Just less
than one year has gone by since the Abkco release of the whole Madison Square
Garden Stones 1st concert from the 1969 which presented a mono soundboard
recording and here we have an improvement created by skilled fans who
superimposed it to the existing good audience recording, the result is what is
called a matrix that adds audience vibrations and a stereo touch to the
otherwise stale mono soundboard due to synchronizing the recordings and
mixing them together; here 2 mono recordings are used to get a stereo sound,
the end rsult is good although there is still some distortion mostly from Wyman’s
bass
. Particularly impressive
is Sympathy For The Devil where we hear Keith’s solo guitar on the right and
Taylor’s rhythm efforts on the left channel. Likewise, on Prodigal Son Jagger
is on the left channel and the acoustic guitars on the right one.
We all
remember how Ya Ya ‘s was well received and became some kind of a cult album
due to the great mix by Glyn Johns and the interesting intro patch by Sam
Cutler which is here too even if unmentioned on track listing. There is always
the risk of muddying the soundboard sound adding an analogue recording, but the
sound of this release is very good and packaging is nice too presenting a
creative effort on the front cover well suited to the content, the back cover
being more conventional.
So, is this
the definitive version of this concert? Hard to say, since the year end is
close and Abkco may issue a stereo version of its soundboard, or something
else.
