Bring On The Dancing Girls (Dog N Cat DAC-016)
Bring On The Dancing Girls is the most complete collection documenting The Rolling Stones’ two shows in Frankfurt on their European tour in the fall of 1970. The reality that most of the tape sources from this tour are mediocre doesn’t really matter as long as they are at least listenable. This new release on the Dog N Cat label brings together two fair tapes and brings a new, previously undocumented tape source to complete the first show.
Festhalle, Frankfurt, Germany – October 5th, 1970
Disc 1 (65:54): Jumping Jack Flash, Roll Over Beethoven, Sympathy For The Devil, Stray Cat Blues, Love In Vain, Prodigal Son, Dead Flowers, Midnight Rambler, Live With Me, Let It Rock, Little Queenie, Brown Sugar, Honky Tonk Women, Street Fighting Man
The tape source for the October 5th show on disc one has been released as Frankfurt 1970 (IMP-CD 015). It is a fair to good mono audience recording that thankfully has no audience interference. The only issue is that it isn’t complete, missing “Let It Rock” and “Little Queenie”. DAC have found a new second source for this show and edited in these two missing numbers. The new tape source is absolutely horrible. It is distorted and taped far from the stage. Its ranking might be a three. But the editing job between the two sources is flawless and we can now say the entire concert exists on pressed disc.
Festhalle, Frankfurt, Germany – October 6th, 1970
Disc 2 (46:24): Roll Over Beethoven, Sympathy For The Devil, Stray Cat Blues, Love In Vain, Prodigal Son, Dead Flowers, Midnight Rambler, Live With Me, Let It Rock, Little Queenie
The October 6th show, the second concert in Frankfurt, is still only a large fragment of the show. It has been released before as The Legend Of 1970 (Vinyl Gang VGP-238) and Live In Frankfurt & Gothenburg 1970. It is a good to very good stereo audience recording with a left channel bias. DAC have addressed this issue by mastering this in two-channel mono to make it more listenable, but these issues are many for this tape. The distortion becomes heavier as the tape goes on; especially by the time the band hit “Midnight Rambler”. Also this tape was made by two Americans in Frankfurt (maybe service men?) who are more interested in their weed than the Stones.
The concerts themselves are good but not great. There is coolness in the air that is hard to explain. The show on October 6th is better than the previous night. The band seems more animated and it contains great versions of “Sympathy For The Devil” (with the “bring on the dancing girls” comment at the end) and “Prodigal Son” played at double time. This review sounds very negative and in some respects it is. DAC have done a good job in presenting these documents in perhaps the definitive versions, but Bring On The Dancing Girls is aimed at the Rolling Stones collector.
