If you’ve been living on another planet for the past week or so you may not know Exile On Main Street, the classic 1972 album by the Rolling Stones, was re-released yesterday with a whole bunch of bonus junk. Exile shows up on a lot of “best of all time” lists, and it’s famous for a number of things including its gloriously shitty “basement” sound. That apparently happened because some of the songs were supposedly put together and recorded in the basement of a mansion in the south of France.
So when they said they were reissuing Exile with remastered sound, I wondered: “What, are they going to make it sound shittier than it did in 1972?” Well, yeah … kind of. The new version sounds pretty good – mainly louder – and it makes you wonder how much of it really was recorded in a basement. That’s the way it is with the Rolling Stones: you get the music, and you get the myth. Pick up a copy of the new Exile on Main Street and you get plenty of both.
Video: “Plundered My Soul”
30 Days Out 