RSFCO

Start Me Up - It's Only Rock'n'Roll - Shattered - Tumbling Dice - Oh No, Not You Again - Rain Fall Down -Ruby Tuesday - Midnight Rambler - Night Time - Intros - Slipping Away - Infamy - Miss You - Rough Justice - Get Off Of My Cloud - Honky Tonk Women - Sympathy For the Devil - Brown Sugar - Jumpin' Jack Flash - You Can't Always Get What You Want (encore) - Satisfaction (encore)

On paper, it just doesn't work.

The Rolling Stones are this old. The tickets cost that much. And surely these songs must have sounded better live in '72.

As Neil Young once famously observed, sometimes numbers add up to nothing.

Looking even more weathered than recent photos have suggested, the Stones showed the Pepsi Center on Thursday night that age literally doesn't matter.

Each Stones tour since the early '90s has surpassed the one before it. Each tour has a sharper focus than the one before. Unbelievably, the band gets better and tighter as players. Mick Jagger remains every bit the frantic frontman the band needs.

Kicking off with a crisp Start Me Up and scheduled to end with Satisfaction, the Stones came through with two hours of heart-stopping classics that, yes, despite all the complaints were worth $400 per ticket to take part in.

It may have been the envelope-pushing ticket prices or the fact that it was Thanksgiving that kept the show from just barely selling out.

The Stones do stick to the big songs, and with these prices, one could argue the fans have a right to see them. The show has been ending every night with a string of mega-hits, from Sympathy for the Devil to Brown Sugar.

But the band is mixing it up more than it has in the past. For starters, they've got their best album in many a year in A Bigger Bang, and cuts from it such as Rough Justice and Oh No Not You Again are so close to the classic Stones sound that you didn't get the usual rush to the restrooms that new tunes inevitably invite.

The band has also rotated songs in and out in key spots; Thursday night's semi-rarities included Ruby Tuesday (dated but still fun) and an exuberant Get Off Of My Cloud.

It would just be Jagger fronting the world's best cover band, however, if the rest of the band weren't just as passionate. While some bands like The Eagles go for perfect recreations of their studio sound, the Stones are sloppy - sometimes unintentionally, with the occasional flubbed Jagger vocal.

But much of it is intentional. Sure, Keith Richards has played Tumbling Dice a million times before, but that didn't stop him from pushing the chords and notes around a bit, keeping it interesting for himself and the fans. And as he did last tour, Ron Wood continued to amaze; he is long past the days when he could be considered second guitarist to Richards.

Charlie Watts, however, remains the not-so-secret weapon. So many bands take extra percussion or a second drummer on tour. Not the Stones; it was nothing but pure Charlie up there, blasting through Sympathy for the Devil, a surprisingly powerful Ruby Tuesday and absolutely annihilating Midnight Rambler.

Technologically, it surpassed even the Stones' elaborate stadium tours of the past, especially the part where the band rode a large chunk of the stage back to the rear of the arena. They've long done the second-stage bit in the middle of the show, but this allowed them a bigger stage bringing them closer to even more fans.

At press time, the Stones were in that show-ending string of hits, sounding astoundingly fresh. The only complaint one can make is they've got the catalog - and surely the energy - to add another hour to the show. Wish they would.