RSFCO

The band gave as usual a great show in MSG, and with a couple of new songs on the setlist.

Jumping Jack Flash - Let's Spend The Night Together - Oh No Not You Again - Love Is Strong - Rocks Off - Worried About You - Rain Fall Down - Midnight Rambler - Tumblin' Dice - Gimme Shelter - Intros -
This Place Is Empty - Happy - Miss You -
Rough Justice - Get Off My Cloud - Honky Tonk Woman - Sympathy For The Devil -
Start Me Up - Brown Sugar - You Can't Always Get What You Want (encore) -
Satisfaction (encore)

Rolling Stones still lean and mean as they ramble into the Garden on Bigger Bang tour

Friday, January 20, 2006

BY BRADLEY BAMBARGER

Star-Ledger Staff

NEW YORK -- As the above-stage screen focused on Keith Richards' gnarled fingers wrapping around his fretboard, it was like seeing an ancient witch doctor wrest spells from a wooden fetish. The Rolling Stones returned to Madison Square Garden on Wednesday, and the guitar riffs were like age-defying incantations.

Mick Jagger -- the music charming him like a snake -- looked fit to shake the sequins right off his back as he strutted balletically onstage to "Jumpin' Jack Flash." The Stones kept the rock-extravaganza bull to the barest minimum, roaring through a set reshuffled since the band played the Garden in September, early on in its "Bigger Bang" world tour.

The downside to this, the Stones' 21st Garden stop since 1969, was that there were fewer rarities and no soul or reggae covers. The upside was that the playing has grown even more combustible, and the band still ranged far across its songbook. What this show proved yet again -- beyond Jagger's superhuman vitality and grace at age 64 -- was how that songbook is a peerless, timeless re-imagining of American roots music.

A long "Midnight Rambler" -- a feature in the band's'69 Garden set -- came across as a tour-de-force of hot-wired Chicago blues, with added sex and violence. One of the Stones' best mid-'90s singles, "Love Is Strong," was lean and low-down, with Jagger's swampy blues harp as authentic as his famously enduring lust. "Exile on Main St." opener "Rocks Off" was as good as a roadhouse travelogue, as well as a miracle of animal virility.

With the Stones having toured regularly since'94 with virtually the same extended family -- Chuck Leavell on keyboards, Darryl Jones on bass, Lisa Fischer leading the backup vocal trio and sax vet Bobby Keys heading the horns -- they have gotten appreciably better each time out. Yet, this being the Stones, there's little slick about the sound. "Let's Spend the Night Together," a freshly added oldie, had ragged edges galore.

From "A Bigger Bang" -- the Stones' best album in two decades -- the band reprised the ungentlemanly garage-rock of "Oh No, Not You Again" and the hard-man riff fest of "Rough Justice." Sadly, the new blues "Back of My Hand" was taken from the set, but "Rain Fall Down" was added, with the Stones echoing their'70s funk mode with fresh aplomb. One misstep was Richards' airing of "This Place Is Empty," the back-porch romanticism of which was lost in an arena setting.

"Sympathy for the Devil" was perhaps more Methuselah than Mephistopheles, despite the grooving of drummer Charlie Watts. As ever, the Stones were their hottest when the basic unit came to the arena's middle for a tight-knit mini-set. When Jagger wasn't bobbing and weaving to keep from getting gutted by Ron Woods' guitar neck, he was drawling out the verses to the'60s hit "Get Off of My Cloud."

Jagger isn't a pop-culture demon these days but a knight of the realm, and Richards gave up his wickedest habits long ago. Still, they can't push out the full-on rock 'n' roll circus much longer. For now, though, it seems like some sort of pact with Lucifer has been made, so lucky folks should catch them before the deal comes due.