Friday is the opening of the latest Martin Scorsese concert flick, Shine A Light, with the self-proclaimed "World's Greatest Rock and Roll Band," the Rolling Stones.
OK, so the movie is not out yet, and I am just a putz writing on a laptop in Tulsa. I have no connections to get to see previews of movies. I will see it when other normal schleps can lay down a sawbuck at the IMAX. But I do have a slight head start in that I picked up the soundtrack for the film--also called Shine A Light--yesterday when it became available at the local Large Blue And Yellow Box electronic retail store. So I have an idea what to expect from the film. And, to be honest, after two times through the album, I am not as excited as I once was about the film.
First of all, we are talking about a band who has released more live than studio albums since 1990. Have any of them, other than the classic Get Yer Ya-Ya's Out, been that great?
Correct answer is "not really."
But this time around I thought, "It was recorded in a smaller venue (The Beacon Theatre in NYC), they have included some songs rarely heard in concert, and Martin Scorsese is involved. I"ll bet it is better than average."
Conclusion: I guess it is, but not by much.
The boys start off with a good version of Jumpin' Jack Flash, and it's a gas gas gas. Shattered is fine, but this is where we start to notice that the audio mix is just off enough to sound weird. Like they have the wrong instruments up at the wrong time. But then we go into a, well, hot version of She Was Hot from their Undercover album. Then two from their best record--and perhaps the last true rock album ever recorded: Exile On Main Street. (The two songs are All Down The Line and Loving Cup.)
These two songs lead into four concert rarities: As Tears Go By, Some Girls, Just My Imagination and Faraway Eyes. Again, the sound mix is off just slightly, but enough to take a bit of the fun of these songs away.
Next is a Muddy Waters song, Champagne & Reefer, with guest Buddy Guy. Ok--this is just horrible. Buddy Guy is playing one tempo, Keef another, and Charlie seems completely lost trying to make sense of either. Mick sounds as if he is totally embarrassed by it all and just wants to get the song over with. He ends it by dropping an MF-bomb in reference to Buddy Guy, I suppose in a positive sense. I suppose. I have not even imported that cut onto my iTunes and hit Skip when it comes on. It's that bad.
The boys have not recovered when they take off on the third Exile song, Tumbling Dice. They give it a halfhearted effort, with it ending better than it started. They sound, to be honest, bored.
Then come the beer songs. (So called because when Keef sings his two solos, many people in the audience get up and go for beer.) Keef does a great job with both You Got The Silver and Connections. A good end to the first disc.
(Oh--you can get a single disc "basic" version of Shine A Light for 10 bucks, but why not spend two dollars more and get the "deluxe" two-disc version? C'mon.)
The second disc starts off with a cut from Scorsese talking about not wanting Mick to burst into flames from the lights he has at the front of the stage. I have a feeling this is the funniest line in the movie, and now that I have heard it, I don't have to take my laughing face to the show. Anyway, we go into the meat of the Stones' set list: Sympathy For The Devil, Live With Me, Start Me Up, Brown Sugar and Satisfaction. All mediocre at best. All played with very little passion or soul. On Brown Sugar, for instance, Keef sets such a fast pace I was left wondering if he looked at his watch and thought, "Damn, it's 10 o'clock. I'm going to miss the rerun of the Golden Girls if I don't get going." Do not buy this album for these songs. I mean, it's better than listening to most any rock that has come out in the past twenty-five years, but it is not vintage Stones.
The last four songs sound as if they were sorta stapled on by a producer who thought, Wow--we can't put out just one and a half discs. We had better add some songs. So they did: Paint It Black (good), Little T&A (a song I have never understood, appreciated or enjoyed--and still don't after hearing it here), I'm Free (makes me think I'm watching a commercial and I start reaching for the TV remote), and the title song, Shine A Light. This last song is well-done, but rather anti-climactic.
So, on the whole about a B- effort from the boys (who are in their mid-60s and should each send me a Christmas card just for calling them "boys"). Maybe after I see the movie I will appreciate the album more. After all, you have to see Sir Mick and Keef to really appreciate their music.
I am wondering, however, if I will be able to take an IMAX-sized Keith Richards. We will see this weekend...
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In the interests of full disclosure: I am not a fan of the Rolling Stones. I've never understood how they got to be so darn successful.
That said, this quote from Martin Scorsese intrigues me:
"Let me put it this way," he said in a revealing August 2007 interview with Craig McLean of the London Observer. "Between '63 and '70, those seven years, the music that they made I found myself gravitating to. I would listen to it a great deal. And ultimately, that fueled movies like 'Mean Streets' and later pictures of mine, 'Raging Bull' to a certain extent and certainly 'GoodFellas' and 'Casino' and other pictures over the years.
"The actual visualization of sequences and scenes in 'Mean Streets' comes from a lot of their music, of living with their music and listening to it. Not just the songs I use in the film. No, it's about the tone and the mood of their music, their attitude. I just kept listening to it. Then I kept imagining scenes in movies. And interpreting. It's not just imagining a scene of a tracking shot around a person's face or a car scene. It really was [taking] events and incidents in my own life that I was trying to interpret into filmmaking, to a story, a narrative. And it seemed that those songs inspired me to do that, to find a way to put those stories on film. So the debt is incalculable. I don't know what to say. In my mind, I did this film 40 years ago. It just happened to get around to being filmed right now."
So, if the Rolling Stones' music helped make Scorsese who he is, I'm all for them. And this now explains why he uses "Sympathy for the Devil" in almost every picture.
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