Although my collection of early Rolling Stones records in the
\nPierce Memorial Archives isn’t as vast as I’d like it to be, I seem
\nto remember it took the lads a few albums to settle down their
\nmanic sound and create a more polished tone. What’s interesting is
\nthat their counterparts, The Pretty Things, had it down by the time
\nof their second release,
\nGet The Picture?<\/i>.<\/p>\n
After the controlled panic that was their debut album, Phil May
\nand crew (less drummer Vivian Prince, who was out of the band by
\nthe time this album was recorded) seemed to have gotten a lot of
\nthe manic energy that made up
\nThe Pretty Things<\/i> out of their system. Now, they could hone
\ntheir musical skills and work on an album that would blow their
\nprevious work out of the water.<\/p>\n
In one sense, they did;
\nGet The Picture?<\/i> is a much better album than its
\npredecessor. I don’t mean to suggest that May, Dick Taylor and crew
\ndidn’t take the recording of their first album seriously, but it
\ndid have the atmosphere that made it sound like kids being turned
\nloose in a candy store. This album, on the other hand, is much more
\ncohesive, and flows a lot better.<\/p>\n
The opening track alone, “You Don’t Believe Me”, is proof enough
\nof this new-found focus. The band sounds tighter than they had to
\nthis point, and May’s vocals are actually more powerful this time
\naround. Tracks like “Rainin’ In My Heart,” “London Town,” “Midnight
\nTo Six Man” and the title track all re-emphasize the suspicion that
\nThe Pretty Things should have been a bigger success than they were,
\nat least in the United States.<\/p>\n
\nGet The Picture?<\/i> has one major problem with it, though – and
\nit’s a complaint I had with the first volume in this re-released
\nset. The liner notes, while giving a lot of the band’s history
\naround this time, fail to tell me what I really want to know: which
\ntracks were on the original release, which are bonus tracks added
\nto the re-release, what was the band’s lineup at this time. I have
\nto sludge through stories that, often, I am not interested in in
\norder to find information about the band’s lineup – and by that
\ntime, I’m no longer interested in finding out. The liner notes to
\nthis release needed to have more concise information.<\/p>\n
And, like the self-titled re-release,
\nGet The Picture?<\/i> seems to try to put too much Pretty Things
\ninto your hands in too short a time frame. After a while, it seems
\nlike 18 tracks (even though they’re no monsters time-wise) is a lot
\nto listen to, and it seemed like it took forever to get through
\nportions of this disc. I’m all for inclusion of bonus materials,
\nbut sometimes it does seem like overkill.<\/p>\n
If you have a multimedia computer,
\nGet The Picture?<\/i> includes a portion that you can watch on
\nyour system. I just haven’t gotten the chance to view it yet (hey,
\nit’s hard when you have to decide between CD extras and Super Mario
\nWorld).<\/p>\n
\nGet The Picture?<\/i> is an album that suggests that The Pretty
\nThings did get the picture, and they created an album that was a
\nmajor improvement over their first effort.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":28031,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","template":"","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"artist":[7303],"rating":[5615],"class_list":["post-39425","review","type-review","status-publish","has-post-thumbnail","artist-the-pretty-things","rating-rating-b"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/review\/39425","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/review"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/review"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=39425"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/review\/39425\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/28031"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=39425"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"artist","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/artist?post=39425"},{"taxonomy":"rating","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/rating?post=39425"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}