(no subject)

[janradder]

I recently found a vinyl copy of The Faces' Long Player from 1971 for $2.99 at Electric Fetus in Minneapolis.  I don't usually shop there for used records, instead preferring Hymie's over on Lake Street, but I went to pick up a cd for a friend's birthday and checked out the used lp's.  What a really great album, bluesy and kind of sloppy, some great guitar lines, and hearing Rod Stewart makes you kind scratch your head and wonder what happened to him later in his career.  If you listen to anything he's done from the late 70's to the present you tend to forget what a great rock vocalist he could be.  The Faces, on a whole, though, seem to be one of those bands  whose sum is greater than their parts.  Listen to anything any of the individual members did post-Faces -- Ron Wood in the Stones (his arrival coincided with their decline), Kenny Jones with The Who (clearly the wrong choice of drummers for that band), solo Ronnie Lane (for the most part), and Rod Stewart solo, excluding his first couple of albums -- and none of  it really matches up with what they accomplished together.  It's too bad their short career (and their predecessor, Small Faces with Steve Marriott on vocals) has been overshadowed by other British rock giants liike the Stones, the Who, and Led Zeppelin because, at their best, they could be one of the great rock and roll bands of their era.