Wednesday, November 11, 2009

Getting My Ya-Yas Out Again






I've listened to Get Yer Ya Ya's Out approximately 80 bazillion times but I never noticed Mick Taylor's sly little rhythm guitar bit on "Sympathy For the Devil" before hearing the remastered CD version.

Swallowed up on the LP, Taylor snuck in a little Stax-y, Steve Cropperesque fillip at the end of each verse (after the simple barre chord pattern that every beginning guitar player learned absolutely first thing out of the box ca. 1981).

The anniversary set also has a short disc of okay unreleased Stones (including a fairly frantic "Satisfaction"), a disc of B.B. King and the Ike and Tina Turner Revue — great stuff but you wonder what the Stoned crowd made of it — and a DVD of leftovers from the Maysles film "Gimme Shelter," including Mick Jagger and Keith Richards doing an incredibly out of tune "Prodigal Son" and some fun with a donkey.

Ya-Yas proper is still a great record. The mix improves Bill Wyman's bass as well, and he is suprisingly busy on the Chuck Berry covers.

Forget whatever it is the Stones have devolved into, get this set, and remember what it was like when giants roamed the earth.

PS: The CD box set also comes with a little hardcover book that includes Lester Bangs' review from Rolling Stone. Bangs was the H.L. Mencken of rock and roll writing. Or something.

1 comment:

The Editor said...

I discovered it because I started listening to it on headphones via an iPod. The guitar interplay in that version should be studied by every guitarist. It's both economical and devastating.