The Rolling Stones - Skydome, Toronto ON (10.18.02)
Posted by Jeremie Brazeau on 01.22.2003
I now hate, hate, hate, HATE the Rolling Stones
I wasn’t expecting too much out of this show from the get-go. I’ve heard “Flashpoint,” “Stripped,” “Love you Live,” “Still Life” and even the highly overrated “Get yer Ya Ya’s Out” and quite frankly, I’ve never been impressed by the Stones “Live experience” as it is so highly touted by rock bourgeoisie. Still, I figured a hundred dollars for a ticket to see the legends live ought to be justified be the fact that I can now say “I’ve seen the Rolling Stones” and add them to the ever growing list of concerts that I’ve seen.
Buzzer please? Wrong answer. From the moment Mick hit the stage it was Jagger by the numbers. No smiling, no real passion, just a guy who knows he can electrify a crowd at his own whim. The band started out with Brown Sugar, and with a few exceptions here and there, sucked their way through a repertoire of songs that a)you hear every day on the radio anyway, or b) stink so bad that you can’t understand why they’d play them in the first place (what the hell were they doing playing “love train” anyway?).
The exceptions were Tumbling Dice, which despite being such a great song, you don’t hear too much and Sympathy for the Devil, whose coolness had more to do with the pyro than anything else. Ex-Beach Boy Blondie Chaplin was a surprise back up singer, and I think figuring out his identity was about the only thing that made the show interesting at all.
There’s something a little disheartening about hearing “Street Fightin’ Man”, a song which, in its time, was so controversial that it was banned from English Radio for its inflammatory message, being played by a band that has so utterly sold their integrity down the toilet. A certain degree of selling out can be interesting in an anti-anti-establishment way (see U2's Zoo TV tour for evidence), but The Rolling Stones are now officially about making money, money, money, and more...MONEY. I paid fifty-six dollars for my ticket to see U2 on the Popmart Tour in 97, same location, MUCH better seats and the band was footing the bill for the most elaborate and expensive tour ever undertaken. The Stones are charging a hundred bucks a pop, for non-floor seating, and E-Trade, amongst other corporate sponsors, are footing the bill. It’s allllllllll profit!
All this is churning through my mind while the band itself bores the living hell out of me by playing standard songs that are so ingrained into my head that they make “I Want it That Way” desirable. Purely Stones by the numbers, the only surprise comes as a fan throws a bottle of water at Sir Mick while the band is doing the “intimate stadium second stage” bit. By the time they’ve ruined “Gimme Shelter, I just want to get the hell out of this place and maybe dream about the up and coming Sigur Ros concert I’ll be seeing (coming soon to a review near you) in about two weeks. Either that or wash the grime of this travesty away with the memory of Crosby Stills Nash and Young rocking out for almost four hours in a truly amazing example of old rockers aging gracefully.
The final insult comes with the encore, where the band races out and plays a rendition of “Satisfaction” that is only reminiscent to the early days of the Stones in that they play it so fast that you can tell they want to get out of there just as badly as we do.
Of the Stones, Keith Richards and Charlie Watts can lay claim to coolness, as Charlie is there because he is a consummate professional, and never really looked all that interested anyway, and Keith, well, Keith can take a shit on his couch while watching Star Trek all day and it would be cool.
The opening act, No Doubt actually made the Stones look bad, and in retrospect, they did a great job...and I hate No Doubt. In short, this is not only a hundred bucks that I’ll never ever see again, it’s also a good two hours and some of my life that I have officially lost to the most insulting barrage of tunes (no Emotional Rescue, Dandelion, 2000 Light Years From Home, or even Nineteenth Nervous Breakdown, for God’s Sake) performed by caricatures of caricatures of caricatures whose only joy seems to be derived from fooling their audience into thinking they’re still relevant.
The 411: I now hate, hate, hate, HATE the Rolling Stones
