Interesting piece by my favorite music critic of this century, Steven Hyden: https://uproxx.com/music/the-rolling-stones-goats-head-soup-box-set-review/
When I started reading music books in the late ’80s as a budding grade-school classic-rock student, I found that Creem‘s take on Goats Head Soup had won out over Rolling Stone‘s guarded optimism. Time and again, Goats Head Soup was positioned as a sloppy and ill-considered departure point, a downward spiral from the heights of the “classic” ’68-’72 period that produced Beggars Banquet, Let It Bleed, Sticky Fingers, and Exile On Main St. It formed a trilogy with the band’s other mid-’70s albums, It’s Only Rock ‘n’ Roll and Black And Blue, as a bad stretch of road between Exile and the triumphant 1978 comeback LP, Some Girls, as The Records Best Left Ignored By Future Generations.
Even Rolling Stone came to adopt this position. In the first two editions of the Rolling Stone Record Guide, which I read religiously as a music ignorant lad, Goats Head Soup was saddled with a pitiful one-star rating, with critic Dave Marsh declaring it “a mistake, a jumble or the beginning of the end.” Around the same time, in the magazine’s comprehensive Illustrated History Of Rock ‘n’ Roll, Robert Christgau called Goats Head Soup “musicianly craft at its unheroic norm, terrific by the standards of Foghat or the Doobie Brothers but a nadir for the Rolling Stones.”
Oof. That hurts.
All The Rage is some great loosey goosey Stones stuff, love it. Oh, and yeah, @Buddhabone , the Heartbreaker instrumental isn't bad either.
Its Friday morning here, I've just checked Spotify and the whole thing is up there for streaming... the remastered album, the bonus tracks, the alternate versions, and the bonus live stuff. Unlike the Stones commercial juggernaut to be so generous, but for my 12 bucks a month I'll take it.
The 2nd disc is amazing. Heartbreaker Instrumental is magic.
I just found a digital version, my box will be here tomorrow. I have always dug this record as an odd but satisfying mess.
I love the Stones, but after 'Exile on Main St', their recorded output went south, with the exception of a few good records (Some Girls, Tattoo You) in between. Still one of my all-time favorite bands & one of the best live bands I've ever seen to this day.
I love this record...an odd one, part of the beginning of the decline. Dancing with Mr D is such an interesting Drug song.
Taste is a hard thing to account for... objectively, I know Beggars Banquet is a 'better' record than Goats Head Soup in terms of creativity, authenticity, songwriting etc etc yet I'll play and enjoy GHS much more often than BB.
As for the upcoming release, not committed to buying it yet. The first unreleased song wasn't much for me, Scarlet is not bad. I think it'll depend on whether the Brussels Affair live CD being included with some versions of the box is put up on Spotify. (Even then, I have the previous MP3 official release of that already anyway)
I have the Super Deluxe on order. It's a fascinating record. Looking forward to it.
I can't explain why, but I often read the customer reviews on Amazon. Late one night I spent a long time reading what people had to say about Goats Head Soup, and it turned out to be interesting. Over and over I read that GHS was underestimated, in that there were a lot of great tracks, like (several titles). Sure, there's dreck like (a few other titles), but they don't sink the album completely. Thing is, over the course of many reviews, every single song on the album was described as belonging in each category. After looking long enough, I found a reviewer who loved everything I disliked, and hated all my favorite songs. I can't think of another album about which people so strongly agree while vastly disagreeing. Maybe the White Album.
I ordered the GHS box a couple months ago, and I'm really looking forward to it.