Concert Review - The Rolling Stones

How many times have you seen them on TV? Super Bowl halftime shows, commercials, HBO Specials, millions of things. So when they walk out onto a stage right in front of your face, it’s pretty damn surreal. And I mean, laughter inspiring surrealism. I probably laughed through the first 3 songs. Seeing Mick Jagger strutting and doing the chicken walk across the stage and seeing Keith Richards playing guitar bent over awkwardly like he was being held up by puppet strings, hearing those songs that I’ve heard thousands of times, it was just hilarious. It can’t really be described.
What can be described is how much I hate arena shows. This was the first concert at the new Cardinals stadium and man does that place suck. It’s gigantic and has a massive concrete wall at the far end, opposite of the stage. So what happens to music waves when they hit a flat concrete wall? Yeah, there’s just a wee bit of an echo. So if you’re sitting perpendicular to the stage, you hear the music from the speakers in one ear and then hear the echo of the sound in your other ear about 2 seconds later. It makes for a pretty interesting (annoying) experience. Also, sitting in the upper deck at the far end of the stadium makes the Stones look like ants. This is nothing new, but it’s the first time I’ve been to a show like that since high school so it reminded me just how useless it is to be in attendance.
Finally, the Rolling Stones, for as old as they are, are still real good. They don’t really do anything but play the same old songs but to be fair, they they play those old songs – which they’ve probably played 10s of thousands of times – with the same energy and passion as they did the very first time they played them. Would I still be excited about playing “Satisfaction” after 40 years? Hell no. But did the Stones come out and rock it just as well as ever? That would have to be a “yes.” Keith Richards actually ran around. Literally ran. The stage itself lifted up on hydraulics and drove down a track through the middle of the arena and sat back down at the other end of the stadium, giving a whole new set of people front-row seats. The backdrop of the stage was 90 feet tall and hollow so a few dozen people, who paid $500 for the seat, actually got to stand above the stage, look down on the band, and look out at the crowd. All in all, it was one of the coolest and most in-depth stage productions I’ve ever seen. It was like Cirque De Sole without the flying.
In the end, The Rolling Stones are just one of those bands that should be on everyone’s lifetime list. They’re just that kind of institution. That being said, if you’ve seen them on TV, that’s more or less the same thing too.