It's all over the media - 6 Music dedicating programmes to them, all the newspapers carrying features - yet we've not mentioned them here. I put High Tides & Green Grass on the iPod yesterday and went to the gym. God, it's perfect! Did rock'n'roll ever sound better than Satisfaction or Paint It Black? What a groove. What a sound. What an attitude. And they so looked the business. I have no doubt that the Rolling Stones were the greatest rock'n'roll band ever - from 1964 to 1972 they recorded so much magnificent music. And even as they faded across the 70s they still offered up some fine funk-soul pastiches: Hot Stuff, Fool To Cry, Miss You, Beast Of Burden, Emotional Rescue, Dance. Since then they have been creatively dead but, from accounts of people I know who have purchased tickets for their gigs, deliver an enjoyable stadium show. I've never gone along - not liking stadiums - but did pay to see Keef at Town & Country and Charlie at Ronnie Scotts. Both were great.
This forum once descended into acrimony over Brown Sugar when a foolish American called Christian asked for a boycott and a drunken Englishman called Des used some really offensive language towards another forumista. So let's not replicate that. Love the Stones - post here. Hate the Stones - post here. But no name calling or unpleasantness please.
I've shown my hand: the Stones were the greatest rock band ever and no one else really came close to matching them in those luminous days. And they inspired the best book on a rock band ever - Stanley Booth's True Adventures Of The Rolling Stones. A superb read.