The Rolling Stones

Rolling Stones Logo used from 1970- onward

Early History
Formed in a London pub in 1962, the Rolling Stones became one of the most popular bands in the world, surpassed only by the Beatles, and reffered to through the years as the greatest rock and roll band in the world.  They were formed as a British blues band a genre that was becoming popular at the time by Mick Jagger and Keith richards, who formed a songwriting partnership just like Lennon/McCartney.  They then recuited Bill Wyman for bass, Charlie Watts for drums, and Brian Jones as a harmonica player and rythm guitarist, with Jagger being lead singer and Richards being lead guitar.  Their first album, released in 1963, "The Rolling Stones" (or in the U.S. as "England's Newest Hitmakers") featured a few covers such as "Carol" "Route 66", and "Not Fade Away", and soon became popular across the Atlantic.  In 1964 they released "The Rolling Stones No. 2" recorded right here in Chicago at Chess Records Studio, became popular with "Time is On My Side" and "Little Red Rooster", popular blues covers.  They finally reached thier worldwide success in 1965 with "The Last Time" thier first No. 1 Billboard hit, and followed with "(I Can't Get No) Satisfaction", also reaching No. 1, which is now reffered to by music critics as one of the greatest songs of all time.  Between this time and the relese of thier next album, they released many popular singles like "Have You Seen Your Mother Baby, Standing In the Shadow?", and "19th Nervous Breakdown".  In 1966 they relesed thier next album "Aftermath" which starting expoloring with Indian and psychedelic sounds with "Paint it Black" one of the first songs with a sitar used, also popular on this album was "Mother's Little Helper" another pshychedelic song that had to deal with perscription drug abuse, "Under My Thumb", and "Lady Jane" which featured an appalachian dulcimer played by Brian Jones, who was an influential multi instrumentalist, who also played sitar.  Their next album in 1967 was "Between the Buttons" further exploring psychedelia with "Please Go Home" and also going into pop music with "Ruby Tuesday" and more rock and roll with "Lets Spend the Night Together."  In mid 1967 Jones, Jagger, and Richards were arrested for signifiacnt amounts of pot, and acid, but released by a judge who was a fan of thier music, and because fans were angered by their jailing.  In response to this the Stones released "We Love You" a bluesy psychedelic song.  In december of 1967 they released "Their Satanic Majesties Request" which they went full out in crazy psychedelia, with most songs being over 6 or seven minutes, and only a few minor hits "She's a Rainbow", "2000 Man", "2000 Light Years from Home", and "In Another Land", the latter being sung by the bassist Bill Wyman, and the first without Mick Jagger singing.  The album went to No. 2 but critics didn't like the Stone's drastic change.  In 1968 they got a new producer, Jimmy Miller, and released the hugely popular single "Jumpin' Jack Flash" which was a return to the Stones' blues and rock & roll roots, and the subsequent album "Beggars Banquet" later in 1968.

Jumpin' Jack Flash Single

Their Satanic Majesties Request (1967)

1968-1974
This time period is regarded as the highlight of the Rolling Stones career, starting with the release of "Jumpin' Jack Flash" and ending with Mick Taylor's resignation (I'll get to him later in the blog)

Beggars Banquet
This album is regarded as the Stones comeback to rock and roll, and the widespread popularity.
On this album "Sympathy for the Devil" is the most recognized, and regarded as one of their best songs made.  It is built up from a piano riff with African drums and maracas, with great lyrics and the famous "whoo whoo's" and an amazing guitar solo in the middle performed by Keith Richards.
The next song "No Expectations" is a bluesy song with great slide guitar playing by Brian Jones.
Blues is explored more with "Dear Doctor" and "Parachute Woman".  On the next side of the album is "Street Fighting Man" a hard sitar driven protest song with Indian influences again played by Brian Jones.  After it are two great tracks "Prodigal Son" and "Stray Cat Blues" the first an acoustic blues and the latter with a gritty rock sound.  The album ends with "Salt of the Earth" with vocals by Jagger and Richards, the first to feature Keith Richards.

In mid-1969 Brian Jones started becoming erratic because of drug use, and drowned in a swimming pool due to drug related effects, shortly after being fired from the band.  He was succeeded by Mick Taylor, a 19 year old guitarist recommended by a fellow bluesman who he played for, John Mayall.
In July 1969, 1 day after Jones' death the Stones released "Honky Tonk Women," the first song Mick Taylor played on.

Let It Bleed
This album is one of the 4 albums released in succession viewed as their best (Beggar's Banquet, Let It Bleed, Stick Fingers, and Exile on Main St.) and is referred to as their first or second best, and my personal favorite.  This is the last to feature Brian Jones who was fired in mid-recording, and then died a few weeks later, and the first to feature Mick Taylor.  Im going to start off saying every single song on this album is great, so I'm going to make it brief and if you listen to it, listen to the whole thing.
It starts off with "Gimme Shelter" a protest to the Vietnam War, and used in many movies associated with the era.  The nest are "Love In Vain" a cover of a Robert Johnson song, and "Country Honk" and country version of "Honky Tonk Women."  Then there is "Live With Me" and the title song "Let It Bleed." The second side starts with "Midnight Rambler", (my favorite Stones song tied with Jumpin' Jack Flash), a harmonica driven song based on the Boston strangler.  The next is "You Got the Silver" Keith Richards' first lead vocal, and definitely his best song. Following that is "Monkey Man" a song that is well known from "Goodfellas" and the last being "You Can't Always Get What You Want" led by a choir in the beginning and generally a nice feel good song.

Sticky Fingers
This album, released in 1971 was the Stones' decade enterer, led by the successful but controversial single "Brown Sugar", the single and album both hitting No. 1.  This album had a few popular acoustic hits, "Wild Horses", a slow nice song with Richards and Taylor both playing, "You Gotta Move" a Mississippi Delta blues inspired song, with Mick Jagger emulating a southern Delta accent, "Sister Morphine", a song dealing with drug abuse, and "Moonlight Mile" made by Jagger and Taylor, is regarded as the Stones best ballad.  They also had a few rock hits such as "Can't You Hear Me Knocking", "Bitch", and "Sway" the last being another credited to Mick Taylor.
In early 1972 the Rolling Stones had to flee Britain, as they had become tax exiles, from paying no taxes at all to the government, and stayed in Keith Richards' villa in southern France, where they recorded Exile on Main St.

Exile on Main St.
This album is regarded by critics as the Stones' most influential and best album, and in 2004, it was placed No. 7 in Rolling Stone Magazine (no connection to the band) in their list of the 500 greatest albums of all time.  It starts off with "Rocks Off" and "Rip this Joint" followed by "Shake Your Hips", (which in turn inspired ZZ Top to make "La Grange") and "Tumbling Dice" one of most well known songs and most recognizable on the album.  "Sweet Black Angel" is a calypso inspired song about an arrested Black Panther, and "Loving Cup", one of their few piano driven songs, and "Happy" another Keith Richards song.  "Turd on the Run" "Ventilator Blues" All Down the Line" and "Stop Breaking Down" are other great songs off this album.

Goats Head Soup
This album was released in 1973 and featured the No. 1 acoustic hit, "Angie" and another popular was "Doo Doo Doo Doo Doo (Heartbreaker)" a funk influenced song.  One of their raunchiest, dirty and controversial songs is also on this album, the track "Star Star" which the title had to be edited to be included on the album, but nonetheless has a great rock sound.

It's Only Rock and Roll
In 1974 they released this album led by the popular "It's Only Rock and Roll (But I Like It)" and "Ain't Too Proud Too Beg" a Temptations cover.  In 1974 Mick Taylor quit because he wasn't receiving any songwriting credits and he contributed hugely to this album. In 1975 he was replaced by Ronnie Wood, the lead guitarist from the Faces.


1974- to Present
Black and Blue
This album released in 1976 got terrible reviews and I think there is only one O.K. song "Fool To Cry"

Some Girls
This album is the Stones comeback album released in 1978, and their last "really good" album.  It starts off with "Miss You" a disco song followed by "Some Girls", "When the Whip Comes Down", and "Respectable".  "Beast of Burden" one of the Stones best songs is on this album, and led to its success.  The last track is "Shattered" a punk themed song about New York City


Emotional Rescue
This album in 1980 featured only one O.K.-ish rock song "She's so Cold" the rest were pretty bad attempts at disco songs.

Tattoo You
In 1981 they released this album backed by "Start Me Up" a huge success, and other songs like "Slave" a blues jam type, both conceived in the 70's and finally recorded on this album. 


Later Years
After this the Stones made pretty terrible music, and released their most recent album in 2005, but they released a song "Hurricane", which I think is not that bad, and performed by Richards, about Hurricane Katrina, with all benefits going to the relief effort. the Rolling Stones performed at Superbowl XL in 2006. Today they are around and still touring.


A Few Songs

Jay and Nick

Jay Gatsby and Nick Carroway have an intersting relationship, that I think has many levels.  The only reason Jay is so very intersted in befriending Nick is that Jay is in love with Nick's cousin, Daisy, and wants somebody who knows her very well to re-introduce the two.  On the other hand when they first met, Jay seemed to be very friendly to Nick, and he at first didn't know that Nick and Daisy were related.  Jay starts showing Nick around the city and to meet people he knows, and the two seem to get along very well and become good friends.  When Nick first brings Daisy to his house Jay starts to freak out a little, and Nick pulls him together, in a way one would usually do with a good friend, Jay gets his mojo together, and shows Daisy around his house and estate, which impresses her very much.  When Nick keeps on making advances to leave the two alone, they both ask him to stay, as both Jay and Daisy know Nick, and in Jay's point of view, he was asking Nick to just help him out a little, like nowadays saying something like "hey dude, I just need a little support to get this girl, then you can leave." Jay even offers Nick a better job that can get him better money than he is making.  Overall, I think that they are starting to form a genuine freindship, and Jay might not only hang around with Nick just because of Nicks relationship with Daisy.  This great book just keeps on getting better, Fitzgerald really know how to write!

Poem... a few Haiku's

Winter

Snowmen, being born
Snow falling, with white wonder

I enjoy the peace

Fireplace

Sitting by the fire

With hot cocoa and a book

I can feel the warmth

I Am Thankful

Ahh... Thanksgiving.... turkey, stuffing, mashed potatoes, and gravy, some of the best foods, and a great four day break is definitely something to be thankful about.  This holiday makes you really think about what is means to be American, and that you have so many things to be thankful for.  When you think about it each and every one of us is lucky to live in this country, where all over the world people have it much worse, and we should be thankful to go to Whitney Young.  Aanyway, in this class there are many students I am thankful for.  Emmet Drea, who I know from gradeschool is that kind of guy who can make the whole class funnier with just one comment, like one day when he decided to talk native american, and he can sometimes have these completely random deep philosophical statements that make you think.  Briana Hammons always knows whats going on with what we are doing in class and that can be very helpful in some situations, and she always has a funny sense of humor, and her argumentative attitude can be entertaining.  Lauren Jeon always has that nice cherry blossom hand cream, and she is also very funny. Overall this is one of my favorite classes and I am thankful to be in it.

Happy Thanksgiving Everybody!

I am a Plow?

Today when I woke up,  I was a plow (whats up with that?).  I was taken out of the barn and hooked up to some oxen and they started pulling me along rough dirt... talk about rugburn.  These oxen were going like 1 mile per hour and after five minutes I was bored out of my mind.  It's not like I could just get up and walk away, as I was now a plow.  When you are a large metal object, you finally realize how hot the sun could really be on a hot sunny day.  The oxen took a break to eat, and while they did that, I was put down under a tree by the farmers.  Little did they know I was a real person, and I realized that being a plow was not very fun at all.  Then I was grinding up the dirt for a few more hours, and put away at twilight.  The farmers then went on putting seeds where I just had plowed up the dirt, after all that work, they were just going to put some little things in the ground and bury it back up?!  They put me back in the barn and locked it up, which is probably unecessary, it's not like I can get up and walk away anymore.  After this long day I now see that it would probably suck to be anything other than a human, I didn't have any fun being a plow.  Anyway how am I even talking and thinking, aren't I an inanimate plow?

Classroom Improvements

Your (I'm talking to you Mr. McCarthy) classroom doesn't have that many problems. Maybe you could make the grading scale a little easier like 93-100 is an A and 92-82 is B etc, because the current grading scale is super crazy. We should definitley watch even more movies.  I think you should completely get rid of note taking when we have to read books, like House of the Seven Gables, and our Independent reading books, I'm pretty sure its unanimous that every student hates taking notes, but if we still have to take notes, you should at least let us use them on the tests, if we take notes and then don't use them for anything they are useless and a waste of time.  I think you shouldn't make us do Independent reading projects, it's no fun reading a book for fun if we have to to projects and work about them.  I like how you let us choose the House of the 7 Gables over the Scarlet Letter, and I think you should let us choose what books we read by a certain author, for example: Edgar Allen Poe: Book a, Book b, or Book c.  You should also give us less reading to do, 20-50 pages is crazy for one night I think 20-30 is better, some of us have other classes that also give large and unreasonable amounts of homework, and sometimes its hard to do it all.  Besides this, you have a great class, I have lots of fun in it, and I am happy to be in it.

Modern Day Slavery

Even though slavery is abolished  in all countries, it isn't really completely gone, as some people have "jobs" but they are practically working as slaves.  In countries like China, Vietnam, Thailand, Cambodia, and many countries in Africa, people work in horrid conditions for little pay.  They work in sweatshops and receive practically no pay, and are doing hours of labor in bad conditions, and get no bonuses or Unions to back them up, they have to work for their families and to survive.  Another type of slavery is another grim aspect in impoverished countries, the problem of human trafficking.  In places like Mexico, people pay most of their earnings to be brought illegally to America, and once they are here they might be subjected to harsh working conditions by their "guides" or traffickers, with threatens of being deported.  Luckily though, these modern types of slavery are recognized and national and international organizations, like the United Nations, who are trying to work with national governments to put an end to these sweatshops and trafficking practices.  Although we like to think that slavery is not around in America anymore it still might be around in other parts of the world.