Easy Sleazy – Mick Jagger With Dave Grohl

Rule one: Rock and Roll is meant to be fun.

Back when I was deep in the seven day sludgefest of B-Movies Week, I featured Too Much Blood by popular beat combo The Rolling Stones. Taken from their album Undercover I inferred they’d spent a portion of the late seventies and early eighties *ahem* going disco. I said it. I know what I said. Mick, Keef, Charlie, Guys… What If? What if they’d gone the Other way? What If The Stones had been down on their luck? What if they weren’t draped in supermodels and couture by 1977? What if they were Angry, snotty, ripe and ready to rip it up with the punk scene. Yes my time travelling friends. With special guest co-star Lord Davith of Grohl in this Episode or Dr. ForTheDeaf we reverse the polarities and fly the SFTD through a worm hole where ‘The Stones Go Punk’. Or Mick does at least.

“We took it on the chin, numbers were so grim, bossed around by pricks, stiffened upper lips”

There have been early signs of a punk influence in The Rolling Stones Discography… If you’re living life backwards like some Benjamin Button that is. I think Mick realises they missed out on some fun not throwing in with the ‘fuck this and fuck that’ crowd. As early as 2012 the band were making a late attempt at teenage rebellion by stropping about with Doom And Gloom. Mr Rock And Roll Rolodex Dave Grohl got Mick to have another bite at the rotten apple just last week with the flip side to The Stones “Lock Down Part One” anthem Living In A Ghost Town. Coming along a year later and sounding a damned sight less sanguine about the whole affair. This ones got no Keef but it’s got teef. Ranting about the shambles in charge, the facebook misinformation set, the boredom and how irritating video calling can be, Jagger is getting it all off his chest while Dave energetically rushes around his mixing desk being all things to a rock god that he can be. It’s not the virus that’s got Mick’s blood up though. It’s the Covidiots. The general public. What a bunch of bastards eh? The gist of this whole endeavour is ‘Shut up and take the bloody Vaccine’. I for one support this message wholeheartedly.

“Bill Gates is in my blood stream, it’s mind control, the Earth is flat and it’s never warming up”

With Grohl on drums, bass and guitar, Mick has an absolute ball screaming about everything that’s pissed him off in the last year. Reading along with the lyric video is like a scatter gun stand up observational comedy skit. “What is it with the fake applause at the lockdown football games? I gotta tell ya” That kind of thing.

“Looking at the graphs with a magnifying glass, cancel all the tours, footballs fake applause”

How hilarious is it hearing arguably the greatest front man in rock and roll rhyming “Took a Zumba Class” with “Landed on My Arse”? In my opinion. Pretty bloomin’ hilarious. If you see rock and roll for the play thing it is, then this tune is a riot. If you’re critiquing it as an artistic statement made by two ageing multimillionaires who owe the world their success and are mistaking arsing about on zoom for rebel spirit I would suggest you have forgotten rule number one.

“Trying to write a tune you better hook me up to zoom, see my poncey books, I’m learning how to cook”

Non-Fungible-Tokens aside, as a tossed off lark this song is all win. As a state of the nation, sign of the times, punk polemic I think it’s washed it’s face. I know both artists probably order meals that cost more than the budget for recording decent punk albums. I don’t care. Rule one is the only rule that counts. I had fun. What’s wrong with being fungible anyway?