Keith Richards – Vintage Vinos (2010)@320

What can I say about this guy. When I was growing up, there were three camps. Elvis. The Beatles and  The Rolling Stones. You had to pick one. For me, it's always been about the darker gravity side of rock. A no brainer. Mutual force by which all bodies attract one another and a function of the masses of the bodies, the distance between them, and the gravitational constant. With all it's hazardousness and bliss. It's ecstasy and blues. Suffering and lauphter. I wouldnt have it any other way. Rock N roll and the Stones.  KEFF was my king and key to the world of rock. (okay and Muddy, Lennon and Page too)...but as a young snot nose punk know it all, KEEF was the man above all others! The gravity of the dark side that would open to blue skies if you waited long enough.

And there, on top of a Maple tree...a bitchy black bird learns to sing...then play music.... all this among the city streets of muddy york. The riff was two chords. "You can't always get what you want" How true. From one wino to another, here is the latest from by boy Keef!
- wino

Also...Here is a cool review from another fan - Mr. Ken Douglas

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In 1990 Vesta and I went to sea. This was before you could load your CDs into iTunes, so we took our CDs out of the jewel boxes and put them in Case Logic binders. We wound up with a duffel bag full of lot of those binders, a lot of Rock and Roll. Talk is Cheap was included and we listened to it a lot.

I can remember one stormy night, when we were sailing along the Venezuelan coast, the Spanish Main, and it was blowing to beat the band. The sky was overcast and that part of the northern Venezuelan coast is deserted, nothing but jungle and a couple small bays. But the weather was so bad, with thirty-five knot winds, high seas and sleeting rain and that coupled with no stars, made it impossible for us to seek shelter, so all we could so was soldier on. Hour after hour. We did thirty minutess on the wheel, thirty minutes off. We were soaked. And all the while that CD was playing loud though the cockpit speakers.

Every time "Take it So Hard" came around, we shouted along with Keith and crew. Tired as we were, frightened as were, yeah were a little scared, that song turned us into wide awake rockers and for a little over three minutes, we rocked as we took turns trying to steer a straight course. That song is rocker and one of our all time favorites.

"Struggle" is another song that had us groovin' through the night. It was appropriate, because we we're struggling. And the other song from that record that has stayed with me from that night and is one of my all time favorite was left off this record and that's, "I Could Have Stood You Up." That's a mighty fine rocker and is a good enough reason to own Talk is Cheap all by itself. Still, this is an anthology of three CDs and they couldn't get everything on here.

I'm a writer and I like to write with music. I do Billy Holliday in the morning, when I'm working early, but in the afternoon I turn it up with the Stones, the Doors, Jimi, Janis and sometimes Zep. Keith's Main Offender has always been in the rotation since a friend sent it out to us in `92 or `93. Every lick, every note, my body knows them all and three of my favorite songs from that record are included here, "Wicked as it Seems", "Eileen", and "Hate it When You Leave", but my favorite song from Main Offender is "999" which again, isn't included here, but still, can't get `em all on, I understand that.

The live stuff here is just great, but sadly I didn't have the live record with me and for some reason I can't fathom, I don't own it and had never heard it, so it's pleasure for me to listen to the live cuts now, and now that these four songs have me hooked, I guess I'm going to have to get Live at the Hollywood Palladium.

We survived that night, thanks to this record and an intrepid German sailor on a catamaran called "La Favorite". He was safe at anchor in one of those small bays, but he was in a hurry to get to Grenada, saw our lights going by, pulled up anchor and came out to join us. He figured, because we were out there, it must be safe. He had no SSB (marine shortwave radio) so he had no weather info. We didn't have one either, were out there with Keith and band, because we were stupid and when he found that out, he didn't want to sail behind us, so he passed us by, insisting on the lead and we followed his lights till dawn, when the storm let up, rocking with Keith all the way.

A final note: There's a short song here called "Hurricane" and though it's not a rocker, it's a damn fine piece of music, though probably not a song you'd want to play at sea, on a dark night, during a storm. That being said, these song all combine to make a hurricane of a record. When I first saw the track list I thought maybe it was sort of thrown together, but I was wrong. I've played this about a forty or fifty times already and it's only been out a couple weeks. Make no mistake about it, this is a great record. It stands by itself. - by  Ken Douglas