Music This Week in Advancement: Mick Jagger and Joss Stone’s New Band

This week we got a sample of the debut single from Mick Jagger’s new band, the multicultural head-scratcher Super Heavy, featuring Joss Stone, Damian Marley, Dave Stewart from the Eurhythmics, and Indian composer A. R. Rahman. Stone says the band has “the weirdest sound…very eclectic. It’s like world music but it’s not one style. It’s just not normal.” Sounds about right.

I had never heard about this before this week, but apparently they’ve been recording for 18 months or so. How I missed it is a mystery because Super Heavy—the name, the concept, the players—is as Advanced as it gets. Though it’s not unprecedented:

Like most people, I was somewhat appalled when I heard David Bowie’s band, Tin Machine, for the first time. Then I saw them on SNL and was blown away. Still, I didn’t get into the records much. But a few years ago, “Under the God” came on my “Lou Reed” Pandora station, and I finally understood why Tin Machine was not only awesome, but completely necessary. (People call projects unnecessary all the time without defining what they mean, so I’m going to turn the tables.) What’s particularly Advanced is that David Bowie reversed the usual order of things by forming a band as an act of Advancement rather than going solo as most other Advanced musicians did.

The peculiar thing is that I’d been preaching the Advanced Theory for 15 years or so, but I could still be surprised by how correct it really is. There’s nothing more basic to the theory than the idea that someone who is ahead of their time like David Bowie or Lou Reed will always be ahead of their time. So it’s funny that I was surprised that Tin Machine didn’t seem all that great when I heard them first but then I grew to appreciate them. Of course they were great: David Bowie was a member!

Then there was the Traveling Wilburys, a band that featured two certified Advanced Artists (Bob Dylan and Roy Orbison), two nearly Advanced Artists (Tom Petty and George Harrison), and a former member of ELO. Unlike Tin Machine, the Wilburys were well received critically and by fans from the start and, though their second record–Traveling Wilburys Vol. 3–was much less successful, their 2007 box set hit #9 in the US Billboard 200 and topped the UK Album Charts. I can’t really account for the success of the Wilburys, and not because their music wasn’t good. My guess is that since the members didn’t put a ton of effort into the band, they didn’t elevate it to their usual level of Advancement so people could relate to it. Maybe it was Jeff Lynne’s fault.

And, of course, Jagger’s bandmate Keith Richards has had his own side band, the X-Pensive Winos. Perhaps as an answer to Super Heavy, Richards said on Jimmy Fallon’s show in May that an X-Pensive Winos album is starting to “blossom.” I have read his autobiography, Life, and I could certainly see his feeling competitive with Super Heavy, especially since it features a Jamaican. Of course he would never admit to this competitiveness because, according to his own account, everything he does is pure, while everyone else is motivated by greed or narcissism.

The question is what is Jagger’s motivation to be in Super Heavy?

There are lots of possible reasons for his participation—wanting to reach a new audience or wanting to stick it to Keith Richards for saying his solo projects were a joke and that he has a small penis (but big testicles)—yet I think the real answer is simpler than that, and it’s the same reason he keeps recording new Rolling Stones albums: He still loves making music.

As I’ve argued before, making records is a tedious process, even if you are as successful as the Rolling Stones. Given this, plus the fact that few people are eager to hear new music from the Stones, I can only conclude that Mick Jagger likes making music and is still searching for new challenges. Of course people are going to be mad about his association with Super Heavy—just read the comments to the story linked above, especially the ones about Joss Stone—but that’s part of the fun for the Advanced Artist.

The song is apparently available on iTunes, and I plan to listen to it right after sending this off to be posted. I don’t expect it to be as good as the Lou Reed/ Metallica collaboration, but I already know I’ll like it eventually, because Mick Jagger is Advanced.
his week we got a sample of the debut single from Mick Jagger’s new band, the multicultural head-scratcher Super Heavy, featuring Joss Stone, Damian Marley, Dave Stewart from the Eurhythmics, and Indian composer A. R. Rahman. Stone says the band has “the weirdest sound…very eclectic. It’s like world music but it’s not one style. It’s just not normal.” Sounds about right.

I had never heard about this before this week, but apparently they’ve been recording for 18 months or so. How I missed it is a mystery because Super Heavy—the name, the concept, the players—is as Advanced as it gets. Though it’s not unprecedented:

Like most people, I was somewhat appalled when I heard David Bowie’s band, Tin Machine, for the first time. Then I saw them on SNL and was blown away. Still, I didn’t get into the records much. But a few years ago, “Under the God” came on my “Lou Reed” Pandora station, and I finally understood why Tin Machine was not only awesome, but completely necessary. (People call projects unnecessary all the time without defining what they mean, so I’m going to turn the tables.) What’s particularly Advanced is that David Bowie reversed the usual order of things by forming a band as an act of Advancement rather than going solo as most other Advanced musicians did.

The peculiar thing is that I’d been preaching the Advanced Theory for 15 years or so, but I could still be surprised by how correct it really is. There’s nothing more basic to the theory than the idea that someone who is ahead of their time like David Bowie or Lou Reed will always be ahead of their time. So it’s funny that I was surprised that Tin Machine didn’t seem all that great when I heard them first but then I grew to appreciate them. Of course they were great: David Bowie was a member!

Then there was the Traveling Wilburys, a band that featured two certified Advanced Artists (Bob Dylan and Roy Orbison), two nearly Advanced Artists (Tom Petty and George Harrison), and a former member of ELO. Unlike Tin Machine, the Wilburys were well received critically and by fans from the start and, though their second record–Traveling Wilburys Vol. 3–was much less successful, their 2007 box set hit #9 in the US Billboard 200 and topped the UK Album Charts. I can’t really account for the success of the Wilburys, and not because their music wasn’t good. My guess is that since the members didn’t put a ton of effort into the band, they didn’t elevate it to their usual level of Advancement so people could relate to it. Maybe it was Jeff Lynne’s fault.

And, of course, Jagger’s bandmate Keith Richards has had his own side band, the X-Pensive Winos. Perhaps as an answer to Super Heavy, Richards said on Jimmy Fallon’s show in May that an X-Pensive Winos album is starting to “blossom.” I have read his autobiography, Life, and I could certainly see his feeling competitive with Super Heavy, especially since it features a Jamaican. Of course he would never admit to this competitiveness because, according to his own account, everything he does is pure, while everyone else is motivated by greed or narcissism.

The question is what is Jagger’s motivation to be in Super Heavy?

There are lots of possible reasons for his participation—wanting to reach a new audience or wanting to stick it to Keith Richards for saying his solo projects were a joke and that he has a small penis (but big testicles)—yet I think the real answer is simpler than that, and it’s the same reason he keeps recording new Rolling Stones albums: He still loves making music.

As I’ve argued before, making records is a tedious process, even if you are as successful as the Rolling Stones. Given this, plus the fact that few people are eager to hear new music from the Stones, I can only conclude that Mick Jagger likes making music and is still searching for new challenges. Of course people are going to be mad about his association with Super Heavy—just read the comments to the story linked above, especially the ones about Joss Stone—but that’s part of the fun for the Advanced Artist.

The song is apparently available on iTunes, and I plan to listen to it right after sending this off to be posted. I don’t expect it to be as good as the Lou Reed/ Metallica collaboration, but I already know I’ll like it eventually, because Mick Jagger is Advanced.