The Rolling Stones, ‘Last Dance’ (Moonchild Records)
Disk 1 – Introduction / Start Me Up / Bitch / Sad Sad Sad / Undercover Of The Night / Harlem Shuffle / Tumbling Dice / Miss You / Ruby Tuesday / Angie / Rock and a Hard Place / Mixed Emotions / Honky Tonk Women / Midnight Rambler (68:03)
Disk 2 – You Can’t Always Get What You Want / Little Red Rooster / Before They Make Me Run / Happy / Paint It, Black / 2000 Light Years From Home / Sympathy For The Devil / Gimme Shelter / It’s Only Rock n’ Roll / Brown Sugar / (I Can’t Get No) Satisfaction / Jumpin’ Jack Flash (69:07)
Recorded live at the Memorial Coliseum, Los Angeles, CA. 22nd October, 1989.
That Mike Millard is famed for capturing solid takes on shows from the 70’s is great but I still get a kick from the fact that he was still taping a lot further in to his life than we generally remember – This Rolling Stones show is a case in point – captured at the Memorial Coliseum, Los Angeles in October, ‘89, Mike took his rig to the show to capture one of the big comeback tour gigs.
Yes, maybe the Stones were edging on semi-parody by this time but they were still pushing at the edges of classicism, the hot ticket of rock, this was ‘reunion-mania’ before the term really started to take off – to see the Glimmer Twins back together on stage again was more than enough balm for the 40-something rockers who had grown up with their sound and for the as-yet-undisenfranchised youth who were interested in the ageing lotharios legacy.
The set list is, as you can see, a mixed bag – Huddles of classic tracks surround the Stone’s mid to late 80’s output. Dependent on your favour / temperance for the “Steel Wheels” era, you’ll find them easy to skip over should you wish but I’d certainly suggest you give them a go.
Not everything that Mike committed to tape was gold however and, despite the exclusivity of this tape, it’s maybe not always going to be the go-to for your ‘89 needs. The sound is a little distant – EQing it raises Bill’s bass a little better, Charlie’s drumming can be a little tinny sounding sometimes, there’s a good amount of audience participation as well – Though maybe I’m damning it a little too much, it’s perfectly serviceable, no soundboard, obviously but you could always rely on the Stones official releases for those. It’s a good show too for it’s era.
The Moonchild record packaging is simple and scant but dresses up the packaging nicely (The typos on the set list on the back are a little unfortunate but as much as we know these tracks, it wouldn’t matter if they were written backwards, the brain kicks in to read them as we know them)
A nice pick up, especially from this cool little inexpensive label – Recommended for it’s budgetary price and availability as opposed to it’s sound but if you have a space open for it, you could do far worse.
