June 24, 2013: The Rolling Stones

Concert Details:

Bands: The Rolling Stones

Location: Verizon Center, Washington, DC

1. Get Off of My Cloud
2. It's Only Rock 'n' Roll (But I Like It)
3. Paint it Black
4. Gimme Shelter
5. Worried About You
6. Street Fighting Man
7. Emotional Rescue
8. Doom and Gloom
9. One More Shot
10. Honky Tonk Woman
11. You Got the Silver
12. Before They Make Me Run
13. Midnight Rambler
14. Miss You
15. Start Me Up
16. Tumbling Dice
17. Brown Sugar
18. Sympathy for the Devil

Encore:

   19. You Can't Always Get What You Want

   20. Jumpin' Jack Flash

   21. (I Can't Get No) Satisfaction

I've always been much more of a fan of The Rolling Stones fan than a fan of The Beatles, although I've never thought they were that comparable of artists, as The Rolling Stones are much heavier, louder, more bluesy band than The Beatles.  Well that's exactly what they delivered heavy, loud, and bluesy.  They also delivered energy and beautiful.  While Keith Richards did not appear to have the energy of a younger man, although that may just be his more laid back style, it would not be difficult to mistake Mick Jagger for a man in his 30's.  Constructed as part of the stage was a tongue pit, with a walk way that worked its way around the crowd which resulted in Mick Jagger doing a considerable amount of running around and at no point did his singing suffer from it.  This is the concert I have paid the most for, in fact twice more than I have paid for any other show and it was worth every dollar spent, including the money I spent on my t-shirt.

They started off strong with crowd pleasing songs such as Get Off of My Cloud and moved through their stories catalogue seeming to me as if they were having maybe even more fun than we were.  They injected energy into their show early, which was impressive as the energy of the room was already very high, when they dropped into Gimme Shelter early,  personal favorite and I would imagine a favorite of many in the crowd.  An impressive group of backup singers providing the second level of singing needed for the song, at times dwarfing Mick Jagger as the song requires but together they were wonderful.

The middle of the show was strong, with the band moving cutting a swath through their large catalogue before closing out their main set with Sympathy for the Devil leaving the audience satisfied, exhausted but ready for more.  They delivered strongly with a guest chorus opened You Can't Always Get What You Want which is the perfect song for a reintroduction of the band back to the stage.  They followed that up to close out the show with strong, albeit predictable, well known songs.  Afterwards my first reaction was thinking that there was some song I was missing but looking over the set list later there was not much more that could have been asked for, and on the songs I wanted the most they really delivered.

Unlike most bands, I don't know if I'd see them again, but that's because of cost not performance, because they blew away all expectations I had of a band who was going through a 50th Anniversary tour and put on a show that I would have expected of most other bands at the peak of their career.