Glastonbury 2013 (no label)
Glastonbury! 2013 Live
Glastonbury Festival, Worthy Farm, Pilton, U.K. 29th June 2013
Disc 1 (65:50) Jumping Jack Flash, It’s Only Rock’n Roll, Paint It Black, Gimme Shelter, Glastonbury Girl (a.k.a. Factory Girl), Wild Horses, Doom And Gloom, Can’t You Hear Me Knocking (with Mick Taylor), Honky Tonk Women, — Band presentation, You Got The Silver (Keith), Happy (Keith)
Disc 2 (70:35) Miss You, Midnight Rambler (with Mick Taylor), 2000 Light Years From Home, Sympathy For The Devil, Start Me Up, Tumbling Dice, Brown Sugar, (encores) You Can’t Always Get What You Want, Satisfaction (with Mick Taylor)
The Glastonbury Festival of Contemporary Performing Arts is the brainchild local farmer Michael Eavis who decided to host the original festival at Worthy Farms after seeing Led Zeppelin perform at the 1970 Bath Festival.
Originally named the Pilton Pop, Blues & Folk Festival Eavis sold a grand total of 1,500 tickets at £1 apiece for the inaugural event in 1970. The featured headliner was Tyrannosaurus Rex (TRex), of Marc Bolin fame, who were a last minute replacement for the original headline acts The Kinks and Wayne Fontana and the Mindbenders. After the 1971 festival there was a break until it was revived again in 1978 after which it has been an annual affair with the exception of a few odd years off.
There have been many famous headliners in the long history of Glastonbury, including David Bowie, Paul McCartney, Neil Young and U2, but no bands appearance was more anticipated then the Rolling Stones debut in 2013. Maybe as a result of this all 135,000 tickets for the festival were reported to have sold in about 2 hours from start of sale.
While only the last hour, the last 9 songs of the show beginning with “Miss You”, was broadcast live a technically savvy fan was able to tap into the raw BBC2 satellite feed and record the entire video of the concert. It is likely that the No Name Label use the audio of this raw satellite feed for this 2CD release.
I believe this is the first release of this show on silver disc but since then several labels have jumped on the band wagon including an ambitious 14CD +1DVD set by Wonderland records which includes this show on audio but curiously not the video on DVD as they chose to include the audience shot video of the Washington show instead.
As with all their releases this No Name Label release comes in a simple jewel with glossy inserts.
The sound quality is excellent as you would expect with a professionally recorded concert. All the instruments are well balanced with Mick and the guitars slightly forward in the mix but not overwhelming Charlie and Darryl. The sound is crystal clear with a wide stereo soundstage, Ronnie in the left channel and Keith in the right, with a perfect mix of audience to give the recording a nice live ambience.
I won’t give a song by song review of the show, as you can find this in my review of the excellent No Name Glastonbury 2DVD set I did recently, but as I stated in that review the Stones put on what may have been the best show of the entire 50 and Counting tour. The band was in top form that night and IMHO there was not a poorly played song in the entire concert with Keith and Ronnie playing exceptionally well.
Obvious highlights for me were stellar versions of “Can’t You Hear Me Knocking” and “Midnight Rambler” featuring Mick Taylor. Other highlights included two rare songs, “2000 Light Years From Home” off of the “Their Satanic Majesties Request” album, and a song Mick called “Glastonbury Girl” which modifies the lyrics of the song “Factory Girl” off of the 1968 album “Beggars Banquet”.
One thing that struck me about this show was the symbiosis between the band and the crowd. The band was excited to play Glastonbury and their performance was fueled by the energy of the crowd who fully participated in every song and never really had a down moment except possibly during the long solos in CYHMK.
Watching the video there was a moment towards the end of the show where a sweaty Mick Jagger, hair plastered to his forehead, puffed up his cheeks and let out a breath of exhaustion which for me summed up the extraordinary effort the band put into the performance that night. They were in overdrive from the opening notes of “Jumping Jack Flash” to the end of “Satisfaction” and left everything on the stage that night which resulted in a very special moment in Stones history.
This is another excellent release from the No Name label and, other than fancier packaging, multi show sets, or special vinyl/CD/DVD packages to entice collectors, I can’t imagine the other labels having a better sounding source then was used on this 2 CD set. I can’t recommend this show highly enough as it makes a perfect companion to the No Name 2DVD set reviewed earlier and will delight casual as well as hard core Stones fans.
