Nasty Songs (Dog N Cat DAC-065)
Wembley Empire Pool, London, England – September 8th, 1973
Madison Square Garden, New York, NY – July 26th, 1972
Disc 1, Wembley Empire Pool, London, England – September 8th, 1973: Brown Sugar, Gimme Shelter, Happy, Starfucker, Angie, You Can’t Always Get What You Want, Dancing With Mr. D, Heartbreaker, Midnight Rambler, Honky Tonk Women, All Down The Line, Rip This Joint, Jumping Jack Flash, Street Fighting Man
Disc 2, Madison Square Garden, New York, NY – July 26th, 1972: Brown Sugar, Bitch, Rocks Off, Gimme Shelter, Happy, Tumbling Dice, Love In Vain, Sweet Virginia, You Can’t Always Get What You Want, All Down The Line, Midnight Rambler, band introductions, Bye Bye Johnny, Rip This Joint, Jumping Jack Flash
Nasty Songs is a collection that brings together two very common tapes, both of which have seen recent releases. It takes its name from the old SODD vinyl release of the New York line recording. The first disc has the September 8th, 1973 early show at London’s Wembley Empire Pool. This has become a very popular tape in the past fews years, being released on Empire Pool (BW-8973), Timeless 73 (Vinyl Gang VGP-373), Wembley High Rollers (Halcyon) and London September 8 1973 (Early Show) (Devil’s Breath DB002).
Devil’s Breath used the actual master cassette with the complete “Gimme Shelter” and is a very good, bright and clear sounding release. Dog N Cat use the same source and have slowed the tape down a notch to bring it to the correct pitch.
It isn’t as bright as Devil’s Breath however, having a very dark and mysterious sound to it. This is still one of the very best sounding audience recordings from the Stones’ European tour of that year and is an essential recording to have for the collection.
Although it does not have the Goats Heads Soup rarities like the Vienna show, it does have four new songs making it a bit longer than those later on in the tour and has what is arguably the best recorded version ever of “Doo Doo Doo Doo Doo (Heartbreaker).” With its expanded “funk” section and Jagger ordering everybody to “move your ass,” is it a scintillating performance of an under appreciated live piece. This is the tour where guitarist Mick Taylor really began to shine and sometimes overshadow the rest of the and in concert, and this is an excellent example of that.
The second disc is another release of the audience and soundboard mix from the final show of the S.T.P. in New York City. The eight songs from the soundboard, “Love In Vain,” “Sweet Virginia,” “You Can’t Always Get What You Want,” “All Down The Line,” “Midnight Rambler,” “Bye Bye Johnny,” “Rip This Joint,” and “Jumping Jack Flash” first surfaced on vinyl on Welcome To New York on TMQ.
This tape was apparently lifted by an enterprising young fan from the mixing desk after the show and has been in circulation every since. The actually master recording TMQ used for their vinyl has never surfaced and all subsequent titles are sourced from the vinyl. Like many other releases of this show DAC augment the line recording with six songs, “Brown Sugar,” “Bitch,” “Rocks Off,” “Gimme Shelter,” “Happy,” and “Tumbling Dice” from a fair to good audience recording.
This is unfortunately not the full show since the “Street Fighting Man” fragment, “Happy Birthday Mick” and encore of “Uptight/ Satisfaction” wasn’t used from the audience source. One of the holy grails of live Stones would be for either an excellent sounding audience recording, or the rest of the soundboard recording to surface in excellent quality instead of having to rely on this hybrid of disparate sources.
The packaging for Nasty Songs is very nice and includes a photo of Mick blowing out the birthday cake at the end of the New York show on the inside cover. But with the frequent releases of these shows Dog N Cat add nothing to what has already been out before and unless one is desperate to have every version of these tapes, or didn’t bother picking up the earler titles, this is really a superflous release and a catalogue filler.
Addendum: It was interesting realizing that the famous MSG 7/26/72 show ran fast. I believe the tape was sped up a half-step during the LP mastering process to keep the length of each side of the LP down.
I have been listening to this MSG show since 1974, so I was quite used to the sound of it — which isn’t immediately noticeable as running a half-step too fast. A digitally tuned guitar or keyboard make it easy to tell. The Stones had to be in tune on stage, otherwise the keyboards and piano would be off. (JP)
