the faces

listening to kcrw at work today, i was surprised to hear "bad 'n' ruin" by the faces. this was the band, a kind of sloppy-drunk poor man's rolling stones, with whom rod stewart -- hard to believe there was once a time when i didn't loathe and detest the ground he, aka "mr. whining-about-'why-haven't-_i_-won-a-grammy yet?'," slithered across -- hedged his bets while waiting to see whether his solo career was viable, and ron wood (of whom we used to say, "he's either a really a great guy or he has _really_ good dope, 'cos he's the sloppiest mothafuckin' gtrist _alive_") marked time before getting a full-time job as keef richards' shadow.

previously, as the small faces, the other three had gone from amphetamine-gobbling mod r&b poseurs to acid-addled fairytale popsters and incidentally made some decent music before steve marriott (whose hectoring, histrionic vocal style i once admired) decided to go form humble pie with, um, peter frampton and just be awful (although i'll admit i still drive faster on those ever-rarer occasions when "i don't need no doctor" or "hot 'n' nasty" comes on the radio). for what it's worth, echoes of the stewart-fronted, not-small faces can be heard in the work of such worthies as the replacements, the georgia satellites, the yayhoos, and being there-era wilco. in a just universe, the good-timey faces' shadow would loom as large as those of their bad-timey contemporaries black sabbath and the velvet underground.

i almost split my sides laughing last year, reading the collective rockcrits of the world losing their load over the not-inexpensive faces boxset five guys walk into a bar, 'cos one thing i haven't forgotten about their records (which i haven't owned in years; i don't even know if they're individually cd-available) is how uneven they were. sitting at work, though, grooving to their streaming sounds through my tiny computer speaker, i could experience all that was best about 'em without having to spend a dime or punch through any dreck. hooray for the internet.