The Rolling Stones re-released Exile on Main Street earlier this month with bonus tracks. I won't be buying. I already own a reissue, and, it was just like the original. The Stones are notorious for re-mastering their albums without adding in freebies for fans. Give me an excuse to buy an album I already own--a b-side, a few live tracks, unreleased material, even. I realize this time is different. They should consider my boycott payback for their past affronts.

Rolling Stone, after its original reviewer found himself "unsatisfied" with the album, put Exile on Main Street as the seventh best album of all time. They were too harsh then and are too fawning now. I put it about the seventh best Stones album. I guess you had to be there. I was born after its release. Like Mick Jaggar, I don't think Exile on Main Street the Stones' best album, despite what diehards say. "Well, I don't think it really is," Mick Jagger says in response to the fetishization of Exile on Main Street as the band's masterpiece. "I'm a great fan of Sticky Fingers." Me too. Can I get a witness?

Whereas Exile on Main Street is much filler, a little killer (Happy, Shine a Light), Sticky Fingers is all killer, no filler. Plus, some of it was recorded at Stargroves, where Doctor Who battled the evil Osirian, Sutekh ("I give you Sutekh's gift of death!") in Pyramid From Mars. It's the Stones sounding most like the Stones. It's one of those rare releases that can get mistaken for a greatest hits album (Who's Next, Back in Black, Appetite for Destruction being a few others). If you wanted to explain to a Martian what rock 'n' roll was, pressing play to Can't You Hear Me Knocking or Brown Sugar would probably do the trick. Is heroin a performing enhancing drug?

Since they were really the Stones' decade, I recently mixed my own CD of my favorite Stones tracks from the seventies. Along with the aforementioned tracks, I included Sway, Bitch, and Moonlight Mile from Sticky Fingers. Some highlights from other seventies albums that I included are Winter, Before They Make Me Run, Memory Motel, and Coming Down Again. After a decade like that, the Stones were justified in taking the eighties, nineties, and aughts off.

Led Zeppelin sold their souls to the devil to rule the seventies. The Rolling Stones brought in Mick Taylor and stole his songs.

...debating the color of shite...

I love Exile. Exile on Main Street is very much like the White album in the sense that if forbodes the decline of the group. However, it flows very well as an album and is a great party record. This is the album that Keith Richards started to hit his stride as a junkie/guitarist. Having said that it is an excellent album and one of their best. Although the album lacks the radio friendly sngles that the previous album had it has great songs, tremendous playing from Watts and Bobby Keys and excellent vocals from Mick and Keith.It lacks the signature solos Taylor had on Sticky Fingers or on later albums but the band sounds more cohesive on this album than most any other stones album save Some Girls. You could make the argument that from 68-72 Beggars Banquet, Let it Bleed, Sticky FIngers and Exile the Stones had a run only equaled by the 65-69 run of Rubber Soul, Revolver, SGT Pepper, White Album and Abbey RD. And any Stones Greatest Hits mix has to borrow generously from Exile. I prefer Sticky Fingers, closely followed by Let it Bleed. But if I am going to a party or going to a desert island I am taking Exile. I wouldn't consider it over rated like many do other critic favorites such as Sgt Pepper Tommy or The Wall. As an album Exile is a powerful part of the Stones cannon.

With the exception of Satisfaction and some of their earlier stuff, I am not a Stones fan and think to an extent they are slightly over rated.

But that would not stop me from adding Sticky fingers as one of my top ten albums of all time.

`Exile' is a decent album, I will agree.

It is not the seventh or the fourth or the sixty-seventh `best album of all time'.

Like `Layla and other assorted love stories', `Exile' was overpraised years later bec. it was underpraised at the time of release (a bit like, in film, `Citizen Kane'...)

The absolute king of rip off reissues has got to be Elvis Costello. I think there's about 6 different reissues of each of his albums, at least the earlier ones.

Blame ABKCO, not the Stones. Allen Klein owned the rights to the early material and was responsible for the rip-off that were modern-day reissues. ABKCO refuses to standardize on the British catalog, as the Beatles have done, resulting in abominations like "Flowers" still existing, and no bonus tracks on reissues.

Anyhow, the re-release of Exile comes with a bonus disc, according to Amazon, and is only available from May -- which release are you referring to, Patrick?

By the way, a fascinating article here on the RS remasters that you might enjoy: http://www.lukpac.org/stereostones/stones-cd-faq.txt