Paint It Black: The Compilation Of The Rolling Stones Covers CD

2006 import-only compilation consisting of cover versions of Rolling Stones classics performed by a diverse selection of artists. EMI have brought together a group of some of the world's best known singers and their interpretations of Rolling Stones tracks. Paint it Black brings you David Bowie's version of 'Lets Spend the Night Together', Rod Stewart's, 'Street Fighting Man, The Ramones version of 'Out of Time' and Ike and Tina Turner's 'Honky Tonk Women' to name but a few. Familiar voices and even more familiar songs make a great collection and a compilation that you will find hard to stop listening to!! Make your summer one to remember and get to know The Rolling Stones all over again. EMI. 2006.

This 18-track compilation of previously released versions of Rolling Stones' nuggets is a little longer than earlier attempts at the same concept such as 1998's Cover You: A Tribute to the Rolling Stones (with which it shares four tunes) and 2005's skimpy 11-cut Wild Horses: A Rock and Roll Tribute to the Rolling Stones (only one duplicate from that), but it's not markedly better. Due to the lack of liner notes, there's a frustrating absence of noting what albums these songs were grabbed from, let alone who played on them, and given the embarrassingly shoddy cover art, this looks like a quicky project seemingly pressed up to capitalize on the Stones' 2006 A Bigger Bang tour. It is also, perhaps not surprisingly, heavy on material from the EMI/Virgin vaults, which accounts for 11 of its selections. That's not to say it's without merit; the compiler unearths a few cool, way under the radar Stones covers from Miranda Lee Richards (no relation to Keith) doing a folk-rock "Dandelion," former Guns N' Roses guitarist Gilby Clarke who checks in with sturdy if unsurprising "Dead Flowers" (featuring Axl Rose on backing vocals) from a 1994 solo album, and Jason & the Scorchers' scorching "19th Nervous Breakdown." This catalog picking also results in the album's worst choices, including a completely lunkheaded metal-ish version of "Bitch" from a band called Exodus, the Flying Pickets' misguided a cappella "Get Off My Cloud," the Quireboys' unnecessary "Doo Doo Doo Doo (Heartbreaker)," and Tony Merrick's forgotten-for-good-reason 1964 attempt at "Lady Jane." Bowie's "Let's Spend the Night Together" drags the song into drugged-out glam but soul acts such as Ike & Tina Turner and Otis Redding fare better with their selections. Not entirely worthless for those few music fans without a computer, in this digital age when almost anything is available to be downloaded; it is at best superfluous, since anyone can make their own collection of similar material, which would likely be better sequenced and imagined than this one. ~ Hal Horowitz

Mojo (Publisher) (p.111) - 3 stars out of 5 -- "Picks of the bunch are by Jason & The Scorchers, Ike & Tina and The Ramones..."