Main menu
Fretplay home Submit tabs

Mick Jagger
Mick Jagger tabs Mick Jagger discography

Channels
Guitar channel Bass channel Guitar videos Reviews

Message Forum
Guitar forum Bass forum Bands and artists Promote your band Recent discussions All categories

Fretplay.com

Mick Jagger guitar tabs

CD reviews

Primitive Cool

Mick Jagger - Primitive Cool Audio CD

A fair review of the Mick Jagger "Primitive Cool" Audio CD. Please note that the below review is the views of the authors, and authors only. You can get a complete list of all Mick Jagger reviews here, or go back to the Mick Jagger tabs.

Band: Mick Jagger
Title: Primitive Cool
Rating:

Release Date: 1993-11-16
Media: Audio CD

Tracks: 1: Throwaway 2: Let's Work 3: Radio Control 4: Say You Will 5: Primitive Cool 6: Kow Tow 7: Shoot Off Your Mouth 8: Peace for the Wicked 9: Party Doll 10: War Baby

I understand other reviewers complaints
I've just purchased this album, after not hearing it since the Summer of '93. but sometimes appreciation is all in the location. I'd gone to stay with my sister in her house north of Barcelona (Spain) where she was in the middle of a painful divorce. I had the whole summer ahead on the Costa Brava to console her and explore my own desires. In her SUV a Toyota Terrano, were three old tapes: Sade - Diamond Life, Culture Club (not sure which) and Mick Jagger's Primitive Cool. I ended up driving all over Barcelona and Catalunya that summer listening over and over again to 'Primitive Cool'. It became a signature for the cities, towns, highways, beaches, mountains and sunsets of that part of Spain. I don't know whether or not it's a good Mick Jagger album. All I know is I love it. I'm currently living temporarily in Tucson Arizona and something about the desert has brought out a longing to hear it again, so I just purchased the downloads. Can't wait to get it in the car.

Mick Alone
I bought this CD to replace an old tape and I enjoy it today as much as I did years ago. What an album! It's great to hear Mick Jagger doing his own thing. Primitive Cool and Party Doll being my favourites.

A very underrated record!!!!!!
Some songs are better than others but it's overall a little better than She's the Boss. Mick's second solo record is very good. Say you will should've been a hit. Check out Mary Chapin Carpenter's version of Party Doll. .

Not the greatest output!
I actually liked She`s the Boss and hoped that this one would be equal to it, but perhaps a little more up-to-date. I also bought this album (CD) when it first came out in the late 1980s, starving for something from the Stones. Boy, was I wrong. I think that, apart from one or two tracks, most of it`s garbage. Listen to "War Baby" and I keep expecting to hear bombs go off and the sounds of sirens.
I guess the thing is with Mick is that he was in a class of his own and did not have to produce this kind of stuff. I am sure he really does not like it, and he certainly did not need the cash. Pass on this one and buy Waundering Spirit instead.

Primitive, no, but cool sophomore effort from Jagger
Both Mick Jagger and Keith Richards decided on solo albums, creating speculations whether the end of the Stones was nigh. Following the Stones' Dirty Work, bickering amongst the Stones prevented them from having the anticipated quinquennial tour. Such wasn't the case however.

But Mick Jagger's second solo album, Primitive Cool, went more on a harder-edged guitar rock sound than the pop polishings of She's The Boss. All songs were produced by Mick himself, with assistance from Keith Diamond and Dave Stewart, and he brought back Jeff Beck on lead guitar.

That's not to say that some of the pop polish was gone. The first single, "Let's Work," his simplistic solution on killing poverty, went to #39. The song seems to be a mean-spirited hit against welfare recipients, but maybe against those who take advantage of the system-"can generosity bring you humility?"

The second single, the #67 "Throwaway," owes a bit to the Stones, but is more typical of Mick's new hard-driving sound, but the theme of a "been there done that" greasy Casanova who finally wants some true love has been done before. "Radio Control" is even better, featuring some hard guitar riffs. Living Colour's Vernon Reid has guitar chores, so I wonder if it's him here.

The title track is an amusing commentary on how the young ask those who lived in the 50's and 60's if they lived the history of those times, be it fashion or political upheavals, as they learned it in school or saw on TV. I shudder to think of the time when it comes my turn, when some whippersnappers ask me of the 80's, "It all seems so primitive, how did you survive? It all seemed so different then. How did you stay alive?" His easy answer is to tell them what they want to hear, "Oh yeah," but sardonically telling the whippersnappers "Well I think you've got it figured out/go check it out for yourself/cause I've had it playing teacher for today. "

"Kow Tow" is a song on taking a stand against a lover gone bad, refusing to be bound to the past or being blackmailed, with some crunching guitar on the chorus. The jumping "Shoot Off Your Mouth" comes closest to the Stones-like nastiness, and is a harder-edged Little Richard/Elvis-type song slamming another ex who not only puts him down but becomes like the proverbial rat on a sinking ship when things go bad. And when he gets stronger, "who are you to shoot off your mouth?" he demands. The most energetic song here and a fave.

The bittersweet ballad "Party Doll" sees Mick visiting country since "Faraway Eyes. " More an acoustic piece than country, it shows the disillusionment that sets in once the giddy party days are over, especially when the other half "wants to live in clover. " Paddy Maloney gives an Irish flavour with the Uileann pipes. Mary Chapin Carpenter later covered this on her greatest hits album.

"I was born in a war, that's why they call me a war baby" sings Mick in the sobering anti-war "War Babies. The poverty experienced by the Brits, the storming of Omaha Beach on D-Day is juxtaposed with the Cold War arms race, with a faint background sound effects of air raid sirens, bombs, and machine gun clatter. "Why can't we hope to find a cure" be it to war, poverty, and security, is an oft-cried question, with a solution that can be either an impossible dream or a darker one.

A few filler songs fail to dampen a stronger solo album from Mick, who despite revisiting familiar themes, is has a reflective side on the title track and "Party Doll. " It would be after another Stones album before Mick would go for round three with Wandering Spirit.
.

You can see a complete list of all Mick Jagger discography, or go back to the Mick Jagger tabs. There is also a good guide on how to read guitar tabs here.