Podunkian Music Club

The Rolling Stones-Sympathy for the Devil

The world’s geriatric rock and roll machine rolled into Vancouver tonight, performing a remake for the show cancelled earlier in the month when Mick Jagger developed throat problems.

The Stones while one of the wonders of the aging process, still manage to not only rock out with one of the most professional of shows, they still pack the big halls, long after many of their contemporaries have retired to the lounges or to a greater reward. And while they now play the Regina’s, Bismarck’s and Halifax’s of the concert world, it’s more as case of “we haven’t been there yet,” rather than as a gig for the sake of a gig.

Tonight on the Music Club, we’ll take you back to the heyday of their early success, the late sixties when revolution (amongst other substances) was in the air and the music was electric.

From the Rock and Roll circus, we bring Sympathy for the Devil one of the most amazing of Stones songs ever recorded. In our selection a youthful Mick, Keith and the boys find a little help from their friends, as they lay down the licks to what many feel is one of the greatest Rolling Stone songs ever. It also gives a glimpse to the two competing attitudes of the era, why parents were aghast at their children’s new choice of icon and perhaps why the kids were so inclined in the first place. It was all so very different and for some a little bit scary.

It defined the early era of the Stones as the bad boys of rock roll; a year later a performance at Altamont, which was steeped in violence at the California concert setting brought to an end the feel good aura of the late sixties and introduced a harsher, more unforgiving era of rock.

The Internet Movie Data Base describes 1968’s Rock and Roll Circus as such: Originally filmed in December 1968, "The Rock and Roll Circus" was originally intended to be released as a television special. The special was filmed over two nights and featured not only the Rolling Stones but The Who, Jethro Tull (with future Black Sabbath guitarist Tommy Iommi filling in for the recently departed Mick Abrahams), Marianne Faithful and an all-star jam featuring John Lennon, Eric Clapton, Keith Richards and Mitch Micthell.

Many others in rock that that traveled these roads with the Stones would fall off the path as the seventies progressed, while the Stones just kept rolling along. Now some four decades later, they may move a little slower but still command a performance as the Royalty of Rock and Roll.

Artist—The Rolling Stones
Recording-Rock and Roll Circus DVD