The Faces were one of the great unsung bands of the late 60s/early 70s.

And they're getting back together after close to 40 years apart.

This will either be really great or really disastrous.

I saw a blip somewhere saying that they had been playing in a rehearsal studio in London.

Wasn't the joy of the Faces that there were disastrous and great? Ronnie Lane will be missed.

I'm betting on "disastrous." I think Ronnie Wood will more than hold up his end of the bargain. Anybody who saw Scorsese's Shine a Light knows that he can still bring it. I have no such confidence in Rod the Once Mod. There have been too many years and too many shmaltzy standards albums in between, and Rod's last half-hearted attempt at "rock" (2006's Still the Same (umm, not really) was tepid at best.

I'm not sure about the "unsung" part of that first sentence, Josh. I, along with about 90,000 other people, saw The Faces as the headliners at an outdoor show in old Cleveland Stadium in the early '70s. They were quite well known, and Rod was a superstar/superstud. But that was a long, long time ago.

They were definitely popular at the time... but how many people know them today? Are their albums even still in print?

Amazon shows:

Long Player
Oh La La
A Nod is as Good As a Wink to a Blind Horse
The "best of": Nice Boys When They're Asleep
The 4 Cd set 5 Guys Walk into a Bar
and
First Step

It might just be the neighborhood I live in but Oh La La is on the jukebox at my favorite pint dispensary. It is a hang out for the one speed bike crowd and a pretty good selection of indie rockers.

With due respect to the wonderful Ian MacLagan (a good pal): There can be no Faces reunion without Ronnie Lane R. Wood can't even play guitar anymore and Stewart is a caricature of himself. Mac must need the dough, but this is simply a bad dream. Ronnie was the soul of that band as well as its best songwriter. This is just a damn shame.

Given that most reunions are cash grabs after years of creative bankruptcy (and a reunion by The Faces would certainly fit that bill), I'd still go see it. They were that good and really set a bedrock for my musical tastes since. And while I'll agree that Rod Stewart has fallen from further from grace that just about any 70's rocker, the notion that he was not at least as important to the Faces essence, soul and charm as Ronnie Lane seems like revisionist history. Kill him all you want for the last 30+ years, but the dude was almost without peer as a frontman from 1968 to 1975.

Anyone my age -- 24 -- who knows the Faces at all likely first heard them through Rushmore, which is the only thing I know about them. "Ooh La La" does seem to be a pretty popular jukebox pick in hipster bars.