Bang At The MSG (Devil Productions DPCD-03/04/05/06)
Madison Square Garden, New York, NY – January 18th & 20th, 2006
Disc 1 January 18th, 2006: Intro. Jumpin’ Jack Flash, Let’s Spend The Night Together, Oh No Not You Again, Love Is Strong, Rocks Off, Worried About You, Rain Fall Down, Midnight Rambler, Tumbling Dice, band intro., Gimme Shelter
Disc 2: band intro. This Place Is Empty, Happy, Miss You, Rough Justice, Get Off Of My Cloud, Honky Tonk Women, Sympathy For The Devil, Start Me Up, Brown Sugar, You Can’t Always Get What You Want, (I Can’t Get No) Satisfaction
Disc 3 January 20th, 2006: Intro., Jumpin’ Jack Flash, It’s Only Rock N Roll, Let’s Spend The Night Together, Oh No Not You Again, Sway, As Tears Go By, Rain Fall Down, Ain’t Too Proud To Beg, Gimme Shelter, Tumbling Dice, band introductions, This Place Is Empty, Happy
Disc 4: Miss You, Start Me Up, Get Off Of My Cloud, Honky Tonk Women, Sympathy For The Devil, Paint It Black, Brown Sugar, You Can’t Always Get What You Want, (I Can’t Get No) Satisfaction
The Stones played three shows the Madison Square Garden on Bigger Bang tour (the first on September 13th), and five total shows in the metropolitan area (including Giants Stadium). Bang At The MSG 2006 is a four disc set covering the two January shows and was released by Devil Productions less than a month after the second concert. The sound quality for both concerts is very similar between the two and they are complete excellent stereo audience DAT tapes. The only negatives about these are the slight distance from the stage responsible for a little fuzziness and the occasional conversation picked up around the taper. With all of the tape sources circulating for these dates DP picked probably the most enjoyable ones for this and these capture the party atmosphere in the Garden perfectly.
There are no less than four different tape sources for this show. This is a great show with an amazingly reactive New York audience and everyone is determined to make this one of the special nights from the entire tour. “How many people were here last time we played? Well, we’d better change some numbers around then.” After the opening three common songs comes the first surprise of the evening with “Love Is Strong” making its tour debut and receiving its first public outing since 1998. Hearing it live on this recording makes one appreciate this latter day Stones classic for what it is. After a good “Rocks Off” (with an out of tune middle) comes the second tour debut of the evening “Worried About You”. Some girls by the taper ask what song that was. “We’re gonna do half time at the Super Bowl” Mick says before “Rain Fall Down”. “The networks are worried about what we’ll do or not do. I’ll show both my tits so there’s no problem”.
The second show in this set from January 20th is a notch below the first in terms of sound quality. It is very good and perfectly enjoyable but is farther from the stage and has a bit more audience noise. There is another tape source circulating (under the name Hootin’ And Hollerin’) which is worse than this so the label chose the better of the two. This is another spectacular show in New York and their second ever attempt at “Sway”. It is much tighter than in Columbus and Ron Wood plays the solo excellently. Another surprise is the tour debut of “Ain’t Too Proud To Beg”, a tune that came completely out of left field. “As Tears Go By” is played acoustically and is the biggest crowd pleaser. “Rough Justice”, the standard inclusion from the latest LP is conspicuously absent and replaced in the set list by “Paint It Black”.
Devil Productions is a relatively new label who in a short time have produced some impressive titles both audio and on video. Other audio include the four disc Handsome Girls with the 1978 KBFH broadcast and other rarities, Bang At The Rio 2006 (Live at the Copacabana, Rio de Janeiro Brazil February 18th, 2006) and several cdr releases Giants Bang (Giants Stadium, September 15th, 2005) and Bang In New York Madison Square Garden + Albany. They utilize a standard fatboy jewel case with thick glossy cardboard inserts with pictures of the shows and a very clean design. The inserts are printed on only one side. If they did both sides it would be in league with Empress Valley for classiness but that is a minor concern. This is an excellent production with some essential tapes from the tour and is worth having.
