Since 1971, those with the most casual interest in The Rolling Stones have tended to select Hot Rocks 1964 - 1971 to satisfy that curiosity. Although it skates over the group's early R&B rampages and their ever-intriguing dalliance with psychedelia, Hot Rocks does a pretty good job of hitting the Stones' most-wanted classics. All of the big hits that went top-five in the U.S. during the represented years are represented, as are essential phased cookies such as "Under My Thumb", "Play with Fire", "Gimme Shelter", and "Sympathy for the Devil". Yes, it is missing such majors as "The Last Time", "It's All Over Now", "She's a Rainbow", and "Have You Seen Your Mother, Baby, Standing in the Shadow?", but some things had to be held in reserve to hook the more adventurous More Hot Rocks released just in time for Christmas the following year.
Because its contents are so obvious, Hot Rocks may not be the album serious Stones collectors most covet, but ABKCO's new Record Store Day edition is certainly pitched at them. Newly remastered by Bob Ludwig, the RSD edition arrives on translucent yellow vinyl and includes groovy printed inner sleeves and two lithographs featuring images from Michael Joseph's 1968 photoshoot that yielded the back cover photo: a full color outtake and a black and white contact sheet.
The remastering is a touch bright, but it generally sounds nice and clear on quiet, flat, well-centered vinyl. After the opening two tracks, both of which are presented in very wide stereo mixes, every track through "19th Nervous Breakdown" is in mono. Unfortunately, Ludwig uses the thin alternate mix of that particular track that previously appeared on the Stray Cuts disc in 2016's Rolling Stones in Mono box set. If that doesn't put you off, this edition is certainly preferable to the original release which used a good deal of abominable fake stereo.
