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The Rolling Stones - Tricky Fingers & Slicky Ringers (1971)

Track listing:
  1. Brown Sugar1
  2. Brown Sugar2
  3. Brown Sugar3
  4. Sway
  5. Wild Horses1
  6. Wild Horses2
  7. Knockin
  8. You Gotta Move
  9. Bitch
  10. Sister Morphine
  11. Dead Flowers
  12. Bitch2
  13. Brown Sugar4
  14. Let It Rock

Notes


"Alternate versions" of entire albums are somewhat in vogue by rock bootleggers, who compile entire CDs of alternate/live takes of songs from one specific full-length recording. This is one attempt at an alternate version of Sticky Fingers, and not bad, though not as successful as it may appear from a glance at the sleeve. There are indeed alternate studio takes of "Brown Sugar," "Wild Horses," "Sister Morphine," "You Gotta Move," and "Bitch." In fact, there are four different versions of "Brown Sugar" alone, including the famous one with a prominent slide guitar. The thing is, they really aren't that different; at a casual listen, they sound almost exactly like the album versions, sometimes amounting to nothing more drastic than different mixes. And it's uncertain whether the live versions of "Dead Flowers" and "Can't You Hear Me Knocking" actually come from 1969-1971, as the sleeve claims. A 14-minute performance of "Can't You Hear Me Knocking" sounds particularly enticing, but this fair-quality live recording (no source given) doesn't sound like it's from the Sticky Fingers period; indeed, it sounds suspiciously like it might be from a Jagger-less side project of Keith Richards or somebody. These reservations aside, hard-core Stones fans may find this worthwhile, with a 66-minute running time and the addition of a cover of Chuck Berry's "Let It Rock" (which was not included on Sticky Fingers).