The Stones Roses - or - the parade of assholes continues

For whatever reason, I've lately been listening to music done with a genuine fuck-you attitude. Dunno why, although I could hazard a guess, it wouldn't make a lick of sense to any of you out there in readerland.

In that vein, I thought I'd share with you one of my favorite bands, one of the few that I obsessively collect, sending off obscene amounts of money to chipped-tooth limeys in exchange for mint 7" singles and odd pressings and *sigh* yes, remixes and extended maxi-singles. Get over it.

They found themselves in the right place at the right time, as their herky-jerky mixture of post-punk and the ringing melodicism of the Byrds jibed right with the rise of the ecstasy scene in Manchester, as teens decided "hey living in this dump sucks, so we can either be mopey like Ian Curtis or take massive amounts of narcotics and have sex with each other." Some choice, huh? Right out the gate, they were snide and arrogant, declaring "you can't tell me anything" to the whole world. A few years later, Oasis would rip them off completely and become huge rock stars.

Their next two singles, "Sally Cinnamon" and "Elephant Stone" found the band moving more towards this weird concoction of classicist Britpop a la mid-period Jam and the lurching beast of the then-burgeoning club music scene, the same wave that would cloud our judgements as Americans and, for a brief moment in history, think it was in any way acceptable to listen to Moby. "Elephant Stone" is one of my favorite songs of all time, and in my sophomore year of college when I was going through a pretty rough patch, I would put it on my flea-market cassette walkman and listen to it on loop while biking through downtown Atlanta, completely oblivious to the world around me, as many of the motorists who almost killed me can attest to.

Their debut record, The Stone Roses, was a masterpiece, one that would-be Brit mavericks often claim to be the best pop record of all time, even in spite of the fact that they have to know about the existence of Accent on Africa. Overexcited potatobreath hack journalists aside, it's a helluva a record, full of both Ian Brown's I'm-better-than-you posturing (the album opens with "I Want to Be Adored" and closes with "I Am the Resurrection") and John Squire's killer guitar leads - check out "Made of Stone," which the shaggy six-stringer said was "like scoring the winning goal in the World Cup...while dressed as Spider-Man...and riding a motorcycle."

A spat with Silvertone kept them from releasing any new music for the next four years, and when they came back with Second Coming, it was coldly received by an extremely fickle British public. I dunno why people continue to shit on it. I mean, it's not a classic, but it's also really good. If you don't believe me, light a bowl and put on "Breaking Into Heaven" (there's a reason the song really kicks off around 4:20). Anyway, afterwards, they did the break-up thing, and a generation of would-be indie schmucks with unimpeachable haircuts continue to plunder their legacy.

You know what I like most about these cats? They were the realest. After a spat with one of the early record companies, they broke into the label head's office, splattered him and his girlfriend in paint before going outside and trashing their cars. Suge Knight would be proud. For record dorks who need killer cruising music.

Tell Me: http://www.mediafire.com/?1yykchnt2hh

Elephant Stone: http://www.mediafire.com/?5dnj2lectn2

Made of Stone: http://www.mediafire.com/?8fixtnm0mxm

One Love: http://www.mediafire.com/?dt3dmjkyymj

Breaking Into Heaven: http://www.mediafire.com/?9xmwymmgwui