From what's now more or less accepted as their peak period, certainly as a live act, this composite of two 1972 North American concerts made for a great in-flight movie on a recent trip home, courtesy of my Ipod.Okay, said composite makes for one or two costume-continuity problems, but the set is obviously as-played and has a natural flow not to say verve as it kicks off with "Brown Sugar" and later hits the home straight courtesy of the 1-2 knockout punch of "Jumping Jack Flash" and "Street Fighting Man" at the close.It helps of course that the band was showcasing, with hindsight, their last great album "Exile On Main Street", seven songs of which get aired and otherwise they focus on the golden 1968 - 1972 period exclusively (even "Satisfaction" doesn't make it onto the play-list). The song selection probably owes as much to a due deference to the stronger post Decca/Abcko Jimmy Miller produced material, as well as a sop to recent inductee Mick Taylor, who takes most of the leads here.Musically, not everything comes off - "You Can't Always Get What You Want" gets reduced to a big chorus, the verses lacking the debauched irony of the studio cut while "Gimme Shelter" as wrongly ignores the female counterpoint vocal as the mistaken inclusion of brass, but there are many riches elsewhere. The 100 mph takes on "Happy", "All Down The Line" and "Rip This Joint" amply demonstrate the band's enthusiasm for these newly-minted "Exile" classics, while this year's enthusiastic dues-paying Chuck Berry re-tread is "Bye Bye Johnny" (it was "Let It Rock" the year before). "Midnight Rambler" too finds an inflamed Jagger on his knees, whipping the stage with his belt in the blood-curdling mid-section.As a movie, there's not much to comment on. There are many camera-settings which helps maintain viewer interest with scant audience reaction shots and the amphitheatre-sized setting (as opposed to latter-day arena-sized stagings) means Mick doesn't have to run about so much and we get a satisfying number of shots of the whole band in the one frame. Oh and Keith looks great before he aged a hundred years (and slowed down accordingly) around the turn of the 80's.This is a great document of the self-proclaimed world's greatest rock and roll band in their prime, pretty much all killer and no filler. As a concert-movie it's more run-of-the-mill, compared to modern day standards, but here without the wholly unnecessary guest star shots, not to mention star director turn of the most recent Stones concert film (which won't be the last!) the focus here is on the music and Stones fans will surely love it, just like I did!

Yes ladies and gentlemen this is the best live concert footage ever of the rolling stones. You see what the stones are all about. The band at it's peak, the songs are played the way they should be played, Mick and Keith sing Dead Flowers, Happy and You Can't Alway's Get What You Want, together on the same microphone which you never see and they work together brilliantly. Also, with Mick Taylor on board what can I say......He really completes the band. The albums he made with the band are easily the best ever and this concert shows just how good he is and how he made the band complete. Take nothing away from Brian and ronnie, but I think Mick Taylor was the best. I have a copy and this concert is a must for stones fans and I hope soon they will remaster and release it as we all eagerly await.

What a great movie. What really steals the show (so to speak) is the soundtrack. Good golly, does it get any better than this? OK, Frank Zappa's "Baby Snakes" is almost as good. This movie is as good as it gets. The star-studded cast is everything it needs. It's an ambitious movie and it lives up to its potential, right to the very last Mick Taylor guitar guitar solo which closes it out. Breathtaking!!!The high point of this brilliant movie occurs not too far into the picture when they do "Tumbling Dice". And the apex there is (of course) the guitar solo played so deftly by Mick Taylor. And as if the song were the microcosm of the movie, the close of the song with Keith pumping out the chorded rhythms and Mick Taylor playing the single-note lines of the same, it gently lands and breaks, just like a Lear Jet coming home.Before this great song, a couple of songs back, the plot thickens with "Gimme Shelter". Again, it's the soundtrack riding high, adding to the movie's aural texture. The staging of the song is cool. At almost the right time the big spotlight turns on Mick Taylor as his soling (but not him) takes center stage as the main focus of the song. Wow! This alone is worth the price of admission.See this movie. Put on your dancing shoes, chuck the popcorn and list3en closely, following every single note.

Like so many other Stones projects which involved onetime financial mastermind Allen Klien, 'Ladies & Gentlemen...' remains commercially unavailable due to the heaps of legal red tape tying it up, which is too bad because the film documents the immortal Rolling Stones at or near the very height of their powers.With the violent Altamont debacle still fresh in everyone's memory, the band had fled England for the Cote' d'Azur in southern France as rock & roll's first tax exiles. It was there, in Keith Richard's £2,400-a-week seaside rental property, that the band created 'Exile on Main Street', their first and only double album, recorded in a sweaty, humid basement amid a hazy, narcotic swirl of Bacchanalian excess.Dubbed the 'STP Tour', the band barnstormed across North America during June and July of 1972 selling out arenas everywhere, partly on the strength of their then-newest release and partly due to rising speculation that this would be the band's last road trip ever. The STP Tour was one of the first to usher in now-commonplace practices such as using dozens of semi-trailers to haul around a custom-made stage, a massive construct of rented lights, speakers and cables, not to mention a small army of technicians, security goons and bean counters getting it from place to place. The band themselves were attended to by a crew of hairdressers, luggage handlers, and other personal assistants, including Richards' own cadre of substance procurers, as he was in the throes of heroin addiction.None of this seems to affect the band, however, who consistently deliver a powerful evening of spectacle; feeding off the fanaticism of the fans in the crowd and sending the energy back again, the concert builds to a fever pitch and ends so abruptly no one in the audience is aware than their wild cheers for an encore will never be answered, the band already en route to their hotel.The hit singles are all here, as well as a slew of classics-to-be from the new album. The band, at all times following the eye contact and body gestures of Keith Richard, are on top form, masters of their craft, while Jagger, as the visual focal point, draws upon his decade-plus of experience in manipulating large crowds, teasing, jiving, grinning and gyrating, his skinny, hairless body contorting into one gigantic pout.Unlike Stones tours of late, here it's just the band, along with two horns and a piano, much more authentic than the generic sweeteners heard in the last few years. The songs feel authentic, rather than watered down imitations of themselves, something the band has had trouble avoiding since bringing on their team of professional studio mercenaries. Even as mega-stars, once the music starts, it's not hard to tell they aren't necessarily there "for the money."The other great thing is that the film's sound was, thoughtfully, recorded in true stereo, and attention was paid to quality of signal resulting in a really decent hi-fi live sound. Turn it up!The STP Tour was marked by a new level of offstage debauchery, chronicled by Robert Frank in "C*cksucker Blues", the controversial cinema-verite film which was shot largely with hand-held cameras in various dressing rooms and hotel suites along the way. This film is yet another unreleased document of the summer of 1972, extremely hard to locate, but not impossible. Add to this the planned-but-never-released Decca live album from the same tour and there's enough bootleg material from the STP Tour to satisfy a Stones fan until, say, 1978 when 'Some Girls',their next great album and tour, came to be.The only weak link is new boy Mick Taylor, thought by others to be a kind of guitar hero, but careful examination of what he actually plays reveals that it hardly matters what song the rest of the band are playing, at any given time Taylor invariably noodles over top of it, soloing whenever he can, which is almost every time Jagger isn't singing.For my money, Ronnie Wood might not be half the pure musician that Taylor is, but he's got much more personality, and though the Stones are as strong musically as any other group might care to put up against them, at the end of the day it's the Stones themselves that attract the attention they've received all these years (To this day, many of their live versions of songs grind to an end in musical train wrecks). If it were different, guys like Yngwie Malmsteen would be cultural icons, too, and the satin jumpsuit would finally get more respect.T.C. Shaw, May '06