12 X 5 (1964)

"Time Is on My Side" One of the things that never fails to astonish me about the Stones is how quickly they sounded so self-assured—and so good. This is only their second album (approximately: as with the Beatles and other transcontinental artists of the time, their US and UK releases run down two separate, imperfectly matched trails) and they are basically all the way there, a first-rate blues band with a knack for the surprising effect, well past simply aping the old 78s and Chess singles they had spent their brief lifetimes collecting, whether it's the sounds Keith Richards and Brian Jones casually wring, the odd vocal conceit of Mick Jagger's that is unfailingly dead-on, and always, always the solid bottom of the rhythm section, which even in 1964 was clearly going to be one of the all-time best in the business. (For comparison, see the Animals of the time, or even better, or worse, the Who.) Already the Stones had no place to go but down, but incredibly, they had a long road ahead of them of continuing to go up. Consider: this album was just about the point when manager Andrew Loog Oldham had begun to convince Jagger and Richards, who would eventually become their own personal hit-making factory, to even try their hand at songwriting. Except for three fledgling efforts, this is an album of covers. But I defy anyone to point to any album of covers not by the Rolling Stones that is even remotely as confident and accomplished. (What's more, they've got more than one of these from the early days.)