Customer Reviews

Rolling Stones: The Biggest Bang

5 star:		(10)
4 star:		(4)
3 star:		(0)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

This box set boast two concerts and lots of bonus footage from concerts in Japan,China,Argentina etc. There are some good documentaries,cool bonus duets and a whole lot for under $30.00 on four DVDs. One of the best things about this set is that they perform Sway live. I will say that the Austin show is the best and the transfer looks fantastic! The sound is very good dispite what I have read from some other reviewers. I can hear Keith just fine.....when he's playing.Look,I love these guys,but lets face it...they are geting old. Keith plays he signature licks and rest his mummified fingers every chance he gets. It is still a pretty good set and I'm glad I own it. If your a fan your gonna buy it and if your not......what are you reading this for?

This dvd is excellent, cotains four dvds:

1. Austin Concert 22 oct 2006 at Zilker Park with a bonus track: a rehearsal: Can't Be Satisfied (worth the money!!! with Mick playing the slide!)

2. Copacabana Beach. A free concert with one and a half million attendance!, with a short documentary from the Show

3. Various locations (Japan, China, Argentina) whith a bonus tracks: duets with Eddie Vedder, and others.

4. documentary


This new dvd contains some "obscure" songs like:

- Sway
- Get Off My Cloud
- Under My Thumb

and many others.....

This is a lot of fun for fans of the Rolling Stones and of Rock and Roll! Live Stones plus those extras that one might expect would come with a 4 CD set. Normally, I don't look too much at extras, but there are some interesting items that come with the concert footage itself, especially on Disk 4.

The one real downer to this is the first disc of the set. Whoever I bought it from sent me a dud. There were a lot of flaws in the recording--especially skips and breaks in the track. Indeed, as the concert finished, my computer shut down saying it had encountered a major problem. This has nothing to do with the music, but I wish I could recall who sold it to me. . . .

Enough. On to the concert footage. Concerts in Rio and Austin, Texas give us a detailed look at a Stones' concert. And the playing is hot. Ronnie Wood and Keith Richards play the guitars well--belying their ages. Darryl Jones (technically on contract, but he might as well be called a band member) and Charlie Watts anchor the band with their rhythm work. Mick Jagger sings well, although without the vocal range of his youth. It's amazing how lively the four Stones can still perform.

Disk One. The concert starts with "You Got Me Rocking." Wood and Richards begin with some nice guitar playing and the solid rhythm section provides great backing. Nice start to the concert! Some other tracks that caught my interest: The Temptations' "Ain't too Proud to Beg" has been covered by the Stones before. Here, they provide us with a credible version. Back to the mid-19670s with "Get off of My Cloud." Great lyrics and a hard rocker still performed well. Jagger dances well and Richards cranks out gritty guitar work. "Honky Tank Women" is as raunchy as ever, with fine guitar work. "Sympathy for the Devil": The opening notes begin to foreshadow the dark lyrics, with the "ooh-oohs." Another well performed song. "Jumping Jack Flash" provides one of the best guitar riffs in rock and roll and some of the finest 3 minutes of music. Guitar work is great and Watts' drumming is stellar in this song. "Satisfaction" begins with the fuzz tone and the band still plays it with conviction, even though it is (I can scarcely believe this) a song that is over 40 years old! Final encore--"Brown Sugar." The lyrics regarding slavery give this song some gravitas to my mind. The rhythm section sparkles; Bobby Keyes does a great job, too. Fine fireworks display to close this concert out.

Disk Two. The concert from Rio is spectacular. The sea of people attending this concert is powerful! Many of the songs are the same as Disk One. A couple comments about songs NOT appearing at the Austin concert. "Midnight Rambler" is played especially well. "Everybody got to go." Closer to the version on "Get Your Ya-Yas Out" than the concert I saw in 1975. The guitar playing in the middle is a chance for Richards and Wood to throw out nasty notes from their guitars Harmonica work by Jagger is fine, too. "It's only Rock and Roll" shows a band enjoying itself. Man, here and on other songs you can see a lot of wrinkles on the faces of Wood, Watts, Richards, and Jagger. But they play a lot younger than they look. "Start Me Up," "Miss You". . . . More fine concert footage.

Anyhow, despite the problem with the first disk, the music itself is fine. I've listened to a lot of Rolling Stones' live music and this is one of their best concert works. Maybe not as spirited and electric as "Ya-Yas," but awfully good! If you desire a lot of music and some cool extras, you might try this out.

I enjoy the Stones and ANY DVD of them is worth owing and watching. For 2007, the 5.1 audio is good but not as good as compared to the 2009 digital remaster of "Live at the Max"). The filming was great, high quality, The Stones as usual played great engergetic shows, no complaints. I just wish using 6 speakers they would have re-mixed the songs for better separation, it sounds almost like a straight to video sound board recording, but is still good to listen too.

Great PRICE and great collection of shows by the Stone's. Fans will LOVE IT!!

The Stones "Biggest Bang" Tour went on for over a year. It climaxed when they played for a million people on the beach in Rio. The only time you see crowds like this these days is with computer animation, but this time it was real. It's an awesome documentary/concert combination. The fans in Rio went nuts. It's on "The Biggest Bang".

But the documentary suffers in comparison with "Four Flicks", which I consider the best choice between the two packages. Of course, there are other alternatives out there for Stones concerts on video. The most recent "Shine a Light" catches the band at their best. But the Austin concert on "The Biggest Bang" catches the band within weeks of the "Shine a Light" date. So, actually, "Shine a Light", kind of belongs in this collection. It would have made a better choice than the Japanese and Chinese concert tracks. Or, the Stones could have included the Las Vegas concert, from November of 08. I was there, and the boys were smoking that night -- the night after Jagger's father passed (RIP).
So, if you are a diehard Stones fan, like myself, you'll pick this up despite the marginal Far East footage. You'll gape at the crowd in Rio, but you'll return again and again to listen to the Austin concert. It shows the "country" side of the Stones like no other concert. If you're a casual fan, you might consider "Four Flicks" or "Shine a Light" (the cheaper option). "Four Flicks" shows the band in different venues and has a better documentary. "Shine a Light" is a great concert.

Since the Stones are well-known for putting out "Greatest Hits" albums, they might want to consider a DVD containing the best of their concert footage, including the special guests they jam with each tour: Jack White, Cristina Aguilera, Bo Diddley (RIP), Bonnie Raitt, and the rest.

Although it's not easy to summarize a brief review about such works (four DVDs, after a world tour...), I try, starting from the strong points.
In general, the quality of the film and the recording are excellent and the live atmosphere of the Stones' shows seems fully captured: apart from Mick Jagger's brilliant performances, Richards-Wood's duets (still the best R'N'R' "battery" in the world) are really nice and the two rhythm guitar lines delight listener's ears (with good headphones or a hi-fi set, you can hear even the pick "licks" on the guitar strings). For connoisseurs: maybe you will discover some little mistakes of the players into some tracks: the recording does not hide it (it's a live!) and I appreciated this.
What's more, some highlights, like the concert at Copacabana beach, are really impressive: it is probably one of the best live concert released by the Stones, for quality of the sound and for the film shots (and for the great audience: 1,5 million persons).
The choice of the tracks is good, as it covers most of the setlists performed during the Bigger Bang Tour (for more information about them, see specialized websites, like "www.iorr.org"). For those who were present at the live concerts, it should be nice to find again most of the songs played there.
Some little weak points, now, especially about the documentary parts. After two years of live concerts all around the world, this could be the occasion to give more space to some rarities about technical and personal details (tour rehearsals, backstage, personal training of the musicians, etc.): under this point of view, the preceding box "Four Flicks" (Live Licks tour) seems more complete (the first DVD shows the "countdown" of the days before the tour and the technical preparation of stage, lights, setlists, etc.). However, the Biggest Bang box contains some relevant chapters, like the preparation of Rio's gig, or the setting up of the Super Bowl show, and some gems (listen to the improvised version of "I can't be satisfied", played during the rehearsals of the Italian concert in Milan), really enjoyable for fans.
Comparing to such set, the price seems to be reasonable, cheaper than the preceding "Four Flicks" box, when released.

It's probably my old tv or crappy dvd player, and I don't want to bash the DVD if that's what the problem is, so I'll go with the compromise of 4 stars when I want to give it 5 and throw it in the trash at the same time.... Come on, guys! Anything but lose Keith's guitar sound! I'll just say that IF you can hear Keith Richards, and not just the brilliant brass-knuckle playing by Ronnie Wood, I think you'll find this awesome. It's more of a documentary than "Four Flicks", though it has two complete concerts and many other songs. The behind-the-scenes documentary about setting up the concert in Rio de Janeiro -- the Stones played a free concert on Copacabana beach for over a million fans -- confirms your most grandiose conceptions about how rock shows at this level are put together. My favorite moment was the interview with their guitar stringer -- another (previously) unsung Stones hero, a man in a cramped room somewhere with a pair of pliers surrounded by about a thousand guitars, tuning from dawn to dusk. The documentary moves from him to the women who decorate the Stones' dressing rooms, the constantly distracted, girl-watching Brazilian construction crew setting up the massive stage, the various engineers, carpenters, security agents, and lastly, the guy who holds the spotlight on Mick during the show... everyone gets their moment of fame here. It's great stuff if you want to know how a huge Stones concert is done.
As for the concert itself -- Mick, Charlie and Ronnie are great, but it's broken without Keith.
***UPDATE: I PLAYED THIS ON BETTER EQUIPMENT AND HEARD KEITH AFTER ALL, THANK HEAVENS, BLASTING THE GOODS. THIS SET IS WORTH IT FOR "GET OFF OF MY CLOUD" ALONE, BUT THERE ARE MANY OTHER AWESOME SONGS. FIVE STARS, IF THEY'D LET ME UPDATE THAT PART OF MY REVIEW!

this concert is the best way to have almost all the greatest hits of the Stones is a great show is really worth to buy it!

"The Biggest Bang" is a 4-DVD set documenting the Rolling Stones' most recent world tour. This was an especially larger-than-life tour even for the Stones with lots of historical firsts, and so the set includes not one but two complete concerts.

The better of the two shows is on Disk 1. This is a well-filmed show in Texas and the Stones' energy, drive, and - yes - musicianship make this a must-see concert. Ronnie Wood's in especially strong form here, and the Stones turn in a couple of numbers here that they've never performed anywhere else. Mick Jagger's voice especially suits the more country-oriented material the band plugs in here. The second of the two shows is the free show the Stones gave on the Copacabana Beach in Rio, and over a million and a half Brazilians turned out to enjoy the music. For my money, the show isn't nearly as good as the Texas show and the Stones are far more bombastic. But at least watching the two concerts back-to-back will dismiss any complaints that bands on the Stones' level do the same show on every stop of their world tours.

Disk 3 consists mainly of extended excerpts from the historically important China and Japan shows, as well as a concert in Argentina where the Stones come dangerously close to being upstaged by the wild Argentinian audience! I'm wondering why the whole Argentinian show wasn't released on DVD . . .

Disk 4 contains an official documentary about the entire tour that's both revealing and superficial at the same time. It's revealing because we get to see what sort of accomodations the individual Stones expect on the road, and get a sense of the scale of the various stages constructed for the travelling show. It's superficial in that much of what the Stones accomplished in the tour - a free Lincoln Center kickoff near Julliard in New York City and a critically well-received film by Martin Scorsese - aren't even mentioned. And, of course, no one bothers to ask Jagger and Richards why the Stones go on tour to support their latest album and then play no more than three tracks off it at any given show!

So there you have it. If you're a Stones fan like myself you'll buy this budget-priced collection if only for the wonderful Texas show that kicks off the DVD and treat the rest as generous extras of various quality. Now if only the Stones were so generous with their reissue of "Ladies and Gentlemen!"