Sympathy For the Devil

THE Stones ain't Rolling in the Philippines.

Shocking as this may sound, even the crafty and artistic Filipinos have a tough time naming songs belted out by the British band.

In fact, the Stones were never big in the singing craze country which adores the likes of Beatles and Bon Jovi.

Here's a take by Clarence Yu at Inquirer.net Blogs. Below are some of the paragraphs seen in the article;

While the rest of the world has celebrated its “Greatest Rock N’ Roll Band” throughout the years, the Philippines has yet to follow suit. How many Filipinos can name at least three songs of the Stones? The normal answer I get is “(I Can’t Get No) Satisfaction,” their 1965 worldwide hit. Outside my musical circle of friends, no one can give me any other two songs. And in my opinion, it is a crying shame.

What is it about the Stones that Manila didn’t like in the ‘60’s? My take is that they didn’t write pop songs that were “poppy” enough for our tastes. We just didn’t get their darkness, their rebelliousness, and most of all, the quality of their music, which is kind of weird because we Filipinos are normally discriminating when it comes to music. The Lennon/McCartney songwriting team was far more popular than the Jagger/Richards partnership, though much higher output can be credited to the latter.

What we got from MTV were either the New Wave crew (Tears for Fears, Duran Duran, etc.) or the resulting new bad boys of Heavy metal/Hard rock — Motley Crue, The Black Crowes, Guns N’ Roses, The White Stripes, to name a few. While excellent bands in their own right and more than a few serving as front acts during several Rolling Stones tours, not many saw the parallels in the bad boy images that these bands projected, with the originals (of course, the Rolling Stones), which, in my opinion, is just plain unfair, and again, another crying shame. Most of us never got the point, which was all but stepped upon with the onset of Seattle grunge in the 1990’s. All these “I hate myself and I want to die” themed songs were just overkill.

With more than 150 million albums sold worldwide, a 46-year career spanning five decades with more than 25 studio albums recorded, chart breaking tour grosses (they still hold the world record for the highest grossing tour in history from their 1995 “Voodoo Lounge” tour, bettering themselves subsequently with their 2002 “Licks” Tour and their 2005 “A Bigger Bang” Tour), the Rolling Stones has been vital, relevant, and surviving, serving as the prototypical bad boy band, and writing the blueprints for the modern rock song.

The Rolling Stones are:

Mick Jagger – lead singer and knight of the British Empire

Keith Richards – guitar and the human riff

Charlie Watts – jazz drummer in the World’s greatest rock and roll band

Ron Wood – the confederate lead guitarist

Former members:

Brian Jones (deceased, founding member) – guitar and the original Kurt Cobain

Mick Taylor – lead guitar, blues extraordinaire, currently still asking himself why he left

Bill Wyman – bass, and original stone face, now a restaurateur

Ian “Stu” Stewart (deceased, founding member) – boogie woogie pianist who hated minor chords