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The Rolling Stones - Around And Around (1964)

Track listing:
  1. Around And Around
  2. Good Times, Bad Times
  3. It's All Over Now
  4. Empty Heart
  5. Confessin' The Blues
  6. Not Fade Away
  7. Bye Bye Johnny
  8. You Better Move On
  9. I wanna Be Your Man
  10. 2120 South Michigan Avenue
  11. If You Need Me
  12. Poison Ivy

Notes

The best of the Stones' first three albums of hopped-up R&B, 12 x 5 hints at why there was more to this quintet than to blues-reviving brothers like the Yardbirds and the Animals. From the opening version of Chuck Berry's "Around and Around," Mick Jagger sings with a charismatic mixture of sexuality and menace. Even as a teenager--he actually looks alive in the 1964 album sleeve photo--Keith Richards shows a rare bluesman's confidence. It's unclear why covers of "Time Is on My Side" and "It's All Over Now" have become classic hits while the equally great "Susie Q" remains obscure. --Steve Knopper

Issued in Germany in the mid-1970s, this 12-song LP has a lackluster front cover (but the back shows the band on stage circa 1965 with a police officer trying to pull a girl off of Mick Jagger, so you know it's cool). There are better compilations covering this period in their music, but the song lineup is pretty much excellent; all hard, early rock & roll and blues, mostly drawn from their early singles and EPs.