We started off with 8 million Beatles albums (approx), but lately we're having 8 million Rolling Stones albums. No wonder my ratings have plummeted! This is a pretty good album cover. I have no idea which one is Mick Jacket. [Update: I looked it up, he's the front guy (imagine). If you're wondering, the other guys are Paul, George, Ringo wearing a funny mask, and Cillian Murphy.]
This is their debut album. Somehow it led them to stardom, even though it sounds pretty generic to me! Lots of covers, but not of songs I like. The sound quality is also "old", but I guess that's not really their fault.
Hooked on Phonics: They say "Barstow" with an [aʊ], which made me worry I say it wrong, but no (I looked it up); it's an [oʊ]!
If only this were a Magnetic Fields album: 'Can I Get a Witness' is composed by Holland-Dozier-Holland, who are mentioned in 'The Death of Ferdinand de Saussure' (not necessarily positively).
Is that British, or...?: The internet kept referencing 'Walking the Dog' having a sexual double meaning, but they didn't specify what it is, and it wasn't in my beloved wiktionary. A tortured yo-yo trick metaphor?? Finally, metaphordogs.org told me what I wanted to know (="it's unclear"); here is their fine lexicographing if you don't take my word for it:
<<walk the dog. (sex) 1. Have sex. 2. Masturbate. 3. “Well, you drive to the park late at night. You open your car doors and you just lay there. And whoever walks up to the car, it’s on.”
In his hit record of the same name Rufus Thomas promises us that “If you don't know how to do it, I can show you how to walk the dog.” His 1965 performance on American Band Stand is punctuated by whistles and yips. For all the innuendo, this enduring classic (covered by The Who, Aerosmith, and The Rolling Stones among others) provides no specifics.
After a reminder that “the [human] male sexual organ [is] one of the many slang meanings of the word ‘dog,’” Marjorie Garber confidently informs us that walking the dog is “a slang term for sex.” It seems a believable definition, given the sexual overtones of dog references in 60s music (The Dog was said to be a lascivious dance that would prompt immoral thoughts and behaviors) and the use of “doggie style” to describe a position for sexual intercourse. However, examples are elusive. The host of the Baltimore radio show “The Love Zone” on 92Q, LaDawn Black, provided definition number three above, which sounds a lot like dogging or being a dogger. That is to say, it is more specific than Garber's description, which I infer references heterosexual intercourse in general. The Dictionary of Sexual Terms and Expressions’ definition—“jocular coinage for male masturbation”—seems to fit with the reference to dog as penis. However, I find it hard to imagine that Rufus Thomas was singing about how he was willing to demonstrate how to spank the monkey, to mix the animal metaphors.
Maybe it's just all tied up with the sexual connotations of dogs and, as Freud reminds us, “that [a dog] is not ashamed of its sexual functions.”>>
