ANAHEIM 1978 2ND SHOW

Disc One: 1. Let It Rock, 2. All Down The Line, 3. Honky Tonk Women, 4. Star Star, 5. When The Whip Comes Down, 6. Beast Of Burden, 7. Lies, 8. Miss You, 9. Just My Imagination, 10. Shattered, 11. Respectable, 12. Far Away Eyes, 13. Love In Vain (shoe time).

Disc Two: 1. Tumbling Dice, 2. Happy, 3. Sweet Little Sixteen, 4. Brown Sugar, 5. Jumping Jack Flash.

The Stones second concert at Anaheim did exist on a good sounding tape soon after the concert that was released on 2 LPs set as On Tour (Phoenix Rec. 44773) and Return To Liver (Atomic Rec. AB 727) and on a silver disc with the same name (Return to Liver) and also as On Tour (whose cover was borrowed from the front cover of a book by Annie Leibovitz having the same name); on cd just as Return To Liver (VGP 292) which sported the On Tour front cover. The obvious reference in the title was at the Stones 69 Oakland stop. This show is a good one, after a slow start and the band speeds up from Star Star onwards; this concert, better known as the shoes show, saw the audience delivering many shoes on stage, prompting at some point Jagger to remark ‘this is the 81^st shoe you throw on stage!’. On a more musical standpoint on this show both Bobby Keys and Nicky Hopkins were invited as guests on stage. The first available recording was a distant one with no much bass but still clear throughout the show. A 2^nd source was released on VGP and on the no label release featuring the same source, including the intro, with a pretty good audience recording that seemed to be a generation lower than that presenting a more balanced document with better lower end frequencies. This is therefore the 3^rd source coming, a nice recording in mono, however, hard to tell if due to the taper’s position that was on Keith’s side, or by a later work because one channel was too low. Anyway the taper must have been pretty close to the PA system because the recording is quite clear and powerful.

It is anyway safe to say that this stands out as a very good release, packed in lavish artwork that stands out, the only thing I don’t personally like is the way the tracks have been split in the two discs, the second disc in fact is too short.