So Mick Jagger sat down with Larry King last night to discuss the 30th-something-anniversary reissue (or is it a re-reissue?) of Exile On Main Street. Mick was the one on the left.

I’m not bitter. Like most Stones fans, I love Exile and I’m always happy when a track like “Loving Cup” or “Ventilator Blues” comes up on shuffle. And the extra tracks, alternate takes, overdubs and even the postcards are something I’d like to listen to (or look at) at least once. (The inevitable DVD about the making of comes out next month.)

But can we stop with the endless rehash, even if actual hash was involved in the making of the album? One of the things that made the music on Exile so great was that kind of murky, funky, tossed-off quality of the songs. (Lines like “Judge and jury walk out hand in hand,” or “The sunshine bores the daylights out of me” still bubble up out of the gumbo, some discernible for the first time.) In fact Mick, twit that he sometimes is, used to complain that the album could have been better if they’d polished it more.

By going back and enshrining all of rock’s sloppy first drafts (the Sun Sessions, London Calling et al) we run the risk of losing the flavor, and certainly the fun, of the originals. Part of the Exile myth is that the Stones were exiled from England, dodging the tax man in the south of France, making music for themselves. Like the story of the Basement Tapes, this idea of a band making music for art’s sake is endearing, and enduring. (Albert Grossman was actually eagerly awaiting new Dylan songs to sell to artists anxious to cover them.) Getting all nostalgic about that supposed spontaneity kind of kills the myth, no?

But maybe that’s what rock is spozed to do.