Well, I think that UNDERCOVER is a GREAT album. I would have had to include it in its entirety. The last great one. So I would have wanted at least 15 songs in addition for the years after UNDERCOVER to make it interesting for me to try to make such a list.

In case, then I would have used zero songs from DIRTY WORK, "Continental Drift" from STEEL WHEELS, the single "Highwire" (the long version), "Love Is Strong" and "Sweethearts Together" from VOODOO LOUNGE and the Internet single "Doom And Gloom". I would have abstained from any re-releases. That exercise so far would have left me ten - 10! - tracks to cover the two albums that I consider verging on the semi-great, the enterprising BRIDGES TO BABYLON and the somewhat too safe, but in parts really, really good A BIGGER BANG.

At that point I would have waved the white flag and cried in desperation: I finally give in!

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Witness
Well, I think that UNDERCOVER is a GREAT album. I would have had to include it in its entirety. The last great one. So I would have wanted at least 15 songs in addition for the years after UNDERCOVER to make it interesting for me to try to make such a list.

In case, then I would have used zero songs from DIRTY WORK, "Continental Drift" from STEEL WHEELS, the single "Highwire" (the long version), "Love Is Strong" and "Sweethearts Together" from VOODOO LOUNGE and the Internet single "Doom And Gloom". I would have abstained from any re-releases. That exercise so far would have left me ten - 10! - tracks to cover the two albums that I consider verging on the semi-great, the enterprising BRIDGES TO BABYLON and the somewhat too safe, but in parts really, really good A BIGGER BANG.

At that point I would have waved the white flag and cried in desperation: I finally give in!

Go ahead Witness: Exclude Undercover. Start 1984, We want your list!

She Was Hot
All The Way Down
One Hit To the Body
Dirty Work
Had It With You
Love Is Strong
I Go Wild
Blinded By Rainbows
Already Over Me
Out Of Control
Saint Of Me
Rough Justice
Oh No,Not You Again
This Place Is Empty
Doom And Gloom

(As you see, nothing from "Steel Wheels"...)

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caschimann

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Witness
Well, I think that UNDERCOVER is a GREAT album. I would have had to include it in its entirety. The last great one. So I would have wanted at least 15 songs in addition for the years after UNDERCOVER to make it interesting for me to try to make such a list.

In case, then I would have used zero songs from DIRTY WORK, "Continental Drift" from STEEL WHEELS, the single "Highwire" (the long version), "Love Is Strong" and "Sweethearts Together" from VOODOO LOUNGE and the Internet single "Doom And Gloom". I would have abstained from any re-releases. That exercise so far would have left me ten - 10! - tracks to cover the two albums that I consider verging on the semi-great, the enterprising BRIDGES TO BABYLON and the somewhat too safe, but in parts really, really good A BIGGER BANG.

At that point I would have waved the white flag and cried in desperation: I finally give in!

Go ahead Witness: Exclude Undercover. Start 1984, We want your list!

That is what I started on, all the time fully aware that I also then was to give in. Because there are approximately 8 songs from B2B and possibly 9 songs from ABB that I would have to include. However, already I have used 5 vacant tracks and have only 10 left.

The task is too difficult for me. It would be much easier for me to transform TATTOO YOU into a maxi single of 3-4 songs. Or even a traditional single of 2. Name it "Best of". But never is there anyone who presents such a challenge.

- All the way down
- Feel on baby
- Too tough
- She was hot
- One hit to the body
- Too rude
- sleep tonight
- Hearts for sale
- Continental drift
- Blinded by rainbows
- The worst
- Sparks will fly
- Out of control
- Laugh I nearly died
- It won't take long

She Was Hot
Too Tough
All The Way Down
It Must Be Hell
One Hit To The Body
Fight
Sleep Tonight
Sad, Sad, Sad
Almost Hear You Sigh
Highwire
I Go Wild
Baby Break It Down
Too Tight
She Saw Me Coming
One More Shot

Undercover is an absolute favorite. All of the stuff recorded at Pathe Marconi (1977-83) was amazing. I fully agree with Kurt Loder's 1983 review of Undercover in Rolling Stone: [www.rollingstone.com]



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 2015-03-06 01:25 by HeatherAnnePeel.

Undercover is their last GREAT album, the last true Rolling Stones album with the whole band full on it, nothing was the same for the Stones after 1983.

The Best after 1983:

One Hit (To The Body)
Harlem Shuffle
Mixed Emotions
Almost Hear You Sigh
Slipping Away
Highwire
Love Is Strong
The Worst
Out Of Tears
Anybody Seen My Baby?
Out Of Control
Saint Of Me
Don't Stop
Rain Fall Down
Doom And Gloom

My list doesn´t include the "new" songs from the Exile and SG-Bonus-disc. I think from a "historical" standpoint it would make more sense to start this list with 1989. Undercover is the last album where you could consider the Stones as a "working band", and by far the best of all the post-Tattoo albums

Undercover (Of The Night)
She Was Hot
Too Tough
One Hit (To The Body) (maxi version)
Harlem Shuffle (London mix maxi version)
Mixed Emotions (maxi version)
Rock and hard place (yes indeed I dare to mention it)
Almost hear you sigh
Love Is Strong
You got me rocking (again: yes indeed I dare to mention it)
Thru and Thru
Flip the switch
Anybody seen my baby
Out of control
Doom And Gloom

1/ Saint of Me
2/ Plundered My Soul
3/ Undercover
4/ Doom and Gloom
5/ Champagne and Reefer (with Buddy Guy)
6/ Love is Strong
7/ One Hit to the Body
8/ Sleep Tonight
9/ Mixed Emotions
10/Slipping Away
11/Highwire
12/Out of Control
13/She Was Hot
14/Oh No,Not You Again
15/No Spare Parts

She Was Hot
Too Much Blood
Pretty Beat Up
One Hit
Harlem Shuffle
Slippin Away
Love Is Strong
You Got Me Rocking
Thru And Thru
Flip The Switch
Out Of Control
Thief In The Night
Rough Justice
Laugh, I Nearly Died
Doom & Gloom

+Like A Rolling Stone / Plundered My Soul

+ everything they cut off VL..

Researching such a list was a useful exercise. It led me to the conclusion that on Steel Wheels there was really nothing to write home about (well, Terrifying is a nice dance song). And that A Bigger Bang is the best album of that period.

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Doxa

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Single Malt

Yes, to me Under Cover is also the last album that can hold many listenings from start to end. Of course there are also good songs on later albums but they're different. UC still has that old feeling. To me it'd be easier to compile 1986-2015 album. I just thought this isn't that serious issue ;-)

Serious issue?

But before I try to make my BEST OF 1983 TO TODAY collection, I need to still dig up further the difference between UNDERCOVER and the rest... Likewise I think that they are also good songs on later albums, and that they are different. But how?

Actually I think that UNDERCOVER doesn't include very strong song-writing, or. let's say, clearly stronger songs than the later albums (except, say, "Undercover of The Night" and "She Was Hot"). I think the song-writing is rather lazy in the album actually, and some later albums - STEEL WHEELS, BRIDGES TO BABYLON - actually contain much sharper song-writing. Of course, this begs the question what a "song" actually is. With the Stones it is not just some skeleton Jagger/Richards composition, but very much constructed from the whole band effort, the way it is performed, arranged, produced, etc. There are lots of ideas - not just the basic riff, chords, melody and lyrics - going on in interesting Stones songs (the issues of credition do not belong here).

Like treaclefingers said of "Hang Fire" in its track talk, The Stones sometimes manage to make ear-pleasing and interesting pieces of music from some rather non-memorable song sketches by just the virtue of their musicianship. I think most of the songs of UNDERCOVER are like that. A damn hot band but rather mediocre song-writing or that the song themselves based on some rather half-baked jam-based ideas worked further (especially pieces like "Tie You Up", "All The Way Down", "Pretty Beat Up", "Feel On Baby"). All those songs are fascinating because of the 'groove' and hot musicianship but not because of killer riffs or memorable compositions. Of course, this is an old Stones virtue - there are things like that especially in EXILE ON MAIN STREET (even though the initial ideas, as their application, there sound more inspired and fresh).

However, in their later works the Stones seem to lost that ability to make the songs fascinating by the virtue of their band effort, and have started to rely more on the compositions themselves. To an extent DIRTY WORK and especially STEEL WHEELS sound like that the band effort, relying and believing on their idiosyncracies and instincts, isn't the natural point of departure any longer, but more like a realization of Jagger/Richards songs within the context of latest studio possibilities. The band is forced to fit to those premises and constraints. I think especially STEEL WHEELS offers rather sharp song-writing - Mick and Keith sound like really sitting down to write some complete pieces fitting for a Stones relaese - but their realization is not that exciting or memorable, but is based on some rather obvious arrangement ideas and production of late-80's (very much dated now). If one listens pieces like "Terrifying", "Almost Hear You Sigh", "Hearts For Sale" or "Rock And A Hard Place" they all sound so compact, so clear and distinct, so slick but so obvious - there is almost none left of the old craziness, vitality and attitude, of the old unpredictable chaos, which relied on nothing else than their own instincts and imagination.

The albums since then sound all the same to me: the difference between them is how good individual compositions they include. Their performance - how they are executed - doesn't save or change anything. VOODOO LOUNGE sets the theme: it is much more 'retro' than their previous albums, but sterilizes the traditional Stones sound into some sort of 'Stones for Dummies' form: (a) it offers some sort of modern ideal what constitutes a classical Stones sound and emphasizies each component crystal clearly; (b) each musical idea - any instrument and any individual sound - is so explicitly presented that a listener cannot miss any of them by just one listening. There are no 'secrets' one needs to have a multiple listenings to get them - nor there are surprises, odd choices, hidden features, anomalies... nothing to really excite imagination. No time is needed to 'get' them - it's all there, served like some fast food. In that sense VOODOO LOUNGE cannot be any further from EXILE than it is - no matter how much Don Was wanted to do his own version of that.

So to go back to the initial comparision: even though I think a song like "Saint of Me" or "Out of Control" is better as a composion - or even as a song - as, say, "All The Way Down", "Pretty Beat Up" or "Tie You Up", there is something more irrestible in the latter ones, which keep me more excited and more eager to go back them in the long run.

Okay, these were my own preliminary remarks for myself to construe a best of collection... the task is difficult...

- Doxa

Doxa, you got a brain and a half.

I rather liked "Highwire" and "Don't Stop" more than a lot of the other post 1983 material, because those two tunes don't sound like the band thought about them too much. They sound like they just came up with them quickly and laid them down quickly. Maybe there's a lesson in there: write and record at a faster rate and the result is greater immediacy.

Pretty Beat Up
Undercover of the Night
One Hit
Had It With You
Mixed Emotions
Slipping Away
Fancyman Blues
Highwire
You Got Me Rocking
Suck on the Jugular
Saint of Me
Rough Justice
Driving Too Fast
Back of My Hand
Doom and Gloom

stonesstein

Kick me like you did before
I can't even feel the pain no more
Rocks Off, 1972

I'm actually a bit surprised to see undercover of the night (the song) in so many lists. I don't think it's a bad song but never thought it was a favourite by the hardcore fans.

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Tops
I'm actually a bit surprised to see undercover of the night (the song) in so many lists. I don't think it's a bad song but never thought it was a favourite by the hardcore fans.

I understand. I always wince when I think of the song... but when I hear it - it's very intense. It kicks. It's jarring.

It still works. I like listening to it.

Thanks for all the entries.
I learned so much.

Next step:
In two days we will sort out the "Inofficial IORR Best of 1983 to today album".

Follow Up Step:
A meeting with Universal CEO Frank Briegmann to discuss the idea of putting together such album.

So if you have any more lists to entry - feel free!

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Tops
I'm actually a bit surprised to see undercover of the night (the song) in so many lists. I don't think it's a bad song but never thought it was a favourite by the hardcore fans.

Like I said earlier, I like the whole album, but you have to remember this is a 1983-onwards list. I'm not sure any of the songs I'd include on such a list would make it onto a pre-83 list, unless you're going pretty large.

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GasLightStreet

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Tops
I'm actually a bit surprised to see undercover of the night (the song) in so many lists. I don't think it's a bad song but never thought it was a favourite by the hardcore fans.

I understand. I always wince when I think of the song... but when I hear it - it's very intense. It kicks. It's jarring.

It still works. I like listening to it.

I recall walking into a nightclub in 1989 and it was playing, one of the remix versions. Utterly fantastic. Six years on from when it was released, I'm not sure if the crowd even knew what they were dancing to but everyone was into it.

Tracks that shouldn´t be forgotten or missing from this period:

Doom and gloom
Biggest mistake
This place is empty
Laugh I nearly died
Gunface
Out of control
Might as well get juiced
Moon is up
Mean disposition
Jump on top of me
Highwire
Mixed emotions
Continental drift
Hold back
Feel on baby

Jump on Top Of Me Baby
Brand New Car
Too Tight
I Go Wild
Too Much Blood
She Was Hot
All the Way Down
One Hit
Terrifying
Continental Drift
Watching the River Flow
Do You Think I Really Care
No Spare Parts
Pass The Wine
She Saw Me Comming
Out Of Control
Saint of Me
Don't Stop
Doom and Gloom
One More Shot
Love Is Strong
Mean Disposition
Flip the Switch
Break the Spell
Back of My Hand
Rough Justice
When You're Gone

the shoot 'em dead, brainbell jangler!

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treaclefingers

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GasLightStreet

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Tops
I'm actually a bit surprised to see undercover of the night (the song) in so many lists. I don't think it's a bad song but never thought it was a favourite by the hardcore fans.

I understand. I always wince when I think of the song... but when I hear it - it's very intense. It kicks. It's jarring.

It still works. I like listening to it.

I recall walking into a nightclub in 1989 and it was playing, one of the remix versions. Utterly fantastic. Six years on from when it was released, I'm not sure if the crowd even knew what they were dancing to but everyone was into it.

It (the remix) was a dancefloor-hit still in the early 90ies in Germany.

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treaclefingers

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GasLightStreet

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Tops
I'm actually a bit surprised to see undercover of the night (the song) in so many lists. I don't think it's a bad song but never thought it was a favourite by the hardcore fans.

I understand. I always wince when I think of the song... but when I hear it - it's very intense. It kicks. It's jarring.

It still works. I like listening to it.

I recall walking into a nightclub in 1989 and it was playing, one of the remix versions. Utterly fantastic. Six years on from when it was released, I'm not sure if the crowd even knew what they were dancing to but everyone was into it.

From what I can tell there was only one 'remix' of UOTN.






Imagine Mick really doing this....

I think it's time for this article:

[www.headheritage.co.uk]


THE ROLLING STONES—
UNDERCOVER MIXES
Released 1983 on Rolling Stones
The Seth Man, March 2009ce
“I remember hearing ‘Undercover of the Night’ first time and thinking they musta been listening to the Pop Group!”
- Julian Cope, 2008CE.

In 1983, the 12” single was not a new thing for The Stones as they thought enough of the format as far back as 1976 by issuing the promo-only “Hot Stuff”/“Crazy Mama.” Another followed in 1978 in the wake of “Some Girls” with a ‘Special Disco Version’ of “Miss You” suitably lengthened and groove-widened for high steppin’ use. Then in 1980, an extended remix of “Dance (Pt. 1)” took the track and elongated it over two sides as “If I Was A Dancer (Dance Pt.2)”/“Dance (Instrumental Version).” However, all this was trumped by what came next: the dub remix of “Undercover Of The Night”/“Feel On Baby” and the 3-track “Too Much Blood” EP. These were shattering proto-electro clash anomalies replete with stuttering sampling and additional deconstructions that sought to chop up and carve the tracks into a place where few if any of the handful of contemporaries of The Stones’ dared to venture forth -- let alone any other Rock bands, period. Even relative newcomers didn’t take things this far: content to leave many of their ‘dub’ or ‘all night version’ B-sides as just slightly longer instrumental versions of their A-sides with little or no modifications. What The Stones did was more iconoclastic than Blondie’s extended mix of “Rapture,” The Clash’s “Radio Clash” EP or even any PIL 12” simply because it WAS The Stones AND they had far more to lose by embracing pioneering elements that dislocated their sound into the extremities of dance floor sound techniques.

Ever since the eighties, these two Stones EPs never registered a single positive response from any Stones fan I’d play them for until the needle lifted up. My claim that these two singles were psychedelic because they were so different from what one had come to expect from The Stones were met only with groans and rolled eyes of bored fans that, even during that first full year of the MTV eighties, rejected ‘em outright as merely ‘disco.’ Disco? I ain’t got time for that now! They even poo-poo’ed the accompanying album’s sticker-splattered sleeve, figgering the triangular patch under the crotch of the cover’s otherwise nude model wasn’t gonna be the promised show time and decried it as a last ditch effort for credibility with such a workaday, sub-Warhol device. I’d finally ask ‘Yeah, but you still wanna know what’s underneath, right?’ and then refuse to reveal what was. (Actually, I couldn’t remember except that it was none of the woman’s anatomy, but that wasn’t the issue. I looked while others kept theirs hermetically sealed; Either in the secret hope it would wind up accruing a value greater than or equal to an unpeeled copy of the first VU album, out of boredom or both.)

With MTV already a full blown cultural epidemic, The Stones finally hiked their once-lagging video acumen into high gear with two uncompromising videos for “Undercover Of The Night” and “Too Much Blood.” No longer miming in a rented studio, hiding behind thermograms or hangin’ ‘round the Lower East Side, a quantum leap was made by hiring director Julien Temple which resulted in casting the band in parallel plot developments that yielded something far more inventive that what usually aired on MTV at the time (comprised for the most part by post-apocalyptic dance routines, South Sea island reveries, haunted house scenarios, cheap ‘it-was-only-a-dream’ plot resolutions, amateurish film noir or some other shopworn motif with practically every lyric conspicuously mimed.) Set in nighttime Central American locations, the videos were immediately engaging with violent and humourous twists at every turn while sound effects constantly erupted over the music as an interior channel surfing world continued throughout. In “Undercover Of The Night,” Mick took on the main character roles (natch) and Keith was typecast as an assassin (double natch) while Bill, Charlie and Ronnie fleshed out the background behind their instruments or as masked abductors. The follow up video for “Too Much Blood” was no less disturbing in its depiction of a woman splitting an otherwise quiet evening between being terrorised by blood seeping out from every appliance she touched and intently watching The Stones throw threatening shapes on her (soon bleeding and consequently defenestrated) TV set.

Like the videos, the songs reeked with an unsettling air of oppressive darkness. Even in their un-remixed state, “Undercover Of The Night,” “Feel On Baby” and “Too Much Blood” stuck out from the rest of the “Undercover” album like a sore tongue and were The Stones’ most errantly experimental moves on one album since “Their Satanic Majesties Request.” (Weirdly, the labels on both albums read ‘Front Side’ and ‘Back Side’ stedda plain old ‘Side 1’ and ‘Side 2’.) But despite the fact “Undercover” weren’t experimental all the way through with much of it echoing familiar shades of “Some Girls”/“Emotional Rescue”/“Tattoo You”-styled buffers, the gruesome threesome listed above was an entirely new sound for The Stones. Burnished with a futuristic gleam by the wonderknobs of long-term Stones co-producer Chris Kimsey, abrupt sampling and FX-upon-everything stabbed throughout while as if in electronic ode to the percussion-inclined nature of their previous work with Jimmy Miller, acoustic and synthesized drums were punched in and out all over the place.

This handiwork carried over with severe application onto two EPs and made those twelve inchers resound with vibrations twelve foot wide, twelve foot deep and twelve foot high. “Undercover Of The Night” featured even more distracting sampled blasts and rattling firecracker snare rolls than on album as they constantly permeated a jagged and slinky funk. The B-side was an authentic dub of “Feel On Baby” that dispensed with the lead vocals altogether in a room full of percussive mirrors with its rebounding bass line the only constant. Then a subsequent 12” saw two separate versions of “Too Much Blood” handled (and mishandled) by a team of outside engineers that made it forget who it was for most of the time as they buffeted it with beats, samples and a whole arsenal of remix materiel while myriad edits revived chunks of sound as punctuation over staccato rhythms with sudden, tightly echoed electronic drums and clap tracking galore. Yet for all the time these proto-techno effects conspired to twist up, rip apart and send flying into oblivion anything that permitted its ejected splinters to be recognisable as ‘The Stones,’ they couldn’t. Because those Volkswagens of Rock’n’Roll were too tough (as they themselves taunted on another song off “Undercover” spared the vicissitudes of remixing) and their base elements were altogether too distinctive and too dirty to destroy or render anonymous.


“Undercover Of the Night”/“Feel On Baby”
Slapping a fake ‘Extended Cheeky Mix’ sticker and Stones tongue over the bare ass on the cover? Nice.
The wide-grooved Euro 12” vinyl of “Undercover Of The Night (Dub Version)” held far clearer audio presentation than its unmixed album counterpart with the original elements reassembled, reshuffled, interrupted and strung out for far longer. The opening machine-gunning electronic snare roll rattles over a red carpet of groove that rolls out fringed with echoed drumming and that ubiquitous dive-bombing guitar blast paired with e-drums that only roughly sounds like ((((“DA-DA-DA-DA-DA-A-A-A-A-OOOUUUWWWGGHH…”)))) but feels like a detonation going off between your ears instead. In the breakdown, four of these samples roar out of nowhere to propel you backwards like the guy on the sofa in the Maxell commercial. Timpani can be heard rumbling innocently in the background during the pressure dropped fade/slight return still intact from the album’s structure only it runs longer, and...Hey, where are the vocals? Oh, there they are: on Jagger’s streecawner “doo-doo, doo, doo, doo-doo”-ing a wordless cockcrowing to bolster the groove. An additional outro instrumental of audible organ, jagged guitar riffs and pounding timpani ensuing right before its conclusion is signalled with a final accent of ((((“DA-DA-DA-DA-DA-A-A-A-A-OOOUUUWWWGGHH…”)))) that impacts into a wall of sickeningly slow echo slapback.

“Feel On Baby” was the isolated reggae move on “Undercover” album. With a groove and inflection displaying a far greater degree of intuition of said Jamaican idiom than “Cherry Oh Baby,” it comes as little surprise that the rhythm section here is none other than drummer Sly Dunbar and bassist Robbie Shakespeare. In its filleted form as “Feel On Baby (Instrumental Dub),” the track was stripped back to expose a sinewy lead bass line backlit with African percussion and shorn of all vocalising save the amplified background vocal/gruff repetition of the title by Keith. In a huge and becalmed surrounding, click-clacking contributions from Senegalese percussionaires Moustapha Cisse and Brahms Coundoul alongside Sade sideman Martin Ditcham organically play off Shakespeare’s slow and deliberate bass. Over time, this acoustic and electronic percussion’s electro-dub netting gradually shifts from a weightless hang to a heavy shroud over its jungled rhythm enclosure. Keith’s rhythm guitar drops out, drops in yet always retains its underlined, drop shadowing echo. An organ passage swells overhead far more prominently and longer than on the LP edition, while additional blasts of the same rapid-fire machine gunning e-drums from “Undercover of The Night” reappear to ping-pong from speaker to speaker. Jagger blares out see-sawing harmonica while Richards’ cross-hatching rhythm is gradually displaced by another thicket of e-drum explosions until a single thunderous down stroke from Keef dissipates all except the nighttime cricket percussion that soon settle up and retreat one by one back into the darkened bush.


“Too Much Blood”
A bloodied and traumatised Jagger pushes his horrified mug forward while Keith stalks in the background with his hollow-bodied axe raised like an avenging angel of death moments before administering a final sacrificial strike.The “Too Much Blood” EP was a huge production number. Involving an auxiliary of players and arrangers appearing alongside Mick (lead vocals, electric guitars), Keith (guitars) and Stones guitar technician Jim Barber (guitar) it would appear to be Robbie Shakespeare once more on bass with either Sly Dunbar, Charlie Watts or both on drums. The reoccurring brass blasts were blown by Chops, a session horn section whose core members Dave Watson and Darryl Dixon appeared on Parliament’s “Funkentelechy vs. The Placebo Syndrome” and “Trombipulation” LPs as well as albums by P-Funk offshoots Quazar and Mutiny. More recently, their distinctive brass placements had appeared on releases by The Sugarhill Gang and Grandmaster Flash & The Furious 5. These guys had brass in the pocket, and no less so on “Too Much Blood” with a memorably sharp accenting in the chorus. Also from the ranks of nascent NYC rap culture was former DJ / producer / arranger / programmer / remixer Arthur Baker: a cut-and-paste studio in human form best known at the time for hijacking Kraftwerk’s “Trans Europe Express” into a Bronx-bound subway for Afrika Bambaataa’s sensational single, “Planet Rock.” Assisting Baker were engineers Chris and Tom Lord-Alge, the two-man edit crew of The Latin Rascals alongside trays of electronic scalpels and chainsaws.

The surgery was a success only the patient looked, sounded and danced nothing like he did pre-op. The hotwired remix of “Too Much Blood (Long Dance Version)” was the result of stripping an already spartan track down to its rhythm section, constant hi-hat pulse, three-way guitar crosstalk and horn theme then rethreading it all through a pounding beat with multiple percussive overlays and processing it all through a blender set at Burroughsian cut up. The prime victim of this procedure were Jagger’s vocals, used and re-used alongside a whole additional set of his piquant bon mots, coarse ad-libs and derisive critiques of Michael Jackson’s “Thriller” video. At 12:33 minutes, this version of “Too Much Blood” is too much of everything: a carnival of beats, edits and samples dart in at angles like a nighttime fire fight accompanied by flares constantly popping off overhead. Holographic percussion lays down a near-“Sympathy For The Devil” introduction over Jagger’s opening vocal gambit of “Oh... Oh no...” and oh no is right for stentorian thumping and push-button staggering bursts in all around the 2-ply beats already edging into the original and pushing it off to one side. Its ceaseless production line rhythm stops for nothing even as timbales galore gallop in and out and it’s only when the once familiar horn theme gets super-stuttered, cut away and echoed in the first of many instances of push-button abuse does the beat lurch to any degree -- but winds up snapping back to attention every time, anyway. Additional synth lines dart in and out to sew the rhythm up even tighter as edits are jammed in out of nowhere: A synth bass appears to fun/c/k up the proceedings, push button sampling gets stuck on a split-second passage and a squalling public saxophone solos like it never did on the album version. Finally, a clearing is made for Jim Barber to unload chiming guitar riffs that gradually nudge into a solo while Jagger riffs on the sort of thing to be found late night on the Bois de Boulogne:

“Dance with a one-legged woman:
Fifty francs!
Good night...
Sister!”

Suddenly, the plug is pulled and it all grinds down to an echoed halt: But for only several seconds, as the trauma is revived with Jagger intoning into a nighttime jungle clearing before an assembled tribe at the foot of a towering voodoo idol: “Mean-mean-mean-mean-while...back in the jungle...Whoa huh HAHAAHAHAHAHAA...!” Hahahahaha: he got it off David Johansen (who got some off him in the first place, anyway) who in turn picked up a case of it offa The Cadets back in ’55 in a cultural Möbius strip winding back on itself forever -- neatly underlined by the percussion track currently zipping by backwards into hyperspace. It parts for the hardfloor stampeding to recommence in air-locked propulsion while the push-button freak-outs make Jagger’s vocals stutter wildly as if he’s traipsing over that red coal carpet of yore. Pounding drums, drums and more drums beat, encircling the rapid rhythmic sampling of Jagger’s cries and yelps. Another edit and flitting synth clusters dance and dart off-beat until a Caribbean percussion squad parachutes into this Junkanoo delirium. The horn theme is punched back in as additional stuff is cut away, inserted and added at a dizzying pace over a swarm of multi-sampled, pitch-controlled vocal samples. Someone pulls the plug a second time, causing fragments of music combined with bits of Jaggered vox e-detritus sampled at several beats per nanosecond to blur, hit the wall and bottom out into dead silence.

The eight minute “Too Much Blood (Dub Version)” see the original vocals scrapped and replaced by newly-recorded adlibs, jibs and jabs from Jagger. In a distant room, the bass line booms over e-drums and beats that crack with digital precision. More Jagger vocal samples whizz by the doubled-up in strength drum beats like flaming shards as his ghostly “Wooo, wooo, wooo...” scans the horizon like searchlights. More primal screams get sampled until a repeated “V-v-v-very v-v-v-very-very @#$%&’ funny, Michael!” gets stuck and doesn’t let go. It cuts in over and over until the increasing echo turns it into a veritable conversation with itself and sprays over a wide trajectory. Hugh synth bass solo funks up against sax shrieks as further overlays of repeated vocals and phrases echo at variable speed. Now a long forgotten dream, the horn theme passes by. In pieces. Timbales return and all the while, the hollowed out bass line continues from its position in the furthest studio corridor. Apropos of nothing, Jagger pipes in:

“Werewolf keeps turning into this bleedin’, @#$%&’ falcon. What’s it all about, y’know? I mean, give me a @#$%& break...They can’t @#$%& because she’s a falcon and he’s a bleedin’ @#$%&’ hawk! Well, I mean: they can’t get it on obviously, anyway...er...Y’know: it’s a bit involved...”

So is this remix. It’s a rush hour of edits, beats, echo and percussion until flitting keyboards renter to dance hither, thither and yon to signal the track’s slow corrosion. Jagger’s done roasting “Thriller” and has reverted to wordlessly gitchy-gitchy-ga-ga all over the place in a reverb-treated dub tank. He lets loose two final screams before a tsunami of echo swipes everything mercilessly into silence.

Thus ends the final remixed doppelgänger that hitched a ride to the heart of darkness and almost didn’t return. Then again, maybe they didn’t. The smell of sex...the smell of suicide...All those (dream) things The Stones just couldn’t keep inside...Along with fleshing out a half an hour’s worth of extreme alternative editions of an already reinvented sound hung out on the furthest extremities.

While for some it’s all too easy to dismiss The Stones outright and consign their successes within their huge body of work to that neat and multi-generational/critically-approved ‘65-‘72 era of achievements, anybody who knows and feels what Rock'n'Roll is knows it ain’t that easy -- Especially with a group with such a varied catalog of high-calibre low-riders as The Stones. And outside of their keepin’ on keepin’ on for as long as they have, these two remix 12”s mark what may be the Stones’ last truly great experiment. Or at very least: solid evidence of an undying resilience that time has yet to prove to be surpassed by any group.

Meanwhile, back in the jungle...