Rolling Stones - Atlanta, Georgia June 9, 2015

Rolling Stones
Concert Review
Atlanta, Georgia
Bobby Dodd Stadium
June 9, 2015

It's time to start considering what kind of world we will leave to Keith Richards.

With two live guitars, live vocals, warts, wrinkles and all, The Greatest Rock And Roll Band In The World proved once again that no one puts on a rock and roll show like The Rolling Stones.   These guys have it down.  

On our way to North Avenue Tuesday night, Scott reminisced traveling from Durham to Hampton Coliseum in 1981 and thinking at the time that was likely the band’s last hurrah.  Here we are, 34 short years later, and the Stones remain unique masters of a music entirely their own.  

If you’re putting together a list of 10 or 20 or 50 Stones’ songs you want to hear played live, it’s unlikely there will be any songs on your list that the Stones recorded after 1981.  The only song they pulled out in Atlanta from the last 34 years was their very latest, Doom and Gloom.  There wasn’t much "I was hoping they’d play that one" from the 40,000 plus, all white, all half a century old fans, festooned in their koncert kostumes, although the song was actually just fine, and Mick sang it like he might have meant it.  There is no precedent, no map, for the road this band is traveling.  Bluesmen played until they couldn’t, but not to sold-out football stadiums.  The Stones are alone on this journey, and seem very happy to let us be voyeurs.

If you haven’t read Bill Wyman’s (not that Bill Wyman) imagined Mick Jagger article, and you love the Stones (and if you don’t, you’re in the wrong place), please allow me to introduce you to it here, among other places:

 http://www.slate.com/articles/news_and_politics/low_concept/2010/11/please_allow_me_to_correct_a_few_things.html

For Tuesday night’s Atlanta concert, the fifth of a fifteen date North American tour, not counting their private show for Ralph Whitworth, the band started appropriately with Start Me Up, rather than Jumpin’ Jack Flash, which had opened the first four shows on the tour.  Jumpin’ Jack Flash was also the opening tune the last time the band came through Atlanta, at Philips Arena in 2006, on the Bigger Bang tour.  Keith’s opening riff for JJF in 2006 made me fall in love with the Stones all over again, after a less than inspired or inspiring Bridges to Babylon show at the Georgia Dome in 1997.  So disheartening was that show that Keith threw his black Gibson E-355 down to the ground in frustration after failing to make it play Gimme Shelter, and I skipped the Turner Field show in 2002.  

Fledgling Ticket Alternative handled the ticketing, instead of the mighty Ticketmaster, and rumors of problems most evidently manifested themselves in massive lines for the multiple ticket resolution stations outside the venue.

The setlist is below, and the highlights remain the Beggars Bleed trio of Gimme Shelter, Sympathy for the Devil, and Midnight Rambler.  These are the songs the band obviously cares about the most, with strong vocals and inspired guitar work.  For a few moments of suspended disbelief, you could imagine these men are still capable of unspeakable evil.  All Down The Line never quite got chugging along to find its groove and Happy was sloppy, but good fun, once Ronnie found the spark on the lap steel.  Mick queer-ied over what key to play Some Girls in and left the black girls verse out, opting for a repeated Zuma Beach chorus over jam.  We also got the first public performance of You Gotta Move since 1976.

Keith spent half the show mugging for the giant screen cameras with an “Aw shucks, who me?” pose. Although he can barely coax his fingers to navigate the fretboard these days, every movement he managed was classic.  No digital tricks, just a tattered tele, clean sound, and open string tuning magic that only Keith can create.  Head tilted back for an upward rake of the strings at the perfect off beat, or a two note slice, conveys more than a thousand slick runs down the neck by any other guitarist.

Ronnie pulled out his battered vintage Les Paul Standard Burst, literally held together with duct tape, for many of the Mick Taylor era songs, along with his usual assortment of exotic engraved metal axes.  While we’re on the guitars, Mick sported a beautiful Gibson Hummingbird, and a ridiculous floppy hat (no, I do not) to help out on You Can’t Always Get What You Want, fronting the Emory University Concert Choir.

The giant video screens for those in the back of the football stadium mainly stuck with shots of the band. Some multi-colored dice during Tumbling Dice, some skulls during Doom and Gloom, and fun fire effects for Sympathy For the Devil, to highlight Mick’s extravagant feather boa drape, got limited screen time.

The band’s not so secret weapon remains that Charlie is a badass.  eom

Atlanta setlist:

Start Me Up
It’s Only Rock ‘n’ Roll
All Down the Line
Tumbling Dice
Doom and Gloom
Can’t You Hear Me Knocking
You Gotta Move
Some Girls
Honky Tonk Women
Before They Make Me Run
Happy
Midnight Rambler
Miss You
Gimme Shelter
Jumpin’ Jack Flash
Sympathy for the Devil
Brown Sugar

Encore:

You Can’t Always Get What You Want
Satisfaction
 

Notes on the setlist from the first five shows:

Jumpin’ Jack Flash opened the first four shows.  It traded places with Start Me Up in Atlanta.

All Down The Line has swapped out with Let’s Spend The Night Together for alternating shows.

The Sticky Fingers duo has been Bitch and Moonlight Mile three times, adding Can’t You Hear Me Knocking the first night, and Bitch and Wild Horses once, before we were treated to a seated You Gotta Move and Ronnie’s extended showcase Can’t You Hear Me Knocking.

The fan choice song has been Street Fighting Man, Paint It, Black (you devil), Out Of Control (NP), and Rocks Off, prior to Atlanta’s Some Girls.

Keith’s duo has been:  Slipping Away and Before They Make Me Run the first night, and Before They Make Me Run and Happy every other night.

The last 8 songs are the same every night, and are the heart of the show, except for the JJF / SMU switch in Atlanta.

You Can’t Always Get What You Want uses a local vocal chorale every night.

 

An extended setlist is in our playlist section.  Check it out here:


http://www.perfectplaylist.net/the-perfect-playlists.html