Posted by Fleabit Peanut Monkey on March 25, 1999 at 20:07:09:
In Reply to: !981 tour posted by Josh,Esq on March 24, 1999 at 17:20:28:
Hmmm. I seem to be the only old guy on the board who doesn't have a memory of anyone shooting up in '81. I saw them at JFK, the opener, and although I thought they sounded much better than '78 (a good tour but the Philly date ranks among their worst gigs ever), I was again disappointed to see them playing in broad daylight. It takes all the drama out of the event. I took my ex-girlfriend along, thinking perhaps that she would swoon at the sight of Mick and fall into my arms...no such luck, though. It was our last date.
The crowd was HUGE. 90,000 people I believe. That's a lot of bodies. I navigated the unwashed sea to the front, took some cool pictures of Mick, returned to the back, took pictures of the whole shebang (it WAS a neat backdrop), then went back up to Keith's side and snapped more. I ended up dead center and got a nice shot of Mick with no shirt on. I was recording the show too, with a little Sony cassette player I used to have. It was a cool show, in retrospect, all of the Tattoo songs sounded nice....Tops, Hang Fire, Neighbors.... Waiting On A Friend was probably the best thing they did; Little T & A was definitely the WORST. (Aw Haw Haw! How many times can Keef say "baybay" in one song?) I was relieved that they played longer than the meager 78 minutes or so they did in '78. But those daytime shows just don't pack the wallop. Plus they had excised all the DANGEROUS material....no Midnight Rambler, no Sympathy, no Shelter, no Paint It Black. (It sure made me happy that ALL of those songs were in the setlist the next time I saw them, eight years later, AND the last time I saw them, two weeks ago.) Mick wasn't singing the songs that tour, he was more interested in gymnastics and just barked the songs.
The show ended at dusk, I think there were fireworks, and then the crowd dispersed. We wandered through Philadelphia. There was a garbage strike that fall and there were piles of garbage on every street corner.It was warm, Indian summer, and the city smelled rotten, the sick sweet odor of decay. We passed a black bar, and the people out front asked us how the show was. "Oh, OK. Pretty good," I said. It was the most subdued I've ever been after a Stones show.