Friday, November 30, 2012

Not a Dry Seat in the House

"Let me hear you say 'yeah!' darlin'!!!!"

From disc four of the just released deluxe special edition of The Rolling Stones' legendary concert film Charlie is My Darling, please enjoy the aforementioned Stones somewhere in England in early 1965...


...and the best fricking version ever heard by sentient mammalian ears of Bobby Troup's ode to cross country travel (and one of the greatest songs of all time) "Route 66."



Some of the tracks on this new set have either been released before or fairly widely bootlegged, but this is (as far as I can tell) the first time they've been made available from the original master tapes.

And as you can hear, the recording quality is quite surprisingly good. It's real stereo, too, albeit with a less than 180 degree soundstage. (I suspect genius engineer/producer Glyn Johns deserves some credit for this).

More to the point, this "Route 66" -- strictly as a performance -- is pretty much ground zero for the Big Beat.

I'll go out on a limb even further: When people talk about the Stones as the greatest rock-and-roll band in the world, this single recorded artifact is prima facie evidence.

Nobody -- before or since -- has ever rocked this hard or as wonderfully.

I should also add that as great as Mick's vocal is, and as devastating as the Richards/Jones guitar duo is, and of course Charlie's good tonight...

...the secret weapon of the band is Bill Wyman on bass.

Listen to what he's doing, for jeebus sake -- nobody else and I mean NOBODY ELSE has ever managed to rumble apocalyptically and swing at the same time like the old guy does here.

6 comments:

buzzbabyjesus said...

It's no "Gloom And Doom", but it's pretty good.
Actually I'm so sick of The Stones at this point, and reading "Life" didn't help, that I almost didn't bother to listen to it. But I did, and you're right on every point, including your support of Bill Wyman.
I realized that Bill leaving was worse than Ronnie joining.

cthulhu said...

Good stuff (coming from a non-fan).

But I'll still take Summertime Blues, Shakin' All Over, and Magic Bus from "Live at Leeds" if you please...

Brooklyn Girl said...

As tempting as it (always) is to get into a discussion about which Brit band was The Best, all I can say is that we were damned lucky to live through a period that gave us the Stones, the Who, the Beatles, the Kinks, and on and on and on.

We may never see the likes of them again, and how fortunate that video and audio clips exist that prove how lucky we were.

Billy B said...

I love those early videos. And I can see why Keef gained such notoriety early on. He cranked it.

Gummo said...

[adds "Charlie is My Darling" to Xmas list....]

I've got several boots of live Stones between 63-67 and in a lot of ways, it's my favorite Stones live period.

Sure, they got more sophisticated and varied later on, but damn! That youthful energy, combined with their superior musicianship, made for some fantastic stuff.

Haik Mendelovich said...

Thanks, Steve!

I'm a bigger fan of their 69-73 live period, but I have to say that this track is awfully darned great.

Was skimming a Jagger bio once. The author claimed that Mick said his stage act was taken more from Marlyn Monroe than James Brown.

I'm sure that that made young Keith very, very happy. :-)