As much as the recorded product, the rock and roll concert scene seems mighty unhealthy these days. I hardly ever go to see name bands anymore myself, because most of them are so incredibly boring. Standards of performance are very low, and those few artists with enough talent or interest to put on a credible show often
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end up turning in performances so professionally, predictably competent that you walk out with the palest satisfaction and few memories. In the past year I have watched Ten Years After stumble through a set equal parts plodding monotone and splintered noise, Crosby, Stills, Nash & Young invoke Woodstock to compensate for boring everyone to tears, and the Band and Creedence Clearwater recite their albums to such perfection that I fidgeted. I had to draw the line of most resistance when Led Zeppelin hit town last month for a 2 1/2 hour
tour-de-force. But I asked a friend with more fortitude how it was, and he raved: "Oh, shit. I took eight reds and just sat there thinkin' the Zep was gonna play forever—man, I felt
so good!"
Into this depressing scene ripped the Rolling Stones barnstorming their way across America last fall for a tour which left most audiences satisfied and well-nigh spent, but got reviews mixed and ultimately perplexed because few of us were sure what to expect or, once the hysteria of the actual performance had drained away, how to react. In 1965, caught up in a hurricane of bopper shrieks, we accepted the whole thing as sort of a supernatural visitation, a cataclysmic experience of Wagnerian power that transcended music. In 1969 they were expected to prove themselves as a stage act, but the force of their personalities and the tides of hype and our expectations cancelled all our cynical reservations the moment Mick strode out and drawled hello to each home town. There they were in the flesh, the Rolling Stones, ultimate personification of all our notions and fantasies and hopes for rock and roll, and we were enthralled, but the nagging question that remained was whether the show we had seen was really that brilliant, or if we had not been to some degree set up, pavlov'd by years of absence and rock scribes and 45 minute delays into a kind of injection delirium in which a show which was perfectly ordinary in terms of what the Stones might have been capable of would seem like some ultimate rock apocalypse. Sure, the Stones put on what was almost undoubtedly the best show of the year, but did that say more about their own involvement or about the almost uniform lameness of the competition? Some folks never did decide.
Liver Than You'll Ever Be, appearing last spring, provided a partial answer. It was a good album, as live rock albums go—"Carol" and "Midnight Rambler" especially shone. Some people were enthralled by it, but I found the musical interest of most of the songs mighty, ephemeral, and in general preferred the clattering thunder of Got Live If Yo
