THE MIDNIGHT RAMBLERS IN THE MIDNIGHT HOUR â€“KNEBWORTH 1976

Sound 8.5 Packaging 10 Performance 8.5 Video

Label: Tarantura TCDRS 50-1,2
Source: Stevenage, Knebworth, UK 21st August 1976
Format: 2 Picture cds
Running time: 78.05/70.17
Sound / source: Matrix of Audience stereo with 3 major patches (first 40 seconds intro and start of Satisfaction from another audience recording, from end of Hot Stuff to the start of Fool To Cry 58 seconds from soundboard source used; from last half of Honky Tonk Women through Midnight Rambler start 19.31 in total, each song sourced from various audience recordings).
Packaging: Gatefold paper sleeve with OBI, 6 pages booklet, Lim. Ed. 150 numbered copies
Features
Video / source

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Review by RICCAR99 More articles by RICCAR99

Track list

Disc One: 1. Crowd, 2. (I Can t Get No) Satisfaction, 3. Ain t Too Proud To Beg, 4. If You Can t Rock Me/ Get Off Of My Cloud, 5. Hand Of Fate, 6. Around And Around, 7. Little Red Rooster, 8. Stray Cat Blues, 9. Hey Negrita, 10. Hot Stuff, 11. Fool To Cry, 12. Star Star, 13. Let s Spend The Night Together, 14. You Gotta Move, 15. You Can t Always Get What You Want, 16. MC.

Disc Two: 1. Intro, 2. Dead Flowers, 3. Route 66, 4. Wild Horses, 5.Honky Tonk Women/ Country Honk, 6. Tumbling Dice, 7. Happy, 8. Nothing From Nothing, 9. Outta Space, 10. Midnight Rambler, 11. It s Only Rock n Roll (But I Like It), 12. Brown Sugar, 13. Rip This Joint, 14. Jumping Jack Flash, 15. Street Fighting Man.

The review

Claimed by Tarantura to be the definitive Stones Knebworth 76 edition, this is a new audience source presenting an almost the complete show, reconstructed with some help from various other audience sources and a short soundboard one. The master tape of a previously uncirculated audience source has been used for the majority of the concert; this new source was missing three sections of the concert which have almost entirely been patched from other sources, these three sections and the sources are detailed below:
Patch 1 - spoken Ladies and Gentlemen... intro and the start of Satisfaction - first 40 seconds of the concert - a different audience source is used to fill the very start of the concert which was not recorded by this new audience taper.
Patch 2 - from the end of Hot Stuff to the start of Fool To Cry - 58 seconds of the soundboard source are used to fill a tape flip of the new audience source (no other audience source of this section of the show is known to exist).
Patch 3 - last half Honky Tonk Women (including Country Honk) > Tumbling Dice > Happy > Nothing From Nothing > Outa-Space > start of Midnight Rambler are all missing from the new audience source. This section is 19:31 minutes in total; each of these 7 songs have been sourced from various other poorer sounding audience sources.
There are two very brief sections missing from this compilation. These are: a few seconds between Honky Tonk Women and Country Honk that were not on any audience source as well as the first few seconds of Nothing From Nothing which were also missing from the audience tapes, otherwise it is the complete show. 2 hours 27 minutes 43 seconds. The audio mixing work was done by Jackson Dux III From the very beginning this is a great experience to listen to, forget those distant, aseptic sounds that even in soundboard form offered a sloppy image of the band; here the taper must have been pretty close to the stage on Keith side and his driving guitar is the top attraction and who cares if the audience is heard at times too much and Charlie drums resonate with too much echo, when the guitars lead the dance.

Knebworth 76 has come out at first on vinyl album as Knebworth Fair later renamed Route 76 Low Tide & Fair Hits (RSVP 005) on coloured wax, then as Hot August Night 2lp (DDR Prod. Kneb 876) running too fast and with the same unimaginative title from Kneb 1976:it wasn t a hot night at all (I can tell it because I was there) as Jagger says: It s getting cold right after Ain t Too Proud To Beg or:cold weather before Hand Of fate Other vinyl album that portray songs from Knebworth 76 are Look at My Face (no label), Stoned Stones Tour Mop Up (Allied Prod. 082), Stoned Stones (Apollo 786) and Everybody s Got To Go (Great Live Concerts RR 786) , later released on compact as well. Talking about silver discs the best is undoubtedly Best of the Knebworth Fair (Midnight Beat 088) that has a very clear but incomplete soundboard, then from Japan came out Hot August Night (Hot Lips 004-5) that missed only Stray Cat Blues taken from the video that surfaced in the 90s, to be found complete as Hot August Night at Knebworth Fair (Stone Crazy 001-2) that released a 3 cd in a large box with an extra disc featuring El Mocambo 77 tracks. Then later a long digipack was released, called Live Dead Flowers (Black Cat Rec. 30) offering an incomplete performance and Knebworth Fair Complete Recording 1976 Final!!!(Shaved Di 020-1), the worst of the lot with a high generation tape coming from a video source, again Hot August Night (TAKRL 876) 2 LP with an incomplete soundboard but with one of the crispest releases before it came out again as Save Me (RSP), Knebworth 2 cd (Red Devil 004 Â½) and then Hot August Night (VGP 146) with a stereo line recording, thanking Bill Graham for lending the tape (something hard to believe). Later we got Hot August Night (SODD 062-63) which mixed audience and soundboard sources in order to get the most complete version of the concert and bypass the dullness of some soundboard songs that have always been of a higher generation, not comparable to the best one circulating; in 2012 came out a new audience source on a cdr called Knebworth 21-08-76 (TRS). On Tour Of Europe 76 Revisited (GFR 227-28) are featured 10 songs as bonus, 3 songs are on Unreleased Live Stones 68-79 (Golden Stars LACS 1034). It is not sure why the whole concert is complete, few cuts are understandable due to cassettes flips, but the 19 minutes missing at the end could possibly have been set apart for a future improved version, we know how things go these days with newly unearthed recordings (no mention in the booklet about why these 7 songs in a row are missing) . Packaging is superb with a 6 pages booklet featuring black and white photos and an essay written by taper Mike B. that has a wrong date (26 August) and a curious anecdote which recalls the way this off gig after 2 months from the Euro 76 tour end was publicised: a man carrying a placard proclaiming The Stones will play Knebworth ran onto the center court of Wimbledon during one of the key tennis tournament of the year; what follows is the description of the audience surprise due to the setlist that featured so many recently unplayed songs (10) that helped making this the longest Stones concert ever .