The Rolling Stones – Sixty Tour 2022 Stockholm – Crystal Cat CC 1145-46)

Disk one – Intro / Street Fighting Man / Let’s Spend The Night Together / Mick Jagger thanks Charlie Watts / Tumbling Dice / Out Of Time / Out Of Control / Angie / You Can’t Always Get What You Want / Ghost Town / Honky Tonk Women / band introduction / You Got The Silver / Connection (66:41)

Disk two – Intro / Miss You / Midnight Rambler / Paint It Black / Start Me Up / Gimme Shelter / Jumping Jack Flash / band on stage, standing ovation / Sympathy For The Devil / (I Can’t Get No) Satisfaction / Sweet Virginia (Amsterdam, 7th July) / Fool To Cry (Berlin, 3rd August) (79:46)

Friends Arena, Stockholm, Sweden. 31st July, 2022.

Thirteen shows in to the ‘Sixty’ celebratory tour, the Rolling Stones had found form. The jury seems to be out as to whether the fans find this a run-of-the-mill show or had decided that it was a big return to form.

This recording, a very good, slightly distant, audience recording is slightly less than standard for CC – listening to all of their Bob Dylan recordings where Dylan is a lot less bombast and crunch than the Stones has the ears adjusted to a certain sort of degree. Having listened to other shows from this leg of the tour gives a certain impression too.

The stadium is an echoey place which doesn’t help the sound too much – Between songs when Mick compères, there’s a heck of a lot of bounce about his voice, the music doesn’t seem to suffer as much but Ronnie and Steve are certainly lower in the mix than Keith and Mick – At times Chuck is almost nowhere to be heard – I turned down the bass on my stereo to try fix a bit of boom, one of the other niggles was a handful of slightly too vocal audience members. They only pop up every so often, are just jolly revellers taking in the atmosphere, and we’ve heard worse – from an outsiders perspective, I was a little annoyed with them rabbiting about, if you are buying this recording as a souvenir, you’ll most likely appreciate that that’s what you heard.

The gig itself is a good show – There are no huge set list surprises from it – the appearance of ‘Out Of Control’ is a gracious change to the set list, however. It hadn’t been played for a while, it rocks as much as it did for the BtB shows and if it allows Mick to get out his harmonica between leaps and bounds, it was worth reintroducing. Some of the crowd were either expecting it or had been going back through their old bootlegs earlier that day however as you can catch them happily singing along.,

Other notable highlights for the show are a lovely ‘Tumbling Dice’, the always joyous, ‘YCAGWYW’ with it‘s now standard jazzy reprise. A new standard in ‘Living In A Ghost Town’ (things look good for the new album), a great ‘You Got The Silver’, a stupendously lengthy ‘Miss You’ twinned with an even longer, ‘Midnight Rambler’.

A vibrant, unfussy ‘Start Me Up’ and ‘Jumping Jack Flash’ with an extra layer. There’s always the stirringly ubiquitous ‘Satisfaction’ to lead the show out too – I’ll certainly not tire of it, not yet at least. Not least if the crowd are going out in to the summers night chanting it’s refrain.

Bonus tracks feature ‘Sweet Virginia’ from the Amsterdam show – the recording sounds pretty much exactly like the Stockholm capture, sound for sound – ‘Fool To Cry’ from Berlin, a little more muffled but it dampens the crowd noise a little – A blessing for this ballad in this case.

The CDs come complete with all the class of the standard CC packaging – A glossy thick tri-fold card case, a full colour booklet inundated with images and reports from the show (Mainly taken from IORR – Guys! Why  not get your own authors?) and lavishly printed disks. There’s a couple of typos on the jacket but people in glass houses, etc ..

It’s not the best recording of this tour, this show has been taped specifically for this release however and I’m unaware of any other tapes from this gig making it unique.

More interesting artifact than must have – unless you were there, of course. The labels name carries this release a long way and deservedly so from their previous output but a shade or two away from being truly essential.