The Rolling Stones – Garden State 78 (no label)

The Rolling Stones, ‘Garden State 78’ (No Label)

Introduction / Let It Rock / All Down The Line / Honky Tonk Women / Star Star / When The Whip Comes Down / Miss You / Just My Imagination / Lies / Beast of Burden (46:03)
Respectable / Far Away Eyes / Live In Vain / Shattered / Sweet Little Sixteen / Tumbling Dice / Happy / Brown Sugar / Jumping Jack Flash / Street Fighting Man (47:17)

The No Label release ‘Garden State 78’ was (At the time of writing) the latest version of the soundboard Stones show at Capitol Theatre, Passaic, New Jersey on the 14th June, 1978 – Having been released multiple times before on vinyl, usually mixed with an extra bit of an audience source for completeness, most famously as ‘Out On Bail’ – the most popular title for this show – on Lurch records, a rubber stamped, white cardboard cover vintage single LP – A few permeations followed on ‘Blockbuster!’ (Slipped Disk Records), ‘Slick’ (Excitable Recordworks), ‘Five By Five Alive’ (DECDA) and, my favourite, ‘In And Out Again’ (Oakland Records), later, as a more complete show appeared, it was packaged on two LPs as ‘Extended Play’ (Great Live Concerts), ‘Garden State 78’ (Trade Mark Of Quality Archive Recordings label), ‘The Slicer’ (No Label), ‘Reverse Blues’ (Beacon Island Records) and the inspiration for this set, ‘Garden State 78′ (Smilin’ Dork Records).

As the (nearly) full show became available from it’s soundboard source, it was picked by in the digital age by yet another few labels including ‘Capitol Connection’ (Scorpio), Part of the ‘Handsome Girls’ boxed set (Dandelion), ‘Out On Bail’ (The Swingin’ Pig), ‘Skin And Bones’ (Country Trash Records) and ‘Garden State 78’ (Vinyl Gang) – a double disk set that was essentially the genesis for this release but now with misspelled titles rectified on it’s – still very handsome – older cover. There were various other snippets on other releases used as pieces and addendums to other collections but as they are essentially space-takers, I won’t mention them here.

A solid soundboard recording – it’s sound is akin to being stood between Mick’s mic and Charlie – essentially centre stage while the show plays – Bill’s bass and Charlie’s drums are HIGH in the mix but that doesn’t come as a distraction to Keef or Ronnie, while a very sweary Jagger sweeps between sounding a little distant at some points to full on – This might be the case though as Leedslungs71 pointed out in a previous review, that Jagger was taking to looping around the stage like a loony despite the resultant effect his age was having on his performances. As I mentioned earlier, this is a nearly complete show, ‘Street Fighting Man’ is aided by an excellent audience recording tacked on around half way through. Hedged up against the closest comparable in my collection – Scorpio’s ‘Capitol Connection’ – it is chunkier and rounder in bass – still the same tape as it features the fluctuations that appeared at the start of the original tapes but sounds better and fuller. It’s a little longer at the beginning too, especially nice of you like audience noise.

Lovely, punkish, artwork that comes straight from one of the better designed LPs of the time in the correct colours also including the artwork for – Eeeek! – ‘In And Out Again’. Inside the back cover which bounces well against the monochrome original.

A worthy investment of a great show especially if you want that upgrade, haven’t yet plunged for any of the numerous versions of this show previously or have any of the incomplete versions that were already out there.