The Rolling Stones - Plundered My Soul - Non-Album Tracks (1970-1972)

I've been meaning to post more Rolling Stones for a long time. I wanted to make a few final adjustments first, but I finally have, so here we go.

Previously, I was able to post about one album of stray tracks for each official studio album as I moved chronologically through the band's discography. But I couldn't do that for their 1971 album "Sticky Fingers." The reason is that the Stones took nearly all of the good outtakes from that album and used them on their next album, 1972's "Exile on Main St." So this album covers the time period of both of those albums.

In 2010, the Stones released a deluxe version of "Exile on Main St." with an entire bonus album of songs. I've only included six of these 11 bonus songs. Four of them are alternates, and I'm only interested in different songs, or significantly different versions of songs. One of the takes is significantly different: "Good Time Women," an early version of "Tumbling Dice." But in my opinion it's not nearly as good as "Tumbling Dice," so I don't see much point to it.

Oddly, one other song on the bonus disc, "Title 5" is an instrumental that dates to 1967. I have no idea why the Stones thought it was fitting to include this on a deluxe version of "Exile on Main St." since it has no connection to it whatsoever. Months ago, I put that on my alternate version of "Flowers," putting it where it belongs with other songs from 1967.

That leaves the six deluxe version songs I have included. These have faced some controversy, because the Stones overdubbed a lot of changes to them in 2010. The basic tracks were recorded in 1971 or 1972, but Mick Jagger rerecorded his vocals to all but one of the songs, two guitar solos were redone, and some extra harmonica and backing vocals were added to a few of the songs. I would go with the raw, unchanged versions if good versions of them existed, but as far as I know, these songs didn't get bootlegged at all.

In addition, I've found seven other songs to fill out the rest of this album. One is a live version of the Chuck Berry song "Let It Rock" that was recorded and released in 1971 as a B-side. The rest all remain officially unreleased. "Bluesberry Jam" is an instrumental the band played for a TV show.

"Exile on Main St. Blues" is an original acoustic blues song done as a lark to promote the release of the "Exile" album. The lyrics name-check a bunch song titles from the album. When I first posted this album, the version I had was incomplete. I have since replaced that was a complete version. It's still short, only a minute and a half, but it sounds finished.

I made a significant edit to the song "Travelin' Man." In my opinion, it was too long. I have no problem with a long song if there's something interesting going on. But the song went on for over six minutes with a section of about a minute and a half towards the end where there's no soloing, no singing, just playing the chords over and over again. After that long boring stretch, guitarist Mick Taylor finally stepped up and soloed for about a minute before the song comes to an end. So I edited the song to remove the boring stretch but keep all of Taylor's solo.

Add it all up, and this makes a 51 minute long album. Personally, I think it holds up very well with the great "Exile" double album, almost as if it could be the third album of a triple album version.

 01 Pass the Wine [Sophia Loren] (Rolling Stones)
02 Plundered My Soul (Rolling Stones)
03 I'm Not Signifying (Rolling Stones)
04 Following the River (Rolling Stones)
05 Dancing in the Light (Rolling Stones)
06 So Divine [Aladdin Story] (Rolling Stones)
07 Exile on Main St. Blues (Rolling Stones)
08 Leather Jacket [Instrumental] (Rolling Stones)
09 Let It Rock [Live] (Rolling Stones)
10 Travelin' Man [Edit] (Rolling Stones)
11 Tell Her How It Is [Potted Shrimps] (Rolling Stones)
12 Key to the Highway (Rolling Stones)
13 32-20 Blues (Rolling Stones)
14 Bluesberry Jam [Instrumental] (Rolling Stones)

https://www.upload.ee/files/16224553/TROLLNGSTNES1970-1972_PlndredMySul_atse.zip.html

For the album cover, I used a concert poster from the Stones' 1972 tour. Obviously, the picture depicts tumbling dice in reference to that song, and that song isn't on this album. But I just thought it was a really great image, so I had to use it. I made some adjustments to make the rectangular art of the poster fit in the square album cover shape, as well as adding in the album title.