Just A Shot Away

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No Smoking In Glasgow
2008-10-24 17:38:00
I have probably heard around twenty-five shows from the Bigger Bang tour in bootleg form now. This is one of the better ones for some reason. It is soundboard quality, no crowd noise, great balance. But what really attracted me was the great version of Sway. The RS messageboards were going a bit nuts when the band unleashed Sway during the last tour and I was excited to hear it too. I have one other version from the Stateside tour, but the Glasgow version is superior due to the bigger guitar sound that I think the song needs. It has more swing in this version. I know that my Rolling Stones writing output has been sporadic at best throughout 2008. I never followed up on Shine A Light, but it was an amazing experience I should have written about. I really felt like I had seen the band after the film was over. I saw at the Imax as I imagine it was meant to be seen and I wish I had gone back. At the same time, the film made me a bit sad. Although the band always tries hard to come acros...
More About: Smoking , No smoking

Shine A Light
2008-03-28 03:37:00
I'm not sure if I'm looking forward to Shine A Light or not. As you can see from my lack of updates, I may have burned out on the Stones temporarily. Also, the madness surrounding the Led Zeppelin reunion last fall sent me into a vortex of Zeppelin material from which I am only now emerging. So having burned out on my obsessive tracking of the Bigger Bang tour, I'm uncertain about revisiting it, although the Beacon shows filmed for Shine A Light are clearly out of the ordinary. First of all, the setlist is something we haven't seen in decades. Because I am rather oblivious to the illegality of it all, I downloaded the soundtrack this afternoon and had a listen. I need more time to digest it though. It sounded totally different than Live Licks, but maybe this is a good thing? More ragged, more strung out. On the other hand, I had a creeping fear that perhaps the band itself sounded played out. Is it possible? I need more time. In any case, I'll be out next weekend to see the fil...
More About: Shine a Light

Bootleg Review: Rogers Centre, Toronto, September 25, 2005
2007-05-18 01:11:00
I have been looking for this for a year and a half. Its the last Rolling Stones show I was at and I have been dying to hear it again through fresh ears, without the crowd noise, without the massive Bigger Bang spectacle. Getting this made me happier than any other download and my sincere thanks go out to whoever took the steps to get this from the soundboard to my computer. I have no idea what is actually involved, but now I am in my apartment listening to this very high quality soundboard recording. The crowd noise is minimal but present, otherwise the sound quality is amazing. The mix is intact with backing vocals and horn sections totally audible. The only oddity is that sometimes Keith's guitar drops out and Ronnie is more audible, but not by much. The vocals are clear and upfront. I have to say that I don't remember the show sounding so clear, but this is the cavernous Rogers Centre (nee Skydome) and you can only hope for the best. Start Me Up and then You Got Me Rocking. I h...
More About: Review , Toronto , Bootleg , September

Love?
2007-02-25 00:47:00
In university I took a history of rock n' roll class. It was taught by musicologist Victor Coelho. He was one of the few really interesting teachers at the University of Calgary and his rock history class was a riot. But it was also maddening because Coelho would sometimes profess with certainty (as professors tend to do) on topics in rock n' roll that I thought were open to extremely broad interpretation. While he seemed to know his stuff when it came to the Rolling Stones, he made one claim that still strikes me as wrong. When the topic of love and the Rolling Stones came up, Coelho said he believed that with only two exceptions, the Rolling Stones never used the word 'love' in their songwriting. I'm not bringing this up merely to be a stickler for details, but my immediate reaction would have to be that on this detail he was wrong. The Rolling Stones make constant reference to love in their writing. A cursory glance at song titles indicates that the word drops in from one al...
More About: Love

How Much Bigger?
2007-02-02 06:53:00
It's now well into 2007 and I am still waiting on concrete news about further Rolling Stone shows this year. It seems clear that the band will return to Europe this summer. However, being essentially selfish, all I care about is the possibility of more North American shows. It is true that I enjoy the fact that the band is playing anywhere. It became my ritual to log into rollingstones.com in the mornings and check the setlist if they had been onstage the night before. It also provides the opportunity to find fresh bootlegs and the exciting prospect of adding a 2007 section to my collection. Popular opinion seems to be that there won't be more American shows this year. This leaves me with the morose and uncomfortable prospect of waiting for the next tour and counting on my fingers the possibility that this won't happen until 2008 or 2009. This is utterly depressing. The few things that brighten the prospect are possible Mick Jagger solo projects, the requisite live album from the...
More About: Much

Start Me Up
2007-01-19 00:33:00
The first three seconds of this video seem like a skit on Saturday Night Live. I'm quite sure it wasn't any different in 1981 when this was released. Mick's outfit is totally ridiculous and the dance moves are worse. But as soon as the vocals start it all works, and I'm at a loss to really explain why. Part of it is probably the pure theatrics of Mick's facial expression. He takes the piss by acting like an ass, but then committs to it so completely that the performance becomes bullet proof. The rest of the band is basically along for the ride on this one. Keith and Ronnie are strangely affable on the backup vocals and actually contribute to a satisfying esprits de corps through their enthusiasm. The video cuts to the requisite shot of Charlie smirking and retiring on drums, and the whole surreal experience is completed by a bizarrely attired Bill in the background looking like he showed up for a court date. Seriously, this has to be the worst Rolling Stones outfit of all time ...
More About: Start , Star , Tart

Considering Voodoo Lounge
2007-01-13 06:24:00
Voodoo Lounge was released when I was 14 years old. It was the first Rolling Stones album I heard in its entirety. It even had a video that made the band look cool (if not larger than life.) Because it loomed so largely over my early days listening to the band I wanted to start a series of album reflections here. The band had been inactive enough in the early nineties for the release of a new album to be considered major news. Released to radio on July 12, the lead single Love is Strong was considered such an event that CBC radio played the song following its regular morning news. So I heard the new single sitting in the kitchen with my mom. My mother was intuitive enough to give me the new disc a week later for my birthday. At the time my Stones catalogue contained only the strange Made In the Shade compilation from the seventies and in my idiocy I had no way to contextualize the new material. At the time, Rolling Stone magazine upheld their long tradition of bestowing the a new St...
More About: Ring , Side , Cons , Voodoo

Bootleg Review: Tokyodome 2006!
2007-01-02 04:40:00
When the Rolling Stones played the Tokyo dome in March 2006, somewhere in the audience was the one millionth fan to see the band at this particular venue. This is the type of statistic that seems relatively meaningless except for its pure abstract shock value and in driving home the point that the Stones have played Tokyo an awful lot.This recording is the first of two shows and unfortunately, is the less interesting setlist. But! It's still a good quality recording and a few things stand out. After a rousing Jumpin' Jack Flash, in the second slot, rarely played since the Bridges to Babylon tour, is Let's Spend the Night Together.Chuck's piano drove earlier live versions of this but the 2006 version is more ragged and gritty due to the somewhat inconsistent anchoring guitar on the familiar riff. It really works in all this ragged glory.The band sounds loose and upbeat and the recording suffers only from the fact that the backup vocals are nearly lost. Lisa gets a bit of help from...
More About: Review , Bootleg , View , Boot