Why?

I'm forty-eight years old.

I've never listened to (or purchased) a Rolling Stones album in my life.

Why?

Many reasons.  They're not my thing.  Beatles or Stones?  Beatles. Pride. Ignorance. Just don't care. Life is too short.  Which is strange, because I've purchased albums of other artists who I've never cared for to see what, if anything, I might be missing.  Bruce Springsteen comes to mind as an example.* So does Prince.**

The 'Stones came up on some random playlist on the interwebs the other day.  It might have been YouTube or Pandora, but it was probably Amazon's music service which flows though the tele into the stereo into my family room.  An album is a click away, and so I clicked and added "Sticky Fingers," to my subscription, an album I remember for the vulgar intent of its cover, depicting and even providing an actual zipper embedded therein for purposes of, well, you get it, going back in time to regarding it as a mid-teen (15 years of age? 17?) in Strawberries, Nashua "mall," ca. early 80s.  The album itself, it turns out, was released in 1971, me just a toddler of a Toadroller, somewhere in Ohio; most likely in Dayton near an Osinski domicile, not a resident of Plumwood Road.

And so, this evening, as I relaxed from a Sunday of Maine-styled roof-shoveling and errand-running and oil-changing and who knows what-all, reviewing the internet's denizens' definitions of capitalism and economic paradigms and generally making a rage against General Theory, I listened to "Sticky Fingers" from start to finish.

Not bad.  Bluesy, swaggery, sloppy, hardly polished and slick, but in the best way, and decent in attitude.

I'll listen again.

*Shame on me.  I've bought them, on vinyl even, but still haven't given them the "spin" that vinyl affords.
** Prince, it turns out, was awesome.