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My choice for a favorite band will come as no surprise to readers of this blog. I’m an unapologetic, unrepentant, unreserved and incorrigible Rolling Stones fan, through and through. I wrote a longish post here on this blog a few years ago about my love for the Stones (for a contest sponsored by No Depression magazine) entitled “Why Exile On Main Street Gets My Rocks Off.” And in the two previous years that I’ve done this 30 Day Song Challenge, the Rolling Stones have showed a number of times, including for the categories of my favorite song, for a song from my favorite band and for a song you want played at your funeral. With some slight modifications in the prompts, I could easily do a 30 Day Song Challenge just using songs by the Rolling Stones. (For the record, I think I could also do 30 days of Bob Dylan, Otis Redding, Emmylou Harris, Johnny Cash, Aretha Franklin and maybe also Etta James.) I won’t rehearse again here all that I’ve said about the Stones before, but suffice it to say that they are about as close to a perfect band that I know. They are the loud and messy roux– that thickening combination of country, blues, folk and gospel– that makes rock n’ roll taste so sinfully delicious.
Since I’ve picked Stones’ songs so many times before on this blog, I thought I’d go for one of their more obscure and under-appreciated tracks for today’s selection. It’s a track off of my favorite Stones album, Beggar’s Banquet— also, and not un-coincidentally, the most Memphis-sounding of their albums– recorded in 1968 at Olympic Studios. This is a winning album from start to finish, but I have a particular fondness for Track 3, “Dear Doctor,” a hilarious account by a fully-soused and reluctant groom, attempting his best to leave his bride-to-be (who he describes as a “four-legged sow”) at the altar. Be ye not afraid, though, it all works out in the end:
Just two quick things that I particularly love about this song. First, the opening line: Oh help me, please Doctor, I’m damaged / There’s a pain where there once was a heart. Such a great lyric, made even more fantastic when one discovers the utter INsincerity with which it is being delivered. And, second, the fact that the song ends, musically, on an unresolved chord, just as it does lyrically.
Genius.
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Here’s your quick-access link to the entire 30 Day Song Challenge 2014 prompt-list and my picks for each day.