The Rolling Stones are the Most Overrated Legendary Rock Band of All Time.

So unless you've just returned from a summer-long missions trip to Tasmania, you've probably heard that the Rolling Stones are touring again. It's probably the big music news of the summer, and has got every radio deejay in any major city (even Pittsburgh!) simply drunk with giddiness. Ticket prices at the venues in our area started at $250 for floor level seats--and that's through TicketMaster, not even scalped yet!

I can only speculate as to your thoughts on the subject, if indeed you have any. If you're like me, you were born too early to have caught any part of the Stones' heyday, but you were born at such a time as to witness the band making (one can only hope, for their own sakes) maybe their last go-round, without exception being celebrated by the masses for their collective body of work.

If you're even more like me, you don't understand the fuss. In fact, if you are me, you think the Rolling Stones are perhaps the most overrated legendary rock band ever.

There is no doubt they are a legendary band. The fact that they have been around, practically unchanged since before man walked on the moon, grants them undisputed legend status. The fact that they can put on a show more than forty years after their first album earns my respect. I just don't think they're quite as great as so many people make them out to be.

I love a lot of Rolling Stones' songs--there might even be four or five that would crack a list of my 100 favourite songs. My complaint with the hubbub about the Stones is not the same as my confusion about the legendary status of Jim Morrison as "An American Poet"--at least I realize the Stones are a good band.

I don't even think I'm in the dark because I didn't live when they were in their prime, when they were revolutionary. This is similar to how people say "The Graduate" was a ground-breaking film in it's day but now isn't worth the price of a rental. Deejays don't build up the Stones as a band that changed rock n roll forever and therefore we should still celebrate them today. Deejays frequently call the Stones the greatest rock n roll band ever. I just don't get it.

Mick Jagger is great as a frontman. He's never not been ugly, and is altogether lacking as a lyricist, but is still a good lead guy to have. Keith Richards is even uglier then Mick and doesn't even hold a candle to any of the truly great guitarists of his day.

The Rolling Stones boast an ok frontman and an ordinary lead guitarist; as a group they haven't done enough to be considered revolutionary; as musicians they haven't had much success straying from their formulaic, almost predictable core style; and they've only just barely survived a rock scene in their lifetime that often was unhealthy enough to make them the only band left standing.

It seems to me that the only thing they really have going for them is that they've lasted. They're sixty-something and people are paying thousands of dollars to be in their audience for a few hours. It's beyond me, but it's one thing I can't knock them for. They sell. They've always sold.

Just please don't make them out to be more than they are. It grates my ears to hear deejays proclaim them the greatest rock n roll band of all time, or introduce "Satisfaction" as the greatest rock n roll song of all time. They're a good band that has lasted. Nothing more.