"It profits me but little that a vigilant authority always protects the tranquillity of my pleasures and constantly averts all dangers from my path, without my care or concern, if this same authority is the absolute master of my liberty and my life."

--Alexis de Tocqueville, Democracy in America

Saturday, January 12, 2013

The Regular Guy's List of the Top 20 Rolling Stones Songs (#1)

We're at the end of the Regular Guy's countdown of Rolling Stones songs, and here's where we've been:

20. Loving Cup (Exile on Main Street)
19. Wild Horses (Sticky Fingers)
18. Bitch (Sticky Fingers)
17. Monkey Man (Let it Bleed)
16. Let it Loose (Exile)
15. Prodigal Son (Beggar's Banquet)
14. Can't You Hear Me Knocking (Sticky Fingers)
13. Shattered (Some Girls)
12. Happy (Exile)
11. Rocks Off (Exile)
10. (tie) Jumping Jack Flash (single only)
10. (tie) Street Fighting Man (Beggar's Banquet)
9. You Can't Always Get What You Want (Let It Bleed)
8. Honky Tonk Woman (single only)
7. Midnight Rambler (Let It Bleed)
6. Start Me Up (Tattoo You)
5. Tumbling Dice (Exile on Main Street)
4. Satisfaction (Out of Our Heads)
3. Brown Sugar (Sticky Fingers)
2. Sympathy for the Devil (Beggar's Banquet)

To me, there is simply nothing like the last song on my list.   Nothing else captures, with no pretentiousness, no cleverness, no bullshit, the sheer excitement and danger and chaos and beauty and sex and menace of the late 1960s.   If a great work of art has as its purpose crystallizing the moment in history inhabited by the artist, then this is a great work of art.  
1. Gimme Shelter (Let It Bleed)

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