This summer I took it upon myself to listen to every single Bob Dylan album in order (including the Bootleg Series) and write about them on this blog. I enjoyed doing it, and also the conversations that came out of it with readers. With the sad passing of Charlie Watts I have been thinking that the Stones deserve similar treatment. Charlie's death also might mean (based on past statements) the end of the Stones for good. (I say the odds are fifty fifty.) As classic rock seems to be losing the powerful place it held in the popular culture landscape and contemporary rock music is absent from Top 40 stations it would be a good time to reevaluate the legacy of "The Greatest Rock and Roll Band in the World."
I picked up on the Beatles and Monkees while I was still in elementary school, but the Stones were the first vaguely dangerous band I ever became a fan of. (The "dangerous" contemporary bands were all dumb shit hair metal, which I hated.) I heard "Jumping Jack Flash" in middle school and was immediately electrified. Once I could drive I wore out my tape of Hot Rocks in my car stereo. They were also the first legacy band whose back catalog I explored in depth.
One biography of the Stones was called Old Gods Almost Dead. It was published twenty years ago, and now finally the bell may be tolling. At dusk let's go out looking for the owl of Minerva.
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