EXILE ON MAIN STREET: NOBLESSE NEGRESSE
REPUBLIC INVISIBLE
One of the most inexplicable things about America is that despite having a nasty profile still hosts much beauty. Perhaps, as many thinkers have said, is precisely because of their vileness, or adversity that such beauty exists
(Leroy Jones)
Titans Howlin'Wolf or bronze as Muddy Waters, like princes in exile, the white man took revenge with winding wisdom of the serpent, perverting their liturgies around starving and pale boys across the ocean, in principle, receptacles too weak to be depositaries of ancient beats that were already old when the world was only a dark and putrid mud.
As in his day European musical traditions, carried by the settlers on their way, shaped the evangelical hymns of preachers, these psalms were altered to be imbued with musical forms and the profound spirituality of African slaves . If the population is Protestant religious singing these songs in hopes of finding the Promised Land of Canaan Jewish paradise, the Herculean stained black voices the melancholy of someone who has been stripped of his home and longs to return. This did not stop there, as the archaic music of the captives continued spreading the musical firmament as the beating of drums in the jungle.
that swarming black musical ties with Europe would tend to return later, came to be a continuous flow from the prehistory of jazz. The troubled French expressionists had taken the ragtime as a free and intuitive way to skip the corset that imprisoned symphonic music. Employee, in any form or in spirit, by famous musicians such as Debussy ("Golligow's Cakewalk") and Ravel (Piano Concerto in G ") that would be so influential for Aaron Copland or George Gerswhin the New World. In the present case, black styles continued to make the reverse journey, from the U.S. after the port cities of England, where blues records, rock, country and gospel, nursed the entire British diaspora formations, they would jump the pond in the sixties, including the Rolling Stones themselves. Reconquered America in 1972 with a musical coup made from the old continent, from that distant lover who was France, jazzmen like exiles. The settlers could have won the Revolutionary War, but these satanic subjects of his Gracious Majesty the ones who condensed the spirit and the musical roots of the new continent in a way, so absolutely modern as if suspended in night time. Pregnant artist of Protestant fervor of America more idealized and dreamed that vivid and deep and earthy devotion of the black slaves.
Like Will More character in "Rapture", Keith Richards influenced the use of heroin to stir something inside. Suppressed genetic memory. A sleeping estate. Both seek a blur, capture a child absorbed and feverish excitement that so accurately expressed in this dialogue of the play estranged de Zulueta, 'How long could you get to spend watching this chrome? Impossible to know, were in full flight, ecstasy, pause hung in the middle Caught! "And project it onto your creation. Richards sought to America dreamed up by the film and rock & roll, idealized from the gray London from his childhood neighborhood, dressed in cowboy outfit Roy Rodgers and listening to jazz albums his grandfather. Or the LPs in rock & roll and blues that began their friendship with a stranger by Mick Jagger to identify these records as a member of the secret brotherhood of the worshipers of the sweet black music. America's hidden foreign and the characters in the cover of the "Exile." Debugging the perception by the derangement of the senses that advocated William Blake. Expanding consciousness, emerging from the vapors of opiates. Never use the heroine as a catalyst art had caused so euphoric effects. The same drug devouring innocence in the hands of the Velvet Underground and the Stooges had already ended the dream of the sixties, in the veins of the vehemence Stones music breathes even more dilapidated to sizzle with the energy needed to stimulate the hippocampus a survivor of the Dust Bowl and relive the sounds of his time in a completely modern and ancient at the same time. Never internal reverberations caused by the poison more elusive and insulation of all provoked trepidation as expansive. Verily, compare the unhealthy atmosphere, waking dream veil of narcotics, disk immediately preceding it ("Sticky Fingers"), which may be the epitome alkaloid EVP "Sister Morphine", with the atmosphere of excitement amphetamine "Exile."
exiles in the land of Boris Vian, Keith, the British transcript of Django Reinhardt, anarchy and culture as other creative ennui. If the lifestyle of the rest of the Stones was Babylonian exile really the rest of us, absent of any loophole mundane and not only isolated from the Treasury and British forces. Paragraphs even themselves with Jagger lost among the international jet set of the hand of Bianca Perez and expecting her first child with her Mick Taylor a dissatisfaction with their role within the group and with Watts and Wyman absent in much of the preparatory sessions. Of course this was not a hippie commune dedicated to the pursuit of duende collective improvisations by the Grateful Dead. Richards, who seemed to act with the same neglect, just looking. As a Zen master, was examining how to capture a mood through the process forget your goal. Knowing that the entropy is the true natural state of the cosmos, was left to be embraced by the forces of chaos, peering at them with deliberate spontaneity. If under his leadership, the group becomes a Lope de Aguirre in search of El Dorado, Keith Richards was the poet who had toxic stole fire from the gods to guide them through the journey. Also, the shaman to purify the poison (heroin) and return it as water of life kind of spice Melanie.
Their antennae were tuned musical in the old main channel, located in a marsh poisoned howling electrified by contact with gaseous elements from abroad, one in which bathes the pendulous swing contracts and expands rhythmically to the space-time reading his own "Satisfaction" by Otis Redding, which plunges the Miles Davis of the revolutionary "In a Silent Way" and "Bitches Brew" diving in repetition and rhythmic intermittent pulses of tradition African, avoiding any Western musical conception. "Exile On Main Street" is an album that contains recognizable forms of various genres. A volcanic landscape that erupts a magma formed by antiquated sound traditional styles. But above all is a rock & roll. Moreover a particular musical style, is a vibration that sends us to the prehistory of the senses. From which spring the most primordial fears of the offspring of Homo habilis. The memory blind darkness in which we were hunted to retain our most distant cells. Fragmentary reminiscence evos unfortunate when the star was a swamp pulsating beat, reverberating with the echoes of dark primal forces. This album reeks of sex, sweat, amphetamine, jaws disjointed, narcotics, spree, orgy, alcohol. Anything to help us pass the night, everything that makes us stronger.
As Dylan himself or Harry Smith, Keith had a deep knowledge of American music from the early twentieth century. He knew that much of the charm that came off these songs lies in its interpretive power, how could one be privileged as the skin of those musicians? I could feel how those who had experienced the famine? Set amid the turmoil, creating a hostile and decadent disorientation simulating those that befell a people who were lost in a society that is metamorphosed rapidly driven by advances in technology and industry, people who sing to an idealized past between romantic mist. Abrupt changes in the social landscape also foster the emergence of radical ideologies, removing individuals to achieve a hypothetical collective destiny glorious doctrines like the Nazis who were quartered in Villa Nellcôte. Now inhabited by his early childhood memories who appear in the rubble of an England ruined by German bombing systematic.
"Being natural is the most artificial poses of "Oscar Wilde claimed. The immediacy and spontaneity oppose mediation processes required to record an album. It requires the cooperation of the will and knowledge. Wilde also left the assertion "I put all my genius into my life in my work I have put only my talent." In "Exile" these categories are inseparable. To catch a self-induced mood that shifts between a provision of the spirit of embracing the joy of life and the desperation to hold on so tightly that the nails bleed and crack grasped the breath of life more miserable, you need to inoculate the field energy inert vital breath breathe the sound spectrum. The sound was such purification, the method used was as finely distilled detail or arrangement, and the disc is full of them, are employed with a mastery that denies even the chance, however, appear to result from this. Capture the magic virgin the first time by a wise and perhaps more prescient than lucid, avoiding chaotic recording routines and common places to hunt and capture the essential spark. Subsequently, the recordings were doctored in Sunset Sound studios in Los Angeles, seeking to maintain intact the sense of sound verite than professional recording to listen to prevail an effect similar to the work in progress running through the film "One Plus One", the Stones' collaboration with Godard. The techniques of a documentary film used in a rock.
The parallel drawn between this magnum opus and "Basement Tapes" of Dylan, with its obvious points in common (dual format, a feeling of collective improvisation, craft and home recording and the same equipment that was recorded) has obscured the intrinsic virtues stoniana methodology used in the preparation of this LP. That has more to do with the way to recording a jazz style rock band the Stooges faced as the recording of their fundamental "Fun House "with Don Galucci, mixed with film of the method, editing and riding hours and hours of improvisations, Teo Macero in Miles Davis electric drives.
There is a scene in "Wattstax" film documenting the festival of the same name as the Stax label organized on Aug. 72 in Los Angeles after race riots in the Watts neighborhood that has always impressed me greatly. The Emotions, that delicious pop-soul trio, perform the gospel song "Peace Be Still" in a small parish church. They are singing to a white audience, but they are not only devoted to their community, their accomplices. Are offering their songs for themselves, looking for a crack in the silence that scares away the dark. During his performance is happening scenes of hysteria, even a woman is removed from the auditorium provocársele an epileptic episode. The same music is growing as the roar of a storm, ending in a climax paroxysmal. As if awakened from a dream, as if singing alone. No importance can be a benchmark for the uprooted black community, a population that in the new world is stripped of any freedom or possession, could have the music. These songs are all they had. The last link with the golden hues of Africa. No one can express the value of their unique treasure, but if you can be listening to his work. If whites conquered their bodies, they seized their souls. From exile. From "Exile on Main Street" of black majesties. The same fluid is watered cardinal drive of the Stones.
IN THE BASEMENT TAPES
I have relied on accidents throughout my life
(Keith Richards)
There were few guests at the meetings that took place in the chateau de Villa Nellcôte, leased on behalf of Keith, who settled there with his partner, Anita Pallenberg and their son, Marlon. Although the number varies according to the source, more than seventy people lived in daily the mansion and many more are passing through. Apart from the large retinue of the group, since members of rock royalty like John Lennon and Yoko Ono, beat writers like William Burroughs and Terry Southern, the toxic twin Richards, Gram Parsons bartered Southern music master classes and tinsel to drug to be expelled for their behavior, not to mention camels, junkies legendary and freeloaders who give lessons to the brother of Popeye. As a summer camps organized by Tod Browning. The Stones were locked with his peculiar world, forgetting that the bulk living ordinary mortals. Beginning the untimely sessions in early July 71 in an atmosphere of debauchery and revelry: missing members of the group sessions, or a musician exchanged instruments of support not found the relevant Stone, trips to Monte Carlo to play in their casinos, a Richards enganchadísimo using heroin as a network, throwing a blind between the ether where they live songs, others less famous addicts who rolled micro cables to inject heroin, wrapped in legend incidents such as fire caused by an absent-minded cook or theft of several guitars of Keith and the final episode starring the French gendarmerie breaking into the mansion, alarmed by the continuous visits to the town wanted traffickers. Ending the Stones' stay in French tour in October of that year.
From there jump to Los Angeles (Sunset Sound Recorders studies) not only to mix and tweak, but also to record a song right there, "Loving Cup" (premiered at the famous Hyde Park concert in the 69), "Torn and frayed "and" Sweet Black Angel. "
also took the opportunity to enter all parts of piano and keyboards, which were commissioned Dr John and Billy Preston, excluding parts of Nicky Hopkins who came mostly from France, another development, there is the inclusion of all choirs with "air gospel." Of these choirs were responsible Clydie King (one of the two alleged secret wives of Bob Dylan that seems to bore him two children at Duluth), Venetta Field and Jesse Kirkland. The choirs were inspired after a visit of Mick and Preston to an evangelical church.
may also be present almost all of LA session musicians, but that is impossible to know who got what because Richards himself probably did not know. Almost all songs are tweaked to a greater or lesser extent ("Casino Boogie" seems to be one of the few that were left as recorded in Nellcôte). "Rocks Off", "Rip this joint," "Shake Your Hips", "Shine a Light" and "Ventilator Blues" were the most modified.
Finally to make things easier, some issues from previous sessions: "Shine a Light" are the days of the Olympic Studios (From "Beggars Banquet" and "Let It Bleed") and "Sweet Virginia" and previously worked in both the Olympic Studios and the meetings of the "Sticky Fingers." Some of these recordings and bases were used for mixtures of "Exile On Main Street."
The atypical production of Jimmy Miller, as if the Stones "touch inside a hurricane", is evident from the start with "Rocks Off." The listener has the feeling of being located in the vortex of a maelstrom where sound waves spill instruments, so seemingly disjointed but with nothing left to chance or lost in the sonic maelstrom. In rhythmic pieces like the above "Turd on the Run", "Rip this Joint" (the piece of higher pace of the Stones at the moment) or recreation hypnotic rockabilly of "Shake Your Hips" by Slim Harpo seems recorded by Sam Philips at Sun studios, one gets the feeling of listening to music through the electromagnetic field of a particle accelerator that electricity saturate these songs, this is so intense that it shows the power crossing through them. The cyclotron vacilona stops at the "Casino Boogie" that allows us to determine crystal-another element present in the album: the duets between Jagger and Richards, who has never returned to play a central role in the battles so vocal. In almost all the songs, the nasal voice dubbing the voices of Keith Jagger. The effect, when perceived paths voices singing at the same time, is unprecedentedly harmonious. Even when they sound like those toothless deliciously dissonant chorus of "Sweet Virginia." And when sound uneven, are for electrons crackling rhythmic brio enthusiastic about the atomic structure of the song. The nerve with which Richards sings indolent in "Happy" contrasts with the feeling of euphoria spread to listen to a song that could not keep a tighter title.
If the influence of cosmic American music of Gram Parsons is present in "Sweet Virginia" and "Torn & Frayed", echoes other vintage obsession Richards, the mythological Robert Johnson, are perceived in metallic acuity Jagger's voice and dragged the dirty blues of "Ventilator Blues." Never took the country with the same seriousness as the blues, which allows them to mold more irreverently with drops of calypso in the country blues of "Sweet Black Angel. " In "Exile" any sound, limp that seems isolated, is included with a purpose that is evident when listening to the whole, including the use of silences, as the battery syncope spaced Watts in "Shine a Light" to appears to retain the listener's heartbeat with the same skill he used Moe Tucker in "Heroin." Do not forget that Mick Jagger acknowledges having previously attempted to copy the sound of the Velvet and the "Stray Cat Blues." The instrumentation used is located in places unknown but which are not at all misplaced. The same can be said about the styles used on the album, blurred their limits to be confused, merged into a single primordial mud. Worth the example of "Loving Cup", a subject that is difficult to pigeonhole into a specific style and carries this unusual (for the context) embedded steel drum arrangement. O as being the most recognizable stylistic soul the greatest absent from work, the presence of this style as a breath through the entire disk spectrum. And the healing power of gospel arising from songs like "Shine a Light" or in this miraculous way of using the metal, accelerating your molecular structure to ecstasy or ghostly fanfare take your soul by ancient paths as in "Let It Loose ". An anti-"Let it be "with a sound similar to the Velvet's third album (considered by some velvetianos as his album" soul ") that starts with a touch of mellotron and guitar sound passed through a Leslie amp. Vertebrate on rhythm guitar eminently Richards, connecting up with a regular rhythm tar walls, amputees by parasitic noise riffs as sharp as razors and battery of a magnificent Watts, which overlaps the whipping ferrous Jagger's voice (which has never again be so arrogant as here). Throughout the "Exile" seems to observe a dusty mirror, dressed in rags and tatters of a past more intuited they experienced. A distorted sense of deja vu. A helping a sense, hidden between layers of spontaneity, of a complex craft and sonic detail that lies behind the inertia that seems to be the main force used. As if every time we listened the album the Stones did it again to record before our ears. Although
reception by audiences and critics was not expected to work closing the tetralogy a vein Stones had started with "Beggars Banquet" and continuing with "Let It Bleed" and "Sticky Fingers", the Time has confirmed the powerful influence of this album. Other double albums that combine a joyful longing the power of rock with an encyclopedic intent regarding this as "London Calling" or "Being There" have to double the Stones their relative greater degree of consanguinity. Even the album version of Nick Cave, the fabulous "Kicking Against the Pricks" has more similarities to "Exile" with the "Pin Ups" by Bowie. And what about Tom Waits from "Swordfishtrombones" and predicted by the cavalcade of poisonous and decrepit bones ghostly instruments, tissues such as in an absurd collaboration between Buñuel Harry Patch and the Mexican stage of "I Just Want to See His Face ", or in its unusual production basement where moisture seeps where it was recorded through the microphones that sound shaping muddy that characterizes the album. It is no coincidence that if the kings of rock artie wanted to record his own version of "White Album" by The Beatles, The Jon Spencer, Pussy Galore, whose sole intention was to kill the rock and sit back and gloat over his corpse, were in Stones's "Exile" the most exemplary instruction manual. But above all, "Exile on Main Street" is a seminal album that embraces the history of rock, while its future influence. A site where you can see past casting its shadow over the infinite
