Wood's "Gimme Some Neck" is worth a listen too.

"but the Stones between Beggars Banquet and Exile On Main Street is untopped in the rock canon."

Due in no small part to the contributions of the great Mick Taylor (on Exile and Sticky). The apotheosis of rock IMO.

IMHO, the only toppers were:

Bringing it/Highway 61/Blonde on Blonde

Rubber Soul/Revolver/Sgt. Pepper

and Talking Book to Key of Life (if that counts as rock.)

I'm not a Stones person, but I get the greatness of those records, esp. Beggar's Banquet. I love the way the country and blues numbers go past parody to something new and real, ultimately matching and even surpassing some of the stuff they set out to poke fun at. And "Street Fighting Man" and "Stray Cat Blues" (and "Monkey Man" on LIB) just have awesome guitar playing.

Oh, and the acoustic open-string strumming on "Salt of the Earth" is positively an iconic folk/rock sound.

Still, I think my personal animus toward this stuff has to do with Mick. You know, he's got no technique or technical ability, just a sort of nasal bray, so he sort of has to figure out an attack for each song anew. So when he comes up with something great, like the funny country parody of "Dear Doctor," for instance, he tends to repeat it to diminishing returns, and we get flat performances like "Dead Flowers" and "Sweet Virginia" et al, which give Keef a good chance to stretch out, but fall short cuz of Micky, to these ears.

At the very top of the heap, The Beatles and Dylan were genius rock singers, and the Stones had a genius rock star.

So it's no surprise to me that Mick has never been able to come up wth anything worthwhile outside of the Stones, while their only real competition, Dylan and the members of the Beatles, have succeeded to varying degrees in a variety of settings. Sometimes it's about real, raw musical talent, which Mick (who tellingly still can't really play the guitar after 40 years of trying) has less of that than those others.

Thanks for bringing up these amazing records, Eric. Call me old, but there will never be enough said about this period of rock music for me.

Thanks CC, very interesting thoughts. I think She's the Boss is pretty good, but you're right about nothing solo being close to the Stones. I like "Dead Flowers" and "Sweet Virginia" because they're good songs and funny. I agree that Jagger is up and down, but I like him a lot better than you do, it would appear, and better than Dylan as a singer.

Did you read my Stones review in the top ten bands list? That's my opus on them career-wise. Thanks again.

I read it, and I think you and me are on the same page. I just don't like the book quite as much.

And I'm afraid I completely disagree with your assessment of their live work now, which I think is a ridiculous and awful rip-off, worse than self-parody.

Well, I expected it to be that, but it sure didn't sound like that, or even, once they got going, look like that.