Compared to the likes of the Beatles, the Kinks, or the Who, I don't have a whole lot of the Stones in my library. This is not because I hate them, but probably more to do with the fact that their early catalog is a mess. It wasn't uncommon to have different releases in the UK and US, but the Rolling Stones (or their management) took this to ridiculous levels. If you want a complete catalog, you basically need to buy every album up though Between the Buttons (plus Flowers for good measure) twice. Also problematic is the band's reliance of cover material, which dominates all albums prior to Aftermath. The Jagger/Richards writing team was slow to develop.
December's Children is a fine album, but the Stones had gone about as far as they could under their old image. It's super short (under 1/2 hour). The studio tracks sound restrained, and not just because we have the gift of hindsight, knowing that bigger and better things were ahead. The two live cuts have so much fire in them that it does a disservice to the studio material. Finally it lack cohesiveness. Even the band is on record calling it just a collection of songs. Even with all of this said, the Rolling Stones enjoyed the power of name recognition, second only to the Beatles. The original material (on side 2) shows signs of improvement over some of the previous albums. As for the covers, they're a lot of fun.
Aftermath, released the following year, showed a lot of changes and the beginning of a golden age for the band. Their fling with psychedelia wouldn't last more than a couple years, but the albums up through at least Exile on Main St. (and arguably Goat's Head Soup) all far outclass the quality of their earlier work, plus you only need to worry about one edition of each. It gets spotty after that. I'm not exactly going to kill myself to add Tattoo You to my collective anytime soon. The glory days may be long over for the Stones, but amazingly they continue to troop on fifty years down the road.
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