The Rolling Stones catalogue has just been released on iTunes, and a quick perusal of it makes a few things obvious.

1) They used to be really good.
2) They suck now. Can anyone name a song off, say, the past six records they’ve made?
3) It’s very likely that they’ve put out more greatest hits albums than they’ve put out albums of new material.
4) They are corporate whores.

Actually, I don’t mention number four because of iTunes, but because of the excruciatingly bad Ameriquest ads all over television at the moment. They feature a guy in a suit who’s supposed to be in the front rows of a Stones concert—and boy, there’s a telling image—although I think the crowd is actually superimposed on footage of the Stones playing. He’s talking about how Ameriquest, which is a mortgage company, is sponsoring the new Rolling Stones tour.

This is such a bummer for so many reasons….

I guess there’s a certain appropriateness to the fact that a rock and roll tour by a group of sexagenarians is being sponsored by a mortgage company. But for the consumer, what exactly does sponsorship mean? Other than a barrage of poorly-produced ads?

The Rolling Stones were, if memory serves, the first band ever to have a tour sponsored. Back in 1981, Jovan Musk (also high on the list of deeply uncool sponsors) paid the band $500,000 to underwrite the tour. Since then, Budweiser and Sprint have paid significantly more.

The band originally explained this sell-out as a way of keeping ticket prices down, but that’s a rationale they don’t even try to throw against the wall anymore, because they know it won’t stick. Every time they hit the road, the Stones charge the highest ticket prices in the world of music—face value for Stones tickets is often in the hundreds of dollars.

If these guys have managed their money well, they must all be worth in the nine figures. And yet, they constantly debase their reputation (sponsorship, playing corporate gigs and birthday parties, licensing their songs) in their lust for lucre. How much money do you need to be happy? How much is enough?

The idea that rock ‘n roll is a pure art form, free of commercial corruption, has of course never been true. But there are degrees. The Rolling Stones make me respect even more artists like Bruce Springsteen, Neil Young and Tom Petty, who a) don’t accept sponsorship and would never let their music appear in ads, and b) manage to keep their ticket prices down nonetheless.

I have this naive idea that greed is wrong (which is one reason I can’t watch “The Apprentice“). It often makes me feel alienated from mainstream American culture. But it also makes me really appreciate people in high places who feel the same way.

Next on the musical whore list: Sheryl Crow.