Mick Jagger - Very Best of Mick Jagger
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Free Music Notes for Very Best of Mick Jagger
Free Music Review: Some Sympathy for the Devil...
Hit: 4 Stars
As the lead singer for the longest running rock and roll circus of all time, it makes as much sense to have sympathy for Mick Jagger as it would to have sympathy for the devil. His tenure with the Rolling Stones is unparalleled for its combination of success and longevity. Nevertheless, his solo projects never generated much steam. I, for one, virtually ignored Jagger's work away from the Stones, so this collection stands as a testament to my ignorance. While I bought every record credited to the Rolling Stones - even when it sucked, or was redundant - I never considered the relevance of Jagger gone solo, and apparently, the loss was mine.
If, like me, you judged Jagger's solo work by his now-dated `80s hit, "Just Another Night," then you are in for a surprise. The diversity contained in "The Very Best of Mick Jagger" is its most compelling quality. Sure, "Just Another Night" is included here, but there is so much more that is worthy of your time. Tracks included here date all the way back to 1969's "Memo From Turner," which was recorded for the movie "Performance." The song features hot blues slide guitar work from Ry Cooder and if you don't already own it, then you aren't a Rolling Stones fan. Another early song that has been overlooked by so many is Jagger's reggae-fied teamwork with Peter Tosh on a Temptations tune called "Don't Look Back," which easily surpasses the original version. There are plenty of pleasant surprises too, including a '73 session with John Lennon and Harry Nilsson that resulted in "Too Many Cooks," and a poignant yet unreleased dance track called "Charmed Life."
Jagger released four solo albums to ever-diminishing sales, but the evidence provided here is that his albums got better and better while sales figures slipped away. There are so many good songs here that I never heard, despite their previous availability. "Put Me in the Trash" would have been a standout track on any Stones album, while "Don't Tear Me Up" is as personal as anything I've ever heard from Jagger's lips, including "Angie" and "Waiting on a Friend." These songs previously appeared on 1992's "Wandering Spirit," but like most people, I never bothered to pay attention. I now admit my transgression and I apologize to Mick for failing to give him the benefit of the doubt. This is an excellent collection of songs, even if most of them never technically qualified as `hits'. Pick it up and catch up on what you've been missing. A- Tom Ryan
Free Music Review: Jagger on his own
Hit: 4 Stars
This CD provides a record of Mick Jagger's work separate from the Rolling Stones. Hence, it is akin to Keith Richards' work with the New Barbarians and Charlie Watts' work with his jazz band. As such, it is an interesting reflection on Mick Jagger's musicianship.
There are a variety of musical traditions called upon here--from reggae to Latin rhythms.
Some examples. . . .
The CD starts off with a nice cut, "God Gave Me Everything." This is a good rocker. However, while it is a Rolling Stones' type of song, without Keith and Ronnie on guitar and Charlie on drums, it lacks the full sound that would have made this something special. This is from the album "Goddess in the Doorway."
Then there is, from "She's the Boss," "Just another Night." This was a hit on its own right as a single. And with good reason. There is interesting orchestration, as it were. Jagger's singing works well in this rather wistful song. Typical line:
"Give me another night
Just another night with you."
"Dancing in the Street." This represents a duet with David Bowie, as they cover the worldwide hit by Martha and the Vandellas. There is good backing by the band. This version begins with horns wailing away, and this sets up the song well for what follows. Overall, a nice up tempo cover of the original hit that works well in its own right.
"Memo from Turner" is a song from the movie "Performance." Ry Cooder and Steve Winwood provide great backing on guitar and bass, respectively. It is a strange song with sometimes mysterious lyrics. One of his better non-Stones' tunes.
Finally, a duet with the great reggae star, Peter Tosh, "(You Got to Walk and) Don't Look Back." This is a song with a, lot of reggae sound to it. It is, as the liner notes put it, a "clever fusion of reggae and R & B." Tosh was one of the early greats in reggae, and he does well in this piece.
So, how might one rate Mick Jagger's non-Rolling Stones' work? It appears to me to represent fine music, including the sort of sound on some cuts that would not be possible with the Stones. Thus, it provides a sense of his more complete musical skills.
Free Music Review: Stone Alone... It makes you pine for the Stones, period
Hit: 4 Stars
Mick Jagger has had a long and illustrous career with the Stones, and over the years he has released 3 proper solo albums and a bunch of one-off singles and songs. This collection tries to bring it all home, and at times manages to do that, but at other times fails.
"The Very Best of Mick Jagger" (17 tracks, 72 min.) starts off with an OK "God Gave Me Everything", one of the few decent songs of "Goddess in the Doorway" (the worst album ever rated 5 (!) stars by Rolling Stone Magazine). Jagger's best solo album, "She's the Boss" is under-represented by only having a mere 2 songs on here: "Just Another Night" (his biggest solo hit ever, not counting the duet singles such as "Dancing In the Streets"), and "Lucky In Love". What a mistake, how could "Goddess in the Doorway" have more songs on here? Besides the true and tried duet hits "Dancing in the Streets" (with David Bowie) and "(You Gotta Walk and) Don't Look Back" (with Peter Rosh), this compilation is worthwhile for a couple of other off-center tracks like the excellent "Memo From Turner" (from the 1969 movie "Performance"), and the 1973 unreleased track ""Too Many Cooks (Spoil the Soup)". The other unreleased tracks "Charmed Life" and "Checking Up On My Baby" are OK but non-essential.
In all, this compilation is a fair representation of Mick Jagger's solo work, if woefully underrepresented by "She's the Boss" but it simply confirms what we've known all along: without his brethren in the Rolling Stones, Jagger is not nearly as compelling.
Free Music Review: Better as Half of a 'Lost Rolling Stones Album'
Hit: 4 Stars
If you come at Mick from the perspective of a Rolling Stones fan--as most of us do--then much of his solo output seems to have gone off course.
But not everything. This 'best of' does a pretty good job of skimming off the best, while also lobbing in a few tracks from left field, such as the off-the-cuff 'Too Many Cooks' track that John Lennon produced back in 1974.
Keith Richards has fared somewhat better in his less numerous solo outings. If you take almost half a CD's worth of Mick's best and alternate them with the best of Keef's two solo abums (along with his live album perhaps), you wind up with the equivalent of a 'Lost Rolling Stones album' that is better than some bona fide Stones albums of recent decades. Call it 'Keef'n Mick' cause the others ain't on it. This kind of exercise has been performed on behalf of the solo Beatles (See the Amazon.com book 'Let's Put the Beatles Back Together Again 1970-2010: How to Assemble & Appreciate the 2nd Half of the Beatles' Legacy'.)
We were hearing those Stones voices and those Beatles voices linked on albums over so many years during the 1960s that it sounds more natural to link them up again during their solo eras. And after all, with CD-Rs and iPods, we can listen to these guys any damn way we please. The era of official packages determining how we listen and to what is mercifully over.
Free Music Review: Never been a big Stones fan, but Jagger solo really Rocks, WOW!!!
Hit: 4 Stars
Even when I consider myself a very selective Rock Music listener, I cannot say that I got specially seduced for the music of the Rolling Stones. Sure, they're also from England, appeared publcily as part of the massive Rock'n'Roll phenomenon almost at the same time the Beatles did, have been going around for more than forty years, have recorded a lot of albums (studio/live), appeared on lot of TV shows... Now, even the great movie director Martin Scorcese has released "Shine A Light", a documentary based on their mega-tour "A Bigger Bang".
Okay, sure all that gives lumber enough to consider them as another "Big Brit Music Creature". But certainly, I must admit that the Stones would have mean nothing in the R'n'R universe, without having such a real good Rock'n'Roll singer/frontman like Mick Jagger.
Get this CD, and you'll discover why. Ah, but previously please clean up from your mind, the general idea that MJ's hits are limited to a funny cover of "Dancing in the Street" he performed with David Bowie. MJ is by himself, really, a GOOD Rock singer.
After listening to this album, I regret myself for not having followed Mick's musical career more thoroughly.
The sound quality is really good, as it happens with most of WEA recordings.