ROLLING STONES Love You Live (Rolling Stones Records)

I imagine that I should state right at the beginning that if you took all the songs on Goats Head Soup, It's Only Rock 'n Roll, and Black and Blue, there wouldn't be more than a handful that in any way affected me. The last Stones album that I liked was Exile On Main Street and it was the urgency and the claustrophobic power of it, those qualities that have been present on each and every Stones album right up until Exile that made it that way. Since then, though, something snapped inside me and cut loose that cord that held me near the Stones' music. I'm not sure that I can even explain it properly—it has something to do with the Hollywoodization of rock in the Seventies and also something to do with the Stones following trends rather than making them by ignoring them. When It's Only Rock 'n Roll came out, all I could see in my head was a newspaper headline in bold block letters: WORLD'S GREATEST ROCK 'N' ROLL BAND SAYS "IT'S ONLY ROCK 'N ROLL." Although I realized that the Stones never asked for that albatross of a moniker and were rather annoyed by it, the music on that record seemed to say, more than anything else, please leave us alone. As for Black and Blue, I couldn't even get through a whole side of it at any one listening, and what was worse, I didn't really care. I know people who sat for months and months grappling with the album until they finally liked it, but that kind of consciousness, namely listening to something a hundred times until you like it, just revulses the.