Live At The Tokyo Dome Second Night (Silver Discs SD-004A/B)
Tokyo Dome, Tokyo, Japan – March 16th, 2003
Disc 1 (71:26): Introduction, Brown Sugar, Start Me Up, It’s Only Rock And Roll, Don’t Stop, All Down The Line, Angie, Monkey Man, Midnight Rambler, Tumbling Dice, band introduction, Slipping Away, Happy
Disc 2 (59:08): Sympathy For The Devil, When The Whip Comes Down (b-stage), Mannish Boy (b-stage), You Got Me Rocking (b-stage), Gimme Shelter, Honky Tonk Women, Street Fighting Man, (I Can’t Get No) Satisfaction, Jumpin’ Jack Flash
The tape used for Live At The Tokyo Dome Second Night is very good and clear but slightly muffled. It’s very good but not as good as the tape Silver Discs use for the first Tokyo Dome show. This is the third and final Tokyo show and is much better than the previous evening.
Silver Discs reproduces Shirley Birenz’s review posted on the IORR website. Her observations about this concert include: “I like to disregard the flubs because I think that’s one part of the Stones that makes them continue to be a bar band in my eyes. Even a many million dollar operation that is fine tuned to the wires that twist into the guitar strings themselves – can not have the sound turned on for Keith’s opening chord. It’s always funny to me when I’m singing along – and then a verse is missing or repeated and I’m left singing in the dust. But the beauty of the band is that they just keep going. No problem – life is random….The boys put on a stellar performance.”
At the beginning of disc one there is five minutes of canned music in the venue before another tentative, sloppy run-through of “Brown Sugar.” At one hundred and eleven, this is the most common song on the Licks tour and the most frequently botched for some reason. “Start Me Up” is a big improvement as is “It’s Only Rock And Roll,” moved up from the b-stage set from the previous night.
Jagger speaks to the audience in Japanese throughout the show, but his pronunciation makes even a non-Japanese speaker cringe. After “Don’t Stop,” the only new song in the set, they parade some of the tour scarcities. “All Down The Line,” played twenty-six times, is played followed by pretty version of “Angie.” The guitars are out of tune during “Monkey Man” diminishing the song’s effectiveness, but Chuck Leavell on piano goes a long way in rescuing it from complete disaster.
“Midnight Ramber,” another song moved from the b-stage to the main, fares much better in this setting. Jagger again takes his time introducsing the band before Richards’ set. He sings the mellow “Slipping Away” and replaces “Before They Make Me Run” with “Happy.” Like the previous evening, “Sympathy For The Devil” is the final song before they move onto the b-stage.
The three song set starts with a scarce “When The Whip Comes Down,” played only twenty-one times on Licks. It is followed by “Mannish Boy” and a nice version of “You Got Me Rocking.” The final five songs are the same as the previous night except that “(I Can’t Get No) Satisfaction” is the set closer this night and “Jumpin’ Jack Flash” is the encore.
This show is also found on discs seven and eight of Licks Japan Tour 2003 Complete Box (Out of Control Records OOC 007/008), and seven and eight in Front Row (VGP-330). And unlike the first Dome show there is another independent release titled Restart Me Up / Tokyo 2003 (no label). Silver Discs released titles for each of the six shows in Japan and despite some of the sloppiness it is a very good show and worth having.
