So I've never listened to the rolling stones much.

[username]

What the hell are you guys talking about? Steel Wheels and Voodoo Lounge are very good, Bridges to Babylon and A Bigger Bang are great! There are more noteworthy songs on either of them than on many of their older ones.

What I can't get into by them is the first two albums (and Satanic Majesties, for obvious reasons, as in it's crap). There are a handful of songs on them that are good but for the most part they seem to lack any sort of identity. Out of Our Heads is when the party gets started.

Agreed with everything you just said, except their first few albums (Rolling Stones, Rolling Stones II, 12x5 and Now!). Yes, they are mostly old soul and blues covers, but they're a great insight into the influences the Stones used as well as what they could do as a band with those songs. No, they are not anywhere near Aftermath, Out Of Our Heads or December's Children. But they are nice early sixties rock and roll albums. I like them because they show how the Stones were shaped.

Songs like It's All Over Now, Under The Boardwalk, Heart Of Stone, Time Is On My Side and Not Fade Away are pure gold. Oh, and their fast version of I Just Want To Make Love To You is pretty meh, but the really slow blues version of it they started playing around the time of Flashpoint (it was the B-side on the Highwire maxi-single) is just mindblowing.

[GivenToFly]

What the hell are you guys talking about? Steel Wheels and Voodoo Lounge are very good, Bridges to Babylon and A Bigger Bang are great! There are more noteworthy songs on either of them than on many of their older ones.

What I can't get into by them is the first two albums (and Satanic Majesties, for obvious reasons, as in it's crap). There are a handful of songs on them that are good but for the most part they seem to lack any sort of identity. Out of Our Heads is when the party gets started.

Agreed with everything you just said, except their first few albums (Rolling Stones, Rolling Stones II, 12x5 and Now!). Yes, they are mostly old soul and blues covers, but they're a great insight into the influences the Stones used as well as what they could do as a band with those songs. No, they are not anywhere near Aftermath, Out Of Our Heads or December's Children. But they are nice early sixties rock and roll albums. I like them because they show how the Stones were shaped.

Songs like It's All Over Now, Under The Boardwalk, Heart Of Stone, Time Is On My Side and Not Fade Away are pure gold. Oh, and their fast version of I Just Want To Make Love To You is pretty meh, but the really slow blues version of it they started playing around the time of Flashpoint (it was the B-side on the Highwire maxi-single) is just mindblowing.

I don't count the American releases, that's just double counting. The Rolling Stones discography to me starts like this: self-titled, self-titled No.2, Out of Our Heads, Aftermath, Between the Buttons, Their Satanic...

Route 66 and Under the Boardwalk are my favorites because they give a true glimpse into what the Stones would do later on. Heart of Stone is great but iirc it's on the third album. There are plenty of good songs there and now that I'm looking at my iTunes they have pretty high play counts. What I'm saying that it often sounds like they're doing what they think a blues band is supposed to do, rather than unleashing their own exceptional creativity, as well as their trademark cynicism.

[username]

What I'm saying that it often sounds like they're doing what they think a blues band is supposed to do, rather than unleashing their own exceptional creativity, as well as their trademark cynicism.

I get what you mean. But I also think that this creativity was very much still forming itself in those days. They were still learning to write their own songs. They were still a bunch of blues loving English white boys discovering this music. And that's what I meant by insight into what would become the Stones as we know them now. I gues that doing what a bluesband is supposed to do is something they had to do first in order to become the Stones.