1,362,897 @ 12:55 am July 6, 2019
The
Rolling Stones: Bridges to Bremen
Review
by Joe Viglione
The Rolling Stones will be in Foxboro
Massachusetts July 7, 2019, two nights from this Friday evening July 5. You are reading the etchings of one of the people who
most appreciates the Stones’ “Golden Age” from 1968 to 1973 when
they could do no wrong. Full disclosure – I represented their producer Jimmy
Miller starting in 1983 with contracts that extended up to his passing in 1994 –
which kind of confirms the above noted point about devotion and appreciation.
On paper the September 2nd,
1998 concert from “the final leg of the band’s Bridges To Babylon tour” sounds
like a winner, and in some respects it is. The set is impeccably filmed, some of the
best Stones footage –with truly delightful camera angles that you’ll ever find
on a Stones’ DVD. And the entire band
along with backing chicks and their countrified “Tumbling Dice” got it down
pat. After all these years they’d better.
But therein lies the problem.
In
record production there’s something that I call “catching the butterfly.” Capturing the butterfly is the intuitive
intangible that is delivered in both the performance and capturing that
performance on tape; in mixing it properly and then in mastering it
properly. Get Yer Ya-Ya’s Out has
it. The bootleg that ostensibly forced out Ya-Ya's - Live'r Than
You'll Ever Be has it ("Gimme Shelter" sounds like The Stones
copying The Velvet Underground copying The Stones on that Oakland concert
classic,) and the hit single "Tumblin' Dice" most definitely has it. On Bremen it is like watching a slow-motion
repeat of one of your favorite songs, pretty decorations but the feel has
evaporated. Heck, Linda Ronstadt’s 45 RPM of the song might have been sterile
and lame, but she made up for it with an exquisite rendition from the film FM -
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2I7GkHy5iOA Play this movie version – which of course was color by
the numbers live onstage. It sounds and feels like the real deal. They “caught
the butterfly.”
On Bridges
to Bremen all the butterflies are caught by the terrific camera people. This is a beautifully filmed movie with an
audio that has the butterflies all fleeing.
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The great
Jimmy Miller walked in to the house at Dragon Court in Woburn he saw me with
headphones on in the living room. “What
are you doing?” he asked. “I’m listening
to “Tumbling Dice” extra loud, it’s my favorite song by you.” Jimmy looked at me and said jokingly “I never
want to hear that song again! Mick made
me mix it about forty-five times.”
Jagger’s been quoted as saying “they used the wrong mix,” but from
someone outside his perspective, it is absolutely the right mix. As I told
Miller “the chicks wailing, the sounds colliding” (paraphrasing myself thirty
plus years on…it’s just a masterpiece of record production, it caught the
butterfly, and many other butterflies of other species along with it.
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Bridges To
Bremen – as much as I love a variety of mutations of a song – and because I do,
it’s important to have this in the collection, it simply does not excite the way a needle dropping on "She's A Rainbow" on a turntable brings a serious tingle to the senses.
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It
does not make one jump up and go crazy, it is a carefully constructed Las Vegas
show (in Germany but you get the idea) that has nothing to do with the Mick
Taylor/Jimmy Miller/ Golden Age of the Rolling Stones.
Joe V with Stones' guitarist Mick Taylor
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It won’t
matter to the 90s generation or the current generation, the genius of Beggars
Banquet, Let It Bleed, Sticky Fingers, Exile on Main St., the bootleg Taxile on
Main Street, Ya-Ya’s, Live’r Than You’ll Ever Be, these masterpieces of music,
these Beethoven/Bach/Mozart Rock & Roll artifacts – especially on the
original vinyl – have the depth, the majesty, the sense of revelation, the
excitement that makes you want to jump up and down and sing along. And not in the artificial way that Tom Cruise
jumped on Oprah’s couch.
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In Bridges
To Bremen Jagger is NOT Oprah-couch-jumping.
He’s quite good. He should be, he’s one of the greatest front men of all
time with a lot of practice decades after being one of the greatest front men
of all time. You wouldn’t want to tangle with Mick, Madonna or Beyonce or Lady
Gaga, unless in a duet. Jagger is wise beyond his years…and his years are
beyond most people’s years. He is
Lucifer, the Dark Angel of Music …see Proverbs: chapter 23, verse 7:
"As a man thinketh in his heart, so is he" Jagger projected the devil image, and the devil he is. Only now he wants big bucks while going through the motions. Lots of new product to sell on the 2019 tour, and why not? But the Stones have so much more to offer and what the fans want (A true boxed set of so much unreleased magical music...) the Stones ain't selling just yet.
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In this 1998 video Lucifer Mick is taking it
easy. The menacing bad boy that was once
every parent’s nightmare is entertaining those parents and their parents and
anyone who survived the sixties hanging on for the last moments, one last time
of seeing the Rolling Stones in concert before they cross over to the other
side.
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The late Jo
Jo Laine (see what I mean about crossing over...the late Jo Jo Laine, the late Jimmy Miller...) and I caught the Stones at Foxboro in September of 1995, twenty-four
years ago. The Stones were so tiny miles away onstage at
the stadium – and so far removed from the historic 1972 Boston show where the
mayor, Kevin White, came out for his infamous “My city’s in flames” speech. I
was there. 2nd row. Took some
of Mick Jagger’s roses home with me and kept them in plastic …God knows where
they are now in some storage facility… That was rock and roll. That was a
machine that crunched and rocked and was sloppy and superb all at once. That
was a midnight concert for the midnight rambler as the Stones had been arrested
in Rhode Island and we had to wait for hours for them to get to Boston.
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YOU TUBE
LIKE A ROLLING STONE
YOU TUBE
LIKE A ROLLING STONE
This is the full-length show performed by the Rolling Stones on the
fifth and final leg of the Bridges To Babylon Tour, at Weserstadion on
September 2, 1998.
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SPENDING WAY TOO MUCH TIME ON THIS REVIEW
IT'S NOW 2:38 AM, I'VE BEEN WORKING ON IT SINCE AROUND
9:30 PM JUNE 5. THE REST OF THE REVIEW YOU CAN READ IN TMR ZOO...THIS IS JUST A TASTE FOR OUR MEDFORD INFO READERS...
- (I Can’t Get No) Satisfaction
- Let’s Spend The Night Together
- Flip The Switch
- Gimme Shelter
- Anybody Seen My Baby?
- Paint It Black
- Saint Of Me
- Out Of Control
- Memory Motel
- Miss You
- Thief In The Night
- Wanna Hold You
- Its Only Rock ‘n’ Roll (But I Like It)
- You Got Me Rocking
- Like A Rolling Stone
- Sympathy For The Devil
- Tumbling Dice
- Honky Tonk Women
- Start Me Up
- Jumpin’ Jack Flash
- You Can’t Always Get What You Want
- Brown Sugar
- Rock And A Hard Place
- Under My Thumb
- All About You
- Let It Bleed
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