JEFF MIERS: SOUND CHECK
Buffalo musicians, new reissues celebrate the Rolling Stones
Little Boy Blue & the Cockroaches. The Rolling Uglies. The Stoned. The world’s greatest rock ’n’ roll band.
Call them what you will — and odds are, whatever moniker you choose, they’ve been called worse — the Rolling Stones refuse to die, both corporally and in terms of continued influence.
This week, a whole new batch of Rolling Stones remasters hit the street, along with a new Blu-ray disc documenting the group’s most recent tour. And this evening, more than 20 Buffalo bands will gather inside Nietzsche’s for the third annual “Exile on Allen St.” concert, a tribute to the enduring legacy of the Stones’ “Exile on Main St.” album, and to the ceaseless resonance of the band once labeled the Beatles’ scruffy little brother.
“A tribute to the Stones is a bit of a no-brainer,” says event producer Jeff Garbaz, a veteran visual/lighting artist who also presents tributes to Led Zeppelin (“Blouses of the Holy”) and Pink Floyd (“Dark Side of Allen St.”) inside Nietzsche’s each year. “I mean, who doesn’t love the band? The Stones are almost the perfect common denominator between people who otherwise might not have a lot in common with their musical tastes.”
Yeah, that’s gotta be the ticket. These days, even your mom is likely to be a Stones fan. Of course, this wasn’t always the case.
When the band first arrived on the scene in the mid-’60s, the Stones shocked the pants off the English middle classes, folks who found the Beatles palatable, despite the mildly threatening length of their hair. Who can forget the infamous “Would you let your daughter date a Rolling Stone?” headlines in the British tabloids, or the way the Stones’ openly druggy, sneering, blatantly sexual appropriation of African-American blues arrived like an uninvited guest in the post-war UK? It might seem rather quaint today, when nothing’s really shocking, but the Stones symbolized a youth-based movement back then, as they carried the banner of social, sexual and personal freedom through the streets while the guardians of propriety cowered in their kitchens and clung feebly to cups of tea.
Those days are well and truly over, though that isn’t really the fault of the Stones. Once it has been wholly commodified, how can rock retain a revolutionary power, on the populist level? It can’t. And since the dawn of the 1970s, the Stones have operated minus any sort of broader political or social significance, which left us nothing but the music. Good thing most of it was awesome.
The Stones — whose members are now far closer to 70 than they are to 60 — recently inked a new distribution deal with the Universal Music Group and, rest assured, Mick, Keith and Co. enjoyed a bountiful payday. So the new label set about remastering and reissuing the band’s ’70s-forward catalog, post-haste. This week’s bounty includes the albums “Some Girls,” “Emotional Rescue,” “Tattoo You” and “Undercover,” all wildly successful releases the first time around and still sources of great contention among Stones fans today.
Why? Well, as hard to believe as this might be, there were many music lovers at the time who insisted the band had outstayed its welcome prior to 1980, that indeed, it was too rich, too removed from the common man and too old to matter. So when “Some Girls” was heralded by the disco-fied strut of “Miss You,” the hipsters ran screaming “Sell out!,” straight into the arms of the Sex Pistols, Ramones, Clash, et al. No matter. The Stones rolled on, sold millions of records, continued to be the biggest concert draw east of Led Zeppelin and irreverently, blatantly indulged in booze-and-drugs excess.
All of this reached a peak with “Tattoo You,” a massive early-’80s hit and the launching point for what was until then the biggest stadium rock tour in history. (Rich Stadium was treated to a tour stop during the “Tattoo You” trek.)
As much as members of the old guard gnashed their teeth and wrung their hands, the band was still delivering the goods. No, these newer albums weren’t exactly “Sticky Fingers” or “Exile on Main St.,” but they were brimming with raunchy, sultry, inspired rock ’n’ roll.
“That’s actually my favorite period of Stones music,” says Garbaz, fully aware that admitting as much might make him seem a tad bit uncool to the rock fashionistas. “I love the disco stuff! I was in ninth grade the first time I heard ‘Tattoo You,’ and that was my music. I loved all the Stones stuff, but they were definitely on a roll during that late-’70s, early-’80s period. I mean, ‘Emotional Rescue’ is a great album — I don’t care what anyone says!”
Among the Buffalo artists lining up to pay tribute to Keef and Co. at Nietzsche’s tonight are Forever Green, Spirit Chief, Cowboys of Scotland, the Painkillers, Handsome Girls, Fredmanscurve, Quintana, Duke/James, Matt Surowiec, the Questionnaires, the Jim Cream Band, Kinives, Theresa Quin and Jim McLaughlin. Throughout the evening, Garbaz will “perform” lights and and onscreen visuals.
The diversity of the lineup — which includes musicians who normally play everything from folk to punk rock — suggests, without subtly, that the Stones’ raunch ’n’ roll continues to inspire musicians, 47 years after the band first formed.•
“Exile on Allen St.” takes place inside Nietzsche’s (248 Allen St.) at 9 tonight.
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