the price should naturally decrease over time. I wonder what is going to happen to audio recordings in the future when copyright runs out on them. Even some songs from the 1930's are getting pretty close to that date. Stuff by the likes of Django Reinhardt. I just suppose it will mean that anyone could share the recording without having to pay for it. People will undoubtedly still pay for a good quality version of it. That's why people still buy classical music.