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List Price: $17.98 | | Label: Abkco
Salesrank: 199512
Released: October 25, 1990 |
| Our Price: $6.86 |
| Used Price: $3.93 |
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| Media: Audio CD |
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Aftermath Track Listing:
1. Paint It Black
2. Stupid Girl
3. Lady Jane
4. Under My Thumb
5. Doncha Bother Me
6. Think
7. Flight 505
8. High and Dry
9. It's Not Easy
10. I Am Waiting
11. Going Home
Editorial Review:
For this 1966 album, one Stone asserted himself even more than Mick Jagger and Keith Richards, who for the first time wrote all the album's songs. Brian Jones is all over the opening "Paint It Black," which remains a dark classic more for its spooky sitar than for Jagger's dated psychedelia. Jones's marimba boosts the R&B-derived "Under My Thumb" and his harpsichord somehow makes the subject of "Lady Jane" more interesting. Though Charlie Watts's jazz-derived fills and Bill Wyman's bass continue growing into rock's greatest rhythm section, a disturbing misogyny creeps into Jagger's class-conscious lyrics, especially on "Under My Thumb," and "Stupid Girl." --Steve Knopper
Aftermath Reviews:
Paint It, Varied 
2008-10-08 - Jonesing for some Brian Jones? Good, because he's all over this record the way ineptitude is all over the McCain-Palin ticket. He doesn't just play guitar. He also plays dulcimer, sitar, marimbas, bells, sax, harmonica, piano, organ, and trumpet. Not only is that a lot of instruments, that's also a bunch of weird instruments. I mean, how do you go from dulcimer to sitar to marimba to saxophone? Not that I'm complaining, though. I love the weird instruments on this record!
As you'd probably expect, this one's pretty screwy. There are a lot of fun country-folk hick hops that I absolutely adore. They're so much fun! "High and Dry," "Flight 505" and "It's Not Easy" are all maximum fun! Then there's the really old stuff. I mean, "High and Dry" is old-school enough - I can easily see a bunch of hillbillies getting together and playing it, one with an acoustic guitar, one with a banjo, one with a washtub bass, one of them slapping a chair with a shotgun, and one of them blowing into a jug labeled "XXX" - but "Lady Jane" and "I Am Waiting" sound like they're from the Renaissance Festival. They have a dulcimer on them! And I like them both "Lady Jane" especially has that Ren Fest sound to it, since Mick's talking about pledging his troth to Lady Jane and being all courtly and gentlemanly. It's weird to hear Mick Jagger as a gentleman, but he pulls it off somehow. "I Am Waiting" is also great. It's the dulcimer ballad! And you know what? It's cool. Very, very cool.
If you're looking for the "ROCK!" Stones... bad news. They're not really here. A couple of these songs have the bluesy bent of the earlier records, but even they have weird but awesome arrangement touches. Dig the saxes on "Think" and "Doncha Bother Me!" I know I do. Do you? They also have sweet guitar parts, of course, but the real attraction is the saxes. "Stupid Girl" is the closest thing to a normal rocker you get here, but in truth it's nothing special. If it weren't for the song's catchiness, it would be a total loser - immature lyrics, grating organ - but at least it's got a really good melody.
And it amazes me the group could include something as, well... stupid as "Stupid Girl" and something as psychologically frightening as "Paint it, Black" on the same album. "Paint It, Black" is probably the album's best-known song, and it's one of the group's best and most original songs ever. Sure, the Beatles had used sitar a year beforehand on "Norwegian Wood," but this is something completely different than "Norwegian Wood." It's a raga, albeit a depressing raga. Brian's sitar part is awesome, and let's hear it for Charlie's beat, huh?
The other song you might know is "Under My Thumb." Again, what a song! I wonder... had anyone mixed fuzz guitar and marimba before that? Would anyone ever do so again? And the sexual, sadistic leer in Mick's vocals is classic. The song is often interpreted as misogynistic, but I think the theme runs a bit deeper than that. To me, the song's about one part of a dysfunctional relationship - you'll note that the narrator openly declares that he was under the woman's thumb once. Pretty smart look at sexual politics, if you're askin' me.
This record had the potential to be perfect, so it's a shame about two things. The presence of "Goin' Home" and the absence of both "Mother's Little Helper" and "Out of Time." "Mother's Little Helper" and "Out of Time" are both undisputable classics - the former is a brilliant pop song, and the latter is a song about pill-popping fortified by a brilliant twelve-string guitar riff that I always thought was a sitar until wikipedia told me I was wrong just a few minutes ago. Both of those songs are on the British version, not the American version. Unfortunately, so is the epic fail "Goin' Home." It's true that the song was ahead of its time -no rock band was doing eleven-minute songs in 1966 - but other than Mick's leering vocals, it just gets old.
And unfortunately, you can't get around this problem by buying the British version, since the British version doesn't include "Paint It Black" - it was customary in Britain to separate albums and singles at the time, for reasons I don't really understand. To further the confusion, the UK version offers "What to Do," which isn't available on either the U.S. version of Aftermath or Flowers (a compilation which has some odds and ends from the period, including "Out of Time" and "Mother's Little Helper," which almost fixes our problem). Of course, both "Paint it Black" and "Mother's Little Helper" are on Forty Licks and Hot Rocks, but "Out of Time" isn't on either! Argh...
My solution? ABCKO does what the Beatles did: retires the UK versions of the early Stones albums and packages whatever tracks might be left over in a Past Masters-esque compilation. This does not mean we pull a Flowers, which means "gathering most of those songs, adding a couple tunes you already had on the original albums in the first place (`Lady Jane' shows up on both versions of Aftermath, and Americans already had `Let's Spend the Night Together' and `Ruby Tuesday' on Between the Buttons), and calling it a day." It means "taking all the stray tracks, and nothing but the stray tracks, including `What to Do' and anything else that may have missed the boat, and releasing them."
But yeah, cool album.
Menacing 
2008-08-07 - Even in its truncated U.S. version with its blurry cover shot, 1966's "Aftermath," the first Stones album of all-original material, is indispensible. The record is the dividing line between the group as scruffy young Brit blues-and-R&B cover artists, and what would eventually become the most powerful and significant rock band in the world. A large portion of the credit for this is due to Brian Jones, who is at his artistic peak here. Jones' strength was his uncanny skill on all sorts of instruments besides guitar, and his marimba on "Under My Thumb," and sitar on "Paint It, Black" give those two signature Stones tunes, in their original versions, their unique flavor. The material ("Flight 505," "Stupid Girl") was getting dark and misogynistic; it would get much, much darker in the next few years. The U.K. version (which this isn't, by the way) puts good songs like "Out of Time," "What To Do," and the single "Mother's Little Helper" (an anti-drug message from a band which later became synonymous with drug excess) in their proper context as far as the group's history is concerned.
4 1/2 stars.
2007-03-30 - "Aftermath," was the stones first album of all original material, and it has a vibe that's a bit different from their previous recordings. Brian Jones plays a mean sitar on the great opening track, "paint it, black," which is a classic piece of psychedelic rock. "Lady Jane," is a divine acoustic ballad, with a heavy english folk sound about it (trivia bit: on neil young's masterpiece "tonight's the night" he sings a song about borrowing a tune from the rolling stones for one of his songs, because he's too wasted to come up with his own tune. The melody which he borrowed from the stones for that tune is the melody from "Lady Jane."). The blues, as always, are a big part of the stones sound. "Doncha bother me," boasts a fine display of slide guitar wizardry, and "High and Dry," is an excellent acoustic blues piece with a strong sense of melody. "It's not easy," is another standout, with its splendid rhythmic drive. All in all, another fine stones album which i highly recommend. but please do yourself a favor: the original cd version of this thing has terrible sound. if you buy this album, make sure that you get a copy of the 2002 ABKCO records remastered version. the upgraded sound on that version is heavenly compared to the inferior quality of the 1st cd release.
Under My Thumb
2006-06-11 - I have to admit that I'm not wild about the songs "Think" and "Lady Jane," especially "Lady Jane." I don't know, maybe there is just a bit too much top sixty like production on "Jane" for me. However, the rest of the record is a knock your socks off, get up and dance type record. Plus, these songs really show off the Jagger/Richards song writing talents. Like my friend Tiffany, I really like "Goin' Home." It's a long and soulful song that moves me. But my favorite on "Aftermath" is "Under My Thumb." I know, as a woman, I shouldn't like that song, but I can't help it, maybe it's because of the kind of revenge aspect of the song. Anyway, I just like it, even though there is no way on God's green earth that I'll ever be under any man's thumb. Five stars for this record, because it's so good, even though I think a couple of the songs are a bit weak.
Feel All Right
2006-06-11 - Like my friends, I really like the very long, eleven minutes long, "Goin Home." I actually have this song coming right after "Sad Eyed Lady of the Lowlands" by Bob Dylan, another eleven minute song, burning onto a CD that I play often when I have a long drive. Just two songs and twenty two minutes have flown by, I feel like I arrived in no time at all, almost like I got there before I left. Somehow I just seem to float along with these two songs, Mick's voice works so well with Mr. Dylan's.
Then there is the rocking and a bit strange "It's Not Easy," which tells us that it's not easy to live on your own, how true. "Lady Jane" is a bit strange, but I like it a lot. "Think," well all I can say about that song is "Wow!" "High and Dry" has such great guitar work on it, kind of reminds me of the guitar work on Bob Dylan's "Desolation Row." Maybe that harmonica is in that song on purpose. And I'd be remiss if I didn't say how much I loved "I Am Waiting" and "Goin" Home." How can anyone not love those songs." Like every record by this band, the Greatest Group on Earth, this record is a keeper.
