Mick Jagger, “Osaka 1988, First Night” (No Label)
Live At Osaka-Jo Hall, Osaka, Japan, 15th March, 1988
Disk One – Opening / Honky Tonk Women / Throwaway / Bitch / Lets Spend The Night Together / Lonely At The Top / Beast Of Burden / Tumbling Dice / Miss You / Ruby Tuesday / Just Another Night / War Baby / Lucky In Love / Harlem Shuffle / Say You Will (69:44)
Disk Two – Party Doll / Member introduction / You Can’t Always Get What You Want / Radio Control / Shoot Off Your Mouth / Drum solo / Guitar solo / Gimme Shelter / Start Me Up / Brown Sugar / It’s Only Rock ’N’ Roll / Jumping’ Jack Flash / Satisfaction / Sympathy For The Devil (75:33)
Such was the relative indifference of record buyers to Mick Jagger’s second solo album, the Stones ego was bruised enough not to try chance any kind of appearances within the UK or the US – disparity between him and his band member Keith wouldn’t have helped his cause either – Jagger decided to keep his touring schedule simple by reining it in to Australia and Japan.
Mick would be rewarded for his choices however as his Japanese fans lapped up the chance to go see the singer – tickets sold out out in only a few hours for each of the eight shows, despite the tiger than usual ticket prices – earning Jagger a solid reputation still and something to brag about when it came to the critical reaction towards his album.
Someone who was more than pleased to be asked to play in Jagger’s band was Joe Satriani – his career was on a downwards trajectory but when he was asked to join Mick on this tour he was elated. As he told Classic Rock magazine later, “All of a sudden I get this call out of the blue and my tour wasn’t going very well,” he said. “It was really rough. Two shows a night [in] small clubs, we were losing money and it was just insane. Then I get this improbable call and I get the gig, and I realise that I haven’t thought about playing these [Rolling Stones] songs in ages. Luckily, there was another guitar player in the band [Jimmy Ripp] whose position was to be Keith Richards, basically”
As in interesting turn, Mick had elected to play more Rolling Stones tracks through out his set than solo songs – There would obviously be high demand for the classics but by feeding the Far East a little more of his day-bands tracks and a lot of rarities at that, he was also making up for their absence, again guaranteeing a generous helping of footfall to his concerts.
The March the 15th show in Osaka has also previously seen release on the Idle Mind 2 CD set, “First Castle Magic 1988”. An excellent / very good audience recording reportedly. This new No Label release is the first of a set of four double CDs featuring shows from the 15th, 16th, 18th and 28th of March as Jagger played at the venue. This first set is a slightly distant, but well recorded example of the shows. There is a lot of audience noise abound and Jagger’s voice is a little distant but the instrumentation is quite clear. Mick is on good form tonight too – almost all of the songs seem to be played at a manic pace which he’s more than capable of keeping up with though you can hear him tire after some of the more frantic performances.
This is a great set – especially as Mick solo CDs are rather thin on the ground – for the fact that Mick is putting in his all for these shows trying to make the show work and also that these tracks are being played by a different band but with their original vocalist, it’s a nice little spin. The generous running times are a relief too.
File under ‘Part time listen’, maybe.
