Customer Rating:  
Summary: About my sixth Stones live album
Comment: Keith sings and you can understand him. Some different live songs, and Jack White sings on Loving Cup. If you are a middle aged rock fan, try White Stripes if you want to feel like you're still in touch with something from this century, although I later heard it in the Safeway supermarket. Anyway, Keith sings Connection, and Christine Agguilerra sings on Live with Me. The standards, Jumpin Jack Flash, Brown Sugar, but well worth the ride. I'm singing along on the beltway with it!
Customer Rating:
Summary: Nobody does it better
Comment: I first saw this at the IMAX theater and what an experience it was. It's better than front row seats to a concert. The cinematography was amazing. The song selection was awesome. The interviews were delightful. The Stones at their very best, as always. Hats off to Scorsese for an exceptional film. Rock on, Stones !!!
Customer Rating:
Summary: junk
Comment: thought this would be a cool product to get saw the film in imax when it came in the mail it feel apart in 2 seconds what a rip off
Customer Rating:
Summary: Content great, Quality control lacking.
Comment: The content of this flash drive was quite excellent, and a nice little gimmick. However, the innards were too big for the molded out space, and the 2 halfs of the lips did not come together. This was evident as soon as I took the item out of the box. Very cheesy quality control. And the record companies wonder why consumers are not buying their product! PS...I did a little surgery with an Xacto knife and carved out a bigger cavity for the flash stick. But why should I have too?
Customer Rating:
Summary: Save Your Money
Comment: I purchased this item for the novely of seeing what it would be like buying an album on a USB stick. The potential for neat things is clearly there but this product offers nothing that couldn't be packaged in a regular CD/DVD format with a few additional data files.
All you get are a few extra pictures including a fascmile of the setlists for each nights with complete musician credits acknowleding little known facets like when Blondie Chaplin plays guitar on a few numbers, and Tim Ries on keyboards. You'd know these things if you've been to a Stones concert. The same booklet as for the CD is available as a PDF file. WOO-HOO.
Okay, there's the value-add in a nutshell for double the cost. You're going to probably download this on your iPOD anyway, so that might be a little faster than downloading off the Internet or from a CD. Is there anybody who is in that much of a hurry?
On to the album's content itself. This album maintains the long standing mystery that aside from "Get Yer Ya-Ya's Out" which is one of the best live albums of all times, in general, Stones live albums are very disappointing. The World's GREATEST Rock n Roll Band, the biggest draw, the kings of longevity, can't release a decent live album! To think there are dozens of live Grateful Dead albums, and even though I don't consider myself a "Deadhead," I honestly enjoy having "umpteen" versions of "Sugar Magnolia" live because they capture the feeling of a Dead concert.
The Stones albums don't do that. I'm not going to rehash the trail of tears from "Love You Live" foward. "Stripped" is an interesting novelty as it has studio jams and acoustic performances. It doesn't really try to capture a full scale Stones concert anyway.
So here we have "Shine A Light." It might be better than some of the rest. The songs seem to follow the flow of a real Stones concert a little more accurately where some of their previous live albums are so randomly compiled. If you're going to get anything out of this album, you're going to have to play it extremely loud on a conventional stereo setup. The immersion of sound you'd get via a headset or car stereo makes it sound too artificial.
Keith and Ronnie are having a blast through out shooting guitar riffs off of each other. Daryl Jones and Charlie Watts lay down that slimy, greasy old Stones rhythm. Chuck Leavell plays a decent piano and pulls in the horns as needed for that extra punch.
Mick Jagger seems to be trying too hard to enunciate his lyrics rather than to just go with the flow and lead the show. After twenty six years, does anybody give a hoot you still can't understand him singing half the lyrics on "Exile on Main Street?" At times it sounds like Mick Jagger singing Rolling Stones karaoke!!!
Jack White really takes advantage of his cameo singing his duet on "Loving Cup" but everything else about the song stinks.
Some good points, "As Tears Go By" is one of the best live ballads they've ever recorded complete with Keith on 12 string. The instrumental performance is so strong that Jagger's wishy-washy vocals don't bring it down that much. This is the best live "Sympathy for the Devil" in a long time, but it still sucks. It sounds more like a live performance relying less on digital samples that has been the norm since "Steel Wheels/Urban Jungle." Jagger sounds just plain silly. There's no drama. There's nothing menacing about his performance. It just's just so much better than thinking of fans paying for $100 seats getting to hear a computer play percussion. You actually get to hear Charlie's drums, and some of the ensemble banging on clangy things. Am I reaching for nice things to say about this album? YES!
The highlight of the album, ARE YOU READY FOR THIS???, it's Keith song, "Little T&A." Keith hardly ever sounds good on a live recording, but he's Keith. That he's still alive and conveys all that Keith attitude is good enough on stage anyway, but on this live album what makes it is the instrumental jam. First Keith and Ronnie are RED HOT. They then work into a quick little jam where Daryl Jones lays down one of the best live bass guitar passages for all time.
The strongest group performance is the title track, "Shine a Light." Jagger struggles to hit the notes at times, but the whole mood of the song is so powerful. It works as a wonderful closing piece to the album complete with two fine guitar solos just like the original.
One additional note, I reviewed the music from listening to the complete, not the editted CD. The USB stick was defective. Some of the pictures didn't load completely and some songs wouldn't load at all or skipped or missed miserably.
You're paying twice as much as the double CD version of the album, an album you'd probably only buy if you're a Stones completist or what a memeno of the concert tour which would be much better accomplished by purchasing the four DVD set from Best Buys which is worth it for just the Texas concert alone.
The stick is enclosed in a rubber cover shaped as the Stone's infamous tongue logo attached to a keychain. It's cute packaging. Double WOO-HOO.
For us aging baby-boomers there's a certain sense of reassurance to see the Stones still carry on, but as a serious listener, this is not a good album. If it weren't the Rolling Stones, this would be a throwaway album. I never thought I'd get so down on a Stones album, but the live CD's are piling up on the shelf and aside from "Ya-Ya's" not a single one screams "Play me!" except for the El Macambo set on "Love You Live."
Kids who are just getting into the Stones for the first time should go right to the classics and then download a song here, a song there from later on to enjoy the whole experience. The mojo of the live experience cannot be captured on an audio recording alone.
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