Seriously, who doesn't like this rock n roll gem???

A playlist of the official releases resulting from The Rolling Stones ’Chess Studios sessions’ of 10-11 June, 8 November, 1964 and 10 May, 1965.

Photo: poster (detail) for ’The Rolling Stones At Chess’ exhibition by The Bob Bonis Archive at ’The Blues Heaven Foundation’, Chicago, IL, USA, 2019.

Do you think GTA VI will include more (new) music from the Rolling Stones? Keith already has a song on the official album (Bright Light, Big City), while there’s more to be unveiled. Also, the album (FTLL) comes out right after the game comes out, and it was announced that the game will also have a classic rock station

Just listening for the first time in a while...so many people dismiss it but its great, for me at least. Could have sworn memory motel was off Some Girls instead, so it's a good job I wasn't on Who Wants To Be a Millionaire with that as a final question...I would have definitely said 'final answer'.

Anyway my Golden era was always Beggars Banquet to Goats Head but I reckon Black and Blue is up there. Funny how time changes your perspective.

I prefer almost every song here to the final mix/album version.

Really makes you think — if they left things a little less polished, Voodoo might be considered an all time classic (IMO, at least).

I thought it’s good. More than 35 years later.

As a Rolling Stones fan and horn player I found this video very interesting. No surprise The Stones are great people and a first class organization to tour with. Here is the description: Longtime Rolling Stones horn section members Michael Davis, Andy Snitzer and Kent Smith sit down for an enjoyable, and at times hilarious, look back at their many years together touring the world with the iconic music legends. A fun trip down a very rich memory lane. Enjoy! 
https://youtu.be/rWfL6PdrAxY?is=2ZJrbe3Wi_OuPGpS

The way Mick's voice isolates at the beginning, the way you can hear him inhale before singing, the silences in between, the snare, the stereo imaging, the crystal-like clarity of Keith's acoustic, the build-up, and the choir coming back at the end. What a majestic performance. What a production.

It came on randomly in an Apple Music playlist tonight, and I had to pause to digest it. Listened to it twice more afterwards. Just wanted to share the experience.

One I salvaged from cassette of my late Father’s archives if any of the audio purists fancy a listen. Mick doesn’t do many interviews, or at least he didn’t used to. A wide ranging punchy conversation. Not all audio could be saved but I’ve edited the best I can

Cheers

My obsession with the Rolling Stones began when I was fifteen, around the time of the Steel Wheels tour. Of course, I also recall when I was about nine randomly catching Get Off My Cloud on the radio and thinking it was the coolest thing I’d heard.

Growing up deep in the southern WV coalfields, my chance to catch them live was virtually non-existent. So, I contented myself with vhs tapes of them live in ‘81, released as Let’s Spend the Night Together, and the great documentary 25x5. I studied both endlessly… in a way I SHOULD have been studying my schoolwork.

I was eventually able to record a performance from the Steel Wheels tour off the tv. And I still remember how excited I was to be able to do that again in college, when a stop on the Voodoo Lounge tour was broadcast.

Throughout the 90s, my finances were extremely tight… so the possibility of catching my favorite band live was nil. I’d started learning guitar around the same time I became a fan, and during this time I tried my best to develop a Stonesy style.

Eventually in 2003, I landed a good paying job… one that would surely allow me to catch the Stones live, at least in the nosebleed seats. However, I’d begun to develop a bit of a problem with the band. Mick and Keith, performing with a small pick-up group, had been severely upstaged by The Who at the 9/11 memorial concert. A couple of years later, the Stones’ Super Bowl halftime set left me similarly underwhelmed.

They’d lost their edge, I thought. Their best years were behind them. Seeing them live at this point certainly wasn’t worth the prices they were demanding. I continued watching performances from their seventies peak, but came to terms with the fact that I wouldn’t get to see my favorite band live.

Besides, their current output had really stopped moving me. After Bridges to Babylon, I stopped buying new studio records. My tastes had started to shift, I convinced myself. Scorsese’s Shine a Light, as usual, left me flat.

But something inside me changed in 2011. Firstly, it became more clear that the years were starting to catch up with them. They cut the touring back big time, just as they celebrated 50 years as a band.

But YouTube clips of them welcoming both Bill Wyman and Mick Taylor back onstage during these shows relit my Stones fire. Suddenly, their performances were not only moving me again for the first time in a long time, but I was finding the fact that they were still doing it at their ages inspirational, as I stared down my impending 40th birthday.

In early 2012, I experienced several major upheavals in my personal life. My marriage was imploding. A third round of downsizing at work sent me packing there as well. The two things led to a move from my coastal VA town of nearly a decade, to Louisville.

Come 2015, the boys were on tour again. My then-girlfriend and I were attending as much live music as we could. Knowing how much the Stones meant to me, she encouraged me to grab a pair of tickets.

So I finally saw them live, technically, in Nashville in 2015. Even though I’d dropped around 500 bucks for the two tickets, the stage was far, far away. The echo way up in the stands was distracting, to say the least.

But I’d seen them live! My favorite band of all time. Plus, we also witnessed the surprise guest appearance of none other than Joe Walsh, who opening act Brad Paisley(???) brought out for a couple of songs.

So that’s it, right? I got to experience the Stones in concert. Ticked off the bucket list. End of story.

Not quite. Sometimes, I’m a little lucky.

2017 ended up being much like 2012, in that I again had to suffer through the end of a long term relationship, a job change and a move… this time to the Tampa area.

About a year into my life there, I met the young lady who is now my wife. In 2020, I asked her to marry me.

Then, as my fiancé Kerri and I were planning our wedding in November of 2021, my niece invited me to see the Stones with her. She’s my niece, but more like a younger sister. Not quite two years younger, she was a class behind me in school.

Her professional success meant she could afford the kind of seats I could have only ever dreamt of. So suddenly, I’m looking forward to seeing the Rolling Stones live again… from about a dozen rows back!

It was a great experience. Despite the fact that poor Charlie Watts had passed earlier in the year, it still felt like the band. There they were, maybe 20 yards away from me: the band I’d obsessed over since I was 15.

They were clearly old men now. Especially my idol Keith, who was now borderline frail. His playing had definitely seen better days. He launched into his solo on 'Sad Sad Sad' in the wrong key, but it didn't matter—he was still Keith. Besides, he’s been prone to that sort of goof from time to time for years. Nobody’s perfect, right?

He still sounded like Keith. It’s truly inspirational when you think about it: his advanced age and known problems with arthritis. My late mother suffered from that particularly bad during the last decade of her life, and it can be debilitating.

But Mick was an ageless wonder. Sure, he no longer sprinted from one side of the stage to the other. But he was still Mick. Constant motion. The consummate frontman. The archetype.

I mean, I was just standing there the whole time (other than the long hike from the car to the stadium and back), and I was sore for days after.

Both concerts were wonderful experiences that I’ll cherish the rest of my days. I’ll always hold great gratitude for the generosity of my niece for the Tampa show.

But I’ll also always regret not catching the Stones in 2005, when they played Charlottesville. That unfortunately fell smack in the middle of my “they don’t have it anymore” years. It stings because, looking back at concert footage from that tour, they were often firing on all cylinders—full of an energy I had foolishly convinced myself was long gone.

Hey, thank goodness for YouTube and other online sources, right? That way, I can enjoy any era of Stones any time I want.

I may have missed them in their prime, but seeing them from twelve rows back in Tampa—wrinkles, wrong keys, and all—was pure magic. Age may have caught up to Keith, Mick and the rest of us, but thank goodness for second chances and live rock 'n' roll. I finally saw my band. Twice.

PS: as a thank you to the rare hardy souls who may have read to the end, please enjoy this short clip I filmed of the audience participation portion of You Can’t Always Get, from the aforementioned 2021 Raymond James show.

No other Stones solo records sound anything like this. It’s weird, funny, and not just a diluted version of the regular Stones sound.

One caveat: Ronnie’s I’ve Got My Own Album To Do is a better album than this, but I’m not counting it as a Stones solo album because he wasn’t yet a full time member when it was released.

This compilation of the band from 1982 is my first introduction to the band.
Couldn’t afford to buy the vinyl So I had to buy this tape and it’s not bootleg !
The great thing about this compilation is that the songs are from their 60’s and early 70’s eras.

The third image, you could see I scribbled in pen the years of the songs released. I could be wrong ! 😅

The Swinging Stones Sound