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The Rolling Stones – Their Satanic Majesties Request (1967) [ABKCO Remaster 2002]
PS3 Rip | ISO | SACD DSD64 2.0 > 1-bit/2.8224 MHz | 44:04 minutes | Scans included | 1,89 GB
or FLAC(converted with foobar2000 to tracks) 24bit/88,2 kHz | Scans included | 1,02 GB

Without a doubt, no Rolling Stones album — and, indeed, very few rock albums from any era — split critical opinion as much as the Rolling Stones’ psychedelic outing. Many dismiss the record as sub-Sgt. Pepper posturing; others confess, if only in private, to a fascination with the album’s inventive arrangements, which incorporated some African rhythms, Mellotrons, and full orchestration. Never before or since did the Stones take so many chances in the studio. This writer, at least, feels that the record has been unfairly undervalued, partly because purists expect the Stones to constantly champion a blues ‘n’ raunch world view. About half the material is very strong, particularly the glorious “She’s a Rainbow,” with its beautiful harmonies, piano, and strings; the riff-driven “Citadel”; the hazy, dream-like “In Another Land,” Bill Wyman’s debut writing (and singing) credit on a Stones release; and the majestically dark and doomy cosmic rocker “2000 Light Years From Home,” with some of the creepiest synthesizer effects (devised by Brian Jones) ever to grace a rock record. The downfall of the album was caused by some weak songwriting on the lesser tracks, particularly the interminable psychedelic jam “Sing This All Together (See What Happens).” It’s a much better record than most people give it credit for being, though, with a strong current of creeping uneasiness that undercuts the gaudy psychedelic flourishes. In 1968, the Stones would go back to the basics, and never wander down these paths again, making this all the more of a fascinating anomaly in the group’s discography.

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The Rolling Stones – Flowers (1967) [ABKCO Remaster 2002]
PS3 Rip | ISO | SACD DSD64 2.0 > 1-bit/2.8224 MHz | 37:06 minutes | Scans included | 1,59 GB
or FLAC(converted with foobar2000 to tracks) 24bit/88,2 kHz | Scans included | 838 MB

Flowers is an American compilation album by The Rolling Stones, released in the summer of 1967. The songs either appeared as singles, had been omitted from the American versions of Aftermath and Between the Buttons, were collected from studio sessions dating back to 1965, or are reissues of songs recently released on other albums. Three tracks had never been released. “My Girl”, “Ride On, Baby” and “Sittin’ on a Fence” are from the Aftermath sessions from December 1965.

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The Rolling Stones – Between The Buttons (1967) [US Versions – ABKCO Remasters 2002]
PS3 Rip | ISO | SACD DSD64 2.0 > 1-bit/2.8224 MHz | Scans included | 1,66 GB
or FLAC(converted with foobar2000 to tracks) 24bit/88,2 kHz | 38:35/38:34 minutes | Scans | 916 MB

The Rolling Stones’ 1967 recordings are a matter of some controversy; many critics felt that they were compromising their raw, rootsy power with trendy emulations of the Beatles, Kinks, Dylan, and psychedelic music. Approach this album with an open mind, though, and you’ll find it to be one of their strongest, most eclectic LPs, with many fine songs that remain unknown to all but Stones devotees. The lyrics are getting better (if more savage), and the arrangements more creative, on brooding near-classics like “All Sold Out,” “My Obsession,” and “Yesterday’s Papers.” “She Smiled Sweetly” shows their hidden romantic side at its best, while “Connection” is one of the record’s few slabs of conventionally driving rock. But the best tracks were the two songs that gave the group a double-sided number one in early 1967: the lustful “Let’s Spend the Night Together” and the beautiful, melancholy “Ruby Tuesday,” which is as melodic as anything Mick Jagger and Keith Richards would ever write.

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The Rolling Stones – Got Live If You Want It! (1966) [ABKCO Remaster 2002]
PS3 Rip | ISO | SACD DSD64 2.0 > 1-bit/2.8224 MHz | 33:09 minutes | Scans included | 1,37 GB
or FLAC(converted with foobar2000 to tracks) 24bit/88,2 kHz | Scans included | 745 MB

A live document of the Brian Jones-era Rolling Stones sounds enticing, but the actual product is a letdown, owing to a mixture of factors, some beyond the producers’ control and other very much their doing. The sound on the original LP was lousy — which was par for the course on most mid-’60s live rock albums — and the remasterings have only improved it marginally, and for that matter not all of it’s live; a couple of old studio R&B covers were augmented by screaming fans that had obviously been overdubbed. Still, the album has its virtues as a historical document, with some extremely important caveats for anyone not old enough to recognize the inherent limitations in a live album of this vintage. The first concerns the history of this release — the Got Live if You Want It! album (not to be confused with the superior sounding but much shorter, U.K.-only extended-play single, issued in England in mid-1965) was a U.S.-only release late 1966, intended to feed a seemingly insatiable American market. As a best-of album had been issued in March 1966 and Aftermath in June of the same year, and the Stones had just come off of a major U.S. tour (which proved to be their last for over three years), another album was needed, to bridge the gap in America between the those earlier LPs, the two most recent singles — “Paint It, Black” and “Have You Seen Your Mother, Baby, Standing in the Shadow?” — and the Between the Buttons album, which was not going to make it out in time for the Christmas season.

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The Rolling Stones – Aftermath (1966) [US Versions – ABKCO Remasters 2002]
PS3 Rip | ISO | SACD DSD64 2.0 > 1-bit/2.8224 MHz | Scans included | 1,78 GB
or FLAC(converted with foobar2000 to tracks) 24bit/88,2 kHz | 53:23/42:54 minutes | Scans | 958 MB

The Rolling Stones finally delivered a set of all-original material with this LP, which also did much to define the group as the bad boys of rock & roll with their sneering attitude toward the world in general and the female sex in particular. The borderline misogyny could get a bit juvenile in tunes like “Stupid Girl.” But on the other hand the group began incorporating the influences of psychedelia and Dylan into their material with classics like “Paint It Black,” an eerily insistent number one hit graced by some of the best use of sitar (played by Brian Jones) on a rock record. Other classics included the jazzy “Under My Thumb,” where Jones added exotic accents with his vibes, and the delicate Elizabethan ballad “Lady Jane,” where dulcimer can be heard. Some of the material is fairly ho-hum, to be honest, as Mick Jagger and Keith Richards were still prone to inconsistent songwriting; “Goin’ Home,” an 11-minute blues jam, was remarkable more for its barrier-crashing length than its content. Look out for an obscure gem, however, in the brooding, meditative “I Am Waiting”.

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The Rolling Stones – Aftermath (1966) [UK Versions – ABKCO Remasters 2002]
PS3 Rip | ISO | SACD DSD64 2.0 > 1-bit/2.8224 MHz | Scans included | 2,14 GB
or FLAC(converted with foobar2000 to tracks) 24bit/88,2 kHz | 53:23/42:54 minutes | Scans | 1,08 GB

The Rolling Stones finally delivered a set of all-original material with this LP, which also did much to define the group as the bad boys of rock & roll with their sneering attitude toward the world in general and the female sex in particular. The borderline misogyny could get a bit juvenile in tunes like “Stupid Girl.” But on the other hand the group began incorporating the influences of psychedelia and Dylan into their material with classics like “Paint It Black,” an eerily insistent number one hit graced by some of the best use of sitar (played by Brian Jones) on a rock record. Other classics included the jazzy “Under My Thumb,” where Jones added exotic accents with his vibes, and the delicate Elizabethan ballad “Lady Jane,” where dulcimer can be heard. Some of the material is fairly ho-hum, to be honest, as Mick Jagger and Keith Richards were still prone to inconsistent songwriting; “Goin’ Home,” an 11-minute blues jam, was remarkable more for its barrier-crashing length than its content. Look out for an obscure gem, however, in the brooding, meditative “I Am Waiting”.

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The Rolling Stones – December’s Children (And Everybody’s) (1966) [ABKCO Remaster 2002]
PS3 Rip | ISO | SACD DSD64 2.0 > 1-bit/2.8224 MHz | 28:53 minutes | Scans included | 1,27 GB
or FLAC(converted with foobar2000 to tracks) 24bit/88,2 kHz | Scans included | 693 MB

The last Stones album in which cover material accounted for 50 percent of the content was thrown together from a variety of singles, British LP tracks, outtakes, and a cut from an early 1964 U.K. EP. Haphazard assembly aside, much of it’s great, including the huge hit “Get Off of My Cloud” and the controversial, string-laden acoustic ballad “As Tears Go By” (a Top Ten item in America). Raiding the R&B closet for the last time, they also offered a breathless run-through of Larry Williams’ “She Said Yeah,” a sultry Chuck Berry cover (“Talkin’ About You”), and exciting live versions of “Route 66″ and Hank Snow’s “I’m Moving On.” More importantly, Jagger-Richards’ songwriting partnership had now developed to the extent that several non-A-side tracks were reasonably strong in their own right, such as “I’m Free” and “The Singer Not the Song.” And the version of “You Better Move On” (which had been featured on a British EP at the beginning of 1964) was one of their best and most tender soul covers.

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The Rolling Stones – Out Of Our Heads (1965) [US Versions – ABKCO Remasters 2002]
PS3 Rip | ISO | SACD DSD64 2.0 > 1-bit/2.8224 MHz | Scans included | 1.35 GB
or FLAC(converted with foobar2000 to tracks) 24bit/88,2 kHz | 29:25/33:27 minutes | Scans | 398 MB

In 1965, the Stones finally proved themselves capable of writing classic rock singles that mined their R&B/blues roots, but updated them into a more guitar-based, thoroughly contemporary context. The first enduring Jagger-Richards classics are here — “The Last Time,” its menacing, folky B-side “Play With Fire,” and the riff-driven “Satisfaction,” which made them superstars in the States and defined their sound and rebellious attitude better than any other single song. On the rest of the album, they largely opted for mid-’60s soul covers, Marvin Gaye’s “Hitch Hike,” Solomon Burke’s “Cry to Me,” and Sam Cooke’s “Good Times” being particular standouts. “I’m All Right” (based on a Bo Diddley sound) showed their 1965 sound at its rawest, and there are a couple of fun, though derivative, bluesy originals in “The Spider and the Fly” and “The Under Assistant West Coast Promotion Man”.

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The Rolling Stones – The Rolling Stones, Now! (1965) [ABKCO Remaster 2002]
PS3 Rip | ISO | SACD DSD64 2.0 > 1-bit/2.8224 MHz | 35:47 minutes | Scans included | 1,13 GB
or FLAC(converted with foobar2000 to tracks) 24bit/88,2 kHz | Scans included | 750 MB

Although their third American album was patched together (in the usual British Invasion tradition) from a variety of sources, it’s their best early R&B-oriented effort. Most of the Stones’ early albums suffer from three or four very weak cuts; Now! is almost uniformly strong start-to-finish, the emphasis on some of their blackest material. The covers of “Down Home Girl,” Bo Diddley’s vibrating “Mona,” Otis Redding’s “Pain in My Heart,” and Barbara Lynn’s “Oh Baby” are all among the group’s best R&B interpretations. The best gem is “Little Red Rooster,” a pure blues with wonderful slide guitar from Brian Jones (and a number one single in Britain, although it was only an album track in the U.S.). As songwriters, Jagger and Richards are still struggling, but they come up with one of their first winners (and an American Top 20 hit) with the yearning, soulful “Heart of Stone”.

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