{"id":40095,"date":"2007-01-02T00:00:00","date_gmt":"2007-01-02T00:00:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/reviews\/12-x-5\/"},"modified":"2007-01-02T00:00:00","modified_gmt":"2007-01-02T00:00:00","slug":"12-x-5","status":"publish","type":"review","link":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/reviews\/12-x-5\/","title":{"rendered":"12 X 5"},"content":{"rendered":"

In 1964, the juggernaut that was (and still is) The Rolling Stones began to truly hit its stride in the <\/country-region><\/place>United States. While their debut effort sold respectably well, they hadn\u2019t been able to place any songs on the Billboard<\/i> charts.<\/p>\n

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12 X 5<\/i>, their second album (at least in terms of what was released on this side of the pond), was both a step forward and a step backward for Mick Jagger and company. On one side, this disc gave the London lads their first taste of singles chart success (though you may be surprised when you hear the original version \u2013 more on that in a moment), and the songwriting duo of Jagger and guitarist Keith Richards make a few more steps into the limelight, even though this remains a covers album. But the joy is counterweighed by the unavoidable fact that this disc isn\u2019t as exciting as its predecessor \u2013 though it could not be called a failure in any sense of the word.<\/p>\n

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The first thing the listener notes on this disc (whose name hints at the number of tracks and number of band members) is that there is more of a rock feel to it, though the blues is hardly abandoned. Covers of tracks like \u201cAround And Around\u201d (which has more life to it than any version I ever heard The Grateful Dead do) and \u201cConfessin\u2019 The Blues\u201d show that the Stones still thought of themselves as a blues band, much like their contemporaries with whom they got their start.<\/p>\n

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Yet that feeling admittedly begins to slip when you hear covers of \u201cUnder The Boardwalk\u201d (which will never take the place of the Drifters\u2019s classic version) and \u201cSusie Q\u201d (which seems far too short at just under two minutes). It\u2019s almost as if there\u2019s a bit of musical wanderlust traveling through the Stones \u2013 a fact confirmed by the almost doo-wop sound of one Jagger-Richards original, \u201cCongratulations,\u201d as well as one of the disc\u2019s two hits, \u201cIt\u2019s All Over Now\u201d.<\/p>\n

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The stylistic shift does seem to work for the Stones (though \u201cCongratulations\u201d is a little slow for my tastes), and the cover of \u201cIt\u2019s All Over Now\u201d crackles with energy. If I had to select my one or two favorite tracks from 12 X 5<\/i>, \u201cIt\u2019s All Over Now\u201d would be right up there with the instrumental \u201c<\/street>2120 South Michigan Avenue\u201d. <\/p>\n

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The disc\u2019s biggest hit, \u201cTime Is On My Side,\u201d will throw listeners for a curve \u2013 mainly because this isn\u2019t going to be the version most people know the best. It turns out there were two versions of this track recorded \u2013 the more popular one, featuring a Richards guitar lead rather than Ian Stewart\u2019s organ work, was recorded a few months after the original. While this is unsettling at first, there is a bit of barely-controlled excitement to this version, making it feel a little rushed. Maybe it\u2019s because the Stones knew exactly what they were sitting on.<\/p>\n

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For all of the successes of 12 X 5<\/i>, the remainder of the disc just seems to lag in terms of energy. Whereas England\u2019s Newest Hit Makers<\/i> had a certain level of raw intensity, the overall feeling on 12 X 5<\/i> is more laid back \u2013 and that isn\u2019t what seemed to have been called for. The three originals from Jagger and Richards still didn\u2019t show much sign of the superstars they were to become in terms of songwriting. Granted, tracks like \u201cGood Times, Bad Times\u201d and \u201cEmpty Heart\u201d aren\u2019t bad, and expecting something along the lines of \u201cStart Me Up\u201d this early in the Stones\u2019s career is unfair. But there\u2019s precious little about these three originals that make them stand out among the crowd.<\/p>\n

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12 X 5<\/i> is a more tentative second step from the Stones, and is still worth the trouble of checking out as it was the first disc that truly marked the beginning of superstardom for the band \u2013 but the true explosion that would make the Stones household musical names was still ahead of them.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":28619,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","template":"","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"artist":[5665],"rating":[5614],"class_list":["post-40095","review","type-review","status-publish","has-post-thumbnail","artist-the-rolling-stones","rating-rating-c-plus"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/review\/40095","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=40095"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/review\/40095\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/28619"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=40095"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"artist","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/artist?post=40095"},{"taxonomy":"rating","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/rating?post=40095"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}