The Rolling Stones - Past and Present

OK, so I've said repeatedly here that I'm a big Rolling Stones fan, but you could certainly make the point that I haven't shown much so far.  So I was looking through my records and I found this little bootleg gem that I haven't played in a long, long time.  Isn't that a great cover?  It's a really glossy cover and I didn't use a flash on my crappy phone camera and I still got a little spot from the light in the room.  So these guys actually spent some of their profits on artwork instead of just running off a bunch of xerox sheets on the copier at work.  I think I remember getting this, and I think I had a bunch of bootlegs by other bands, and I felt that if I wasn't going to dig deep into a band's official collection, I probably shouldn't collect their bootlegs.  I know that sounds weird, but that's the way I looked at it.  I figured The Stones weren't losing any money on me, because they didn't release enough material to keep me happy, but I knew I didn't need any Genesis or Doors bootlegs because I wasn't that interested in that stuff. So I took a bunch of records up to a record show that used to happen a few times a year in Richfield, and looked around for the guy with the most Stones bootlegs and opened my bag and said, "Hey, wanna trade?"

He started saying he didn't really do that and I'd have to have a certain kind of record for him to be interested in and I started pulling them out of the bag and he said, "Yeah. Yeah, I think we can work something out.  What are you looking for?"  I said "Stones.  That's it for for special interest records for me from now on."  Special Interest Records used to be a euphemism for bootlegs.  A lot of times it got you led into a back storeroom or office, or a box would be retrieved from under the racks.  It was fun back then.  Hunting bootlegs was a terrific hobby.

So anyway, this guy looks at my stuff and says, "Title for title?"  I said that since one was a three record set how about I get one extra so long as it's not a double?  He agreed and I took home a nice little selection of Stones records that day, and this is one of them.  I remember asking him if he knew anything about it because I had never seen it, and he said it was a European pressing, and he didn't know much about it.  Is it really European?  I don't know.  I think so because the cover art is so nice and in the early - mid 80's US bootleggers didn't usually put much effort into covers.  This guy had a nice selection and really liked my stuff so I think he might be right.  Plus, I never saw another one of these so maybe it really is European.

The songs ranged from As Time Goes By, which is the early demo of As Tears Go By up to Keith Richards doing a cover of Apartment No. 9 from 1981.  I hadn't heard these yet, and I was really excited to get my mitts on this one.  I just crossed my fingers and hoped to hell it wasn't a really nice cover with a bunch of hissy, horrid speed issue outtakes that sounded like they were recorded through a door with a tape deck with dying batteries so the speed could never be right.  I got lucky, though.  This is mostly pretty great, with a couple of dropouts and some tape hiss here and there, but hey, it's a bootleg and back then I was one of a very few that probably ever heard these songs.

I know everyone just downloads everything they want these days, and believe me, I get the idea of free bootlegs, but now that you get stuff like Van Morrison singing Brown Eyed Girl and some doofus lists it as The Stones, I just don't play with that stuff much anymore.  I've got pretty much everything I want, I think.  So I just live with that and concentrate on finding new music (even if it's old) to make me happy.

So Past and Present is a pretty good bootleg.  I don't think I'd say it's essential, because I never said any bootlegs were essential.  Sure a really great one is very cool to have, but if you've never heard the instrumental outtake Separately, which is on here and is a big reason I grabbed this, you're really not missing much.  It sounds like one of Mick Taylor's ultra mellow ideas, which could be okay, but he hadn't even thought up a killer solo for it, so it's kind of like musical Ambien.  The version of Highway Child is a little fast, but it's still such a great song.  I've always loved every second of that monster riffage, and this may have been one of the first records I had it on, but I'd have to check a little more.

I think the record is in really good shape.  I wonder what turntable I had then?  I'm guessing my B&O.  That was a nice table, but the proprietary cartridge that didn't have a replaceable stylus kind of let me just get rid of it, live a few years without a turntable and then get a Rega (of which the internet audiophiles say I bought one that can't hold speed and sounds like shit).  I really like the Rega.  I never had a full manual table, but I always liked the idea that if it didn't help make things sound better, then the expense of something like a light, a brake, a speed selector switch or auto anything left more money for a decent tonearm and motor.  I borrowed a strobe disk from a friend and we checked and my table is dead on at 33 1/3 and 45.  So apparently I got one that's all messed up, or the people on the internet that don't like Rega tables are busy justifying how a company that makes some of the best tonearms ever made is too stupid to make a pulley the right size.  I suppose that's what audio forums are all about.  I swear I saw a forum that had record reviews as a subject, and in order to submit reviews you had to tell them what kind of equipment you had.  As if buying expensive equipment makes you more qualified!  How about submitting your latest hearing test?

Anyway, I hope you like whatever you listen to music on.  My system isn't exactly a huge investment, and it's been done a little at a time, but I like the way it sounds.  Most other people come in and are really surprised at how my little stereo sounds.  I know a guy that keeps trying to get the same punch in his music that I get, but he keeps buying these funny (but cool looking) things to play music on.  I told him until he bought a stereo, he wasn't going to get what he was looking for.  I bet he's spent more than me on disappointing "systems" over the past few years.