 St. Pete Times Forum, Tampa, FL
on Wednesday, October 19th. 2005. Joss Stone had the pleasure to do
the warm-up part of this Forum.
Set list:
Start Me Up - It's Only Rock'n'Roll - She's So Cold - Tumbling Dice - Rough
Justice - Back Of My Hand - Dead Flowers - Bitch - Night Time Is The Right Time
- Intros - The Worst - Infamy - Miss You - Oh No Not You Again - You Got Me
Rocking - Honky Tonk Women - Out Of Control - Sympathy For The Devil - Brown
Sugar - Jumping Jack Flash - Satisfaction (encore).
Reviews:
Love it, yes they do
By Sean Daly
After all these years, nobody does rock'n'roll better than the Rolling
Stones, as more than 18.000 happy fans saw at the St Pete Times Forum.
TAMPA - Because there isn't a music critic alive who hasn't zinged umpteen
Rolling-Stones-are-coots jokes over the past 20 years, and because most of those
gags were wheezy and tired anyway, this review of Mick & Co's sold-out gig
at the St. Pete Times Forum Wednesday will be refreshingly free of any
played-out references to the British band's cumulative age.
Cause it's wrong.
Just wrong.
Really.
Even though during opening song Start Me Up, I'm fairly certain I saw
drummer Charlie Watts keeping time with a brontosaurus bone.
Oh, c'mon! It's the Stones! They make us all giddy! And it's not like the
self-proclaimed "World's Greatest Rock 'n' Roll Band" cares about
the japes. Not only are these 60-somethings very rich (tickets for this show
soared as high as $500), but they remain devastatingly cool, prehistoric or not.
Plus, for more than two hit-packed hours, the blokes thoroughly pumped
up 18,493 fans -- the very young and the very young at heart - with the cocksure
knowledge that they're still better at their jobs than you'll ever be at yours.
Despite the fact that the "A Bigger Bang Tour" (named after their
new album) is sponsored by the totally lame-sounding Ameriquest Mortgage
Company, the Stones still have some naughty swagger in them. Are they as good as
ever? Of course not. These days, the Stones lazily play too many songs at the
same tempo and with little nuance. Classic cut It's Only Rock 'N' Roll,
which used to grind along at a middling groove, sounded far too much like
burner You Got Me Rocking.
But hey, for the most part, the Stones can still bring it with money's-worth
gusto, with each band member capable of his own brand of thrills.
Mick Jagger, he of the infamous Stones logo lips and
sexually-confused-chicken dance moves, rarely stood still, prancing like a dandy
all over the massive stage, sharing his sly pout on the IMAX screen behind him.
Mick still has the pipes, and he sounded especially crisp and inspired on new
gutbucket-blues cut Back of My Hand and dusty country gem Dead Flowers.
(Although I am deducting cool points from Mick for this lame banter: "I
want to welcome everyone who came from miles and miles away: Pittsburgh,
Sarasota, Orlando." He later tried to talk hockey. Oof.)
Ronnie Wood - his guitar solos slithering through the arena-rock jangle like
snakes dipped in Valvoline - infused some fresh, naughty blood into She's So
Cold and Bitch.
Watts' casual backbone beat is as familiar as your heartbeat; heck, he barely
moved during Miss You, but he's the reason you were shaking your caboose
to that well-aged bit of disco.
And Keith Richards - dear, sweet immortal Keith - smirked out his legendary
licks during that Glimmer Twins salute Tumbling Dice. The man lives in
his own wonderful world, talking to himself, pointing to crowd members as if
they were old pals. "Have you been good while I been away?" Keith
lasciviously snickered before his solo showcase of rarity The Worst.
As a comfy little up-and-close-and-personal trick, the band rode a gliding
catwalk to a smaller second stage at the opposite end of the arena. They seemed
enlivened by the change of scenery: New cut Oh No, Not You Again had more
feisty oomph than on A Bigger Bang. And a wonderfully nasty Honky Tonk
Women had legit punch, with Wood and Richards hunting each other with
knife-sharp licks, and Mick wiggling his wonder hips in pure seductive silliness.
(Speaking of which: English soul singer Joss Stone, a runway-model-tall
blonde who prefers to perform in her bare feet, opened the show with some fine,
if not exactly Times Forum-thrilling, blue-eyed wailing plus a rather sweet
rendition of the Queen/David Bowie hit Under Pressure. She's 18 years
old. In other words, she's young enough to be Mick's girlfriend.)
As the stage was bathed in a red glow, and Mick sang, "Please allow me
to introduce myself..." the not-so-secret formula to the Stones' success
became gloriously clear: Mick, Keith, Ronnie and Charlie just love to play, be
it Sympathy for the Devil or Brown Sugar. And that's what they did,
rocking well into the night. And who knows? Maybe well into their 70s, too.
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