[gmku]

Don't get me wrong. I was a diehard fan all through the 70s. I bought every album and was really into collecting their boots. I bought multiple copies of Some Girls (b/c of the cover variations). But I remember feeling like my love for the band was only riding on my memory of how great they once were, and on this vain hope that with the next new album surely "they would get it right this time."

I feel that after Exile they stopped anticipating and shaping trends and simply started following them, or worse, simply rehashed what they'd already done. Even with Some Girls, they were just reacting to punk and were certainly not doing anything new for it.

And in light of everything new that was going on--the whole NYC scene with Television, the Dolls, Patti Smith--they seemed so out of touch.

They also stopped being an American r&b band. What made the Taylor period so phenomenal was that they became this really tight r&b band. They really did swing. And they let other influences in too, like gospel and country. They just seemed to shut all that down after Exile and become this closed little corporate band that seemed too tired or too indifferent to keep experiementing and growing.