The Rolling Stones - GRRR! (Review)

PaulB1984

The legendary Stones celebrate 50 years in music with this new release, GRRR! 1962-2012, featuring 2 new recordings, including the new single Doom And Gloom (Seen below). As with the classic Forty Licks album 10 years ago (Celebrating their then 40 year career), various record labels have come together to release a stunning box set, this time containing 50 classic songs from their 50 years between Universal/ABKCO and Virgin Records (Including The Rolling Stones grown label), covering everything from their first single, Chuck Berry's Come On right through to the two new recordings complete last August. This time, the collection comes in a variety of editions, the standard 50 track release (A badly thrown together flimsy cardboard digipack with booklet), a "Deluxe Edition" featuring the 3 CD set + a throwaway 36 page book and 5 artcards featuring reprints of various tour posters (Which costs 2.5 times the cost of the standard album, leaving you with a pointless shabby book and 5 photos you could print from the internet yourself) and then a "Super Deluxe Edition" which proudly features a further 30 classic Rolling Stones songs including the likes of Out Of Time, Mother's Little Helper, Saint Of Me, Bitch, You Got Me Rocking, Play With Fire, reorganised into the existing 3 CD to expand it to 4 CDs while remaining in chronological order. This edition also includes a 7" vinyl record featuring a BBC live session, a 12 minute CD featuring the famous IBC demos, while also including the previous edition's book and artcards, along with a reproduction concert poster. However, the price of this box set stands at a whopping €130 (If bought from Amazon UK) and reaching higher elsewhere, which is shocking considering for €17 in HMV you may purchase the fantastic 50 track collection, while should you pay a further €113, you recieve the extra 30 songs, a rather pointless BBC vinyl record and the IBC demos which have been doing the rounds online for piracy for many years (I won't even mention the book and cards). Personally, i believe the 4 CD set should have been released as the deluxe version as opposed to what they called that second edition, it seems to have an air of cheat about it, but as the tracks missing from the 50 song collection weren't major hits, it far from warrants the €113 overspending. Should it hit half that price in the near future, then it's well worth the purchase. But for now, the standard release is a stunning album, with all tracks remastered to insane quality, some having never sounded so good as this before. The selection, aside from the few i mentioned, is spectacular, and putting aside the horrible gorilla artwork (It's 50 years guys, a photo of the band was called for...) and shoddy packaging, this is one of the biggest and greatest releases in a long time, and more than makes up for the fact of the Forty Licks album being long OOP. A must buy. Rating: Album -5 Stars/ Packaging - 1 Star.

joydivision

Have they released an album between this greatest hits and the one ten years ago ?

PaulB1984

joydivision wrote: »

Have they released an album between this greatest hits and the one ten years ago ?

Only various reissues of the Universal/ABCKO albums (Rolled Gold, London Years etc...), but nothing combining the songs from every decade of their music, this is the first since Forty Licks. Studio album wise, they released A Bigger Bang in 2005, which was a big hit album and gave the band many more concert favourites including the hit Streets Of Love, which is included on GRRR!. Aside from that album, they released no more new material until the new tracks on this new compilation.

nlgbbbblth

That deluxe edition looks shockingly poor value and soundwise is TOO LOUD.

More here - http://www.superdeluxeedition.com/reviews/the-rolling-stones-grrr-super-deluxe-makes-a-monkey-out-of-fans/