While it clearly wasn’t from one show, cuz Jagger’s jump suit jumps from white to black and back between songs, Ladies & Gentlemen … The Rolling Stones remains a sublime example of an average killer night for The Greatest Rock & Roll Band In The Whole Fucking World back during their 1972 North American tour. Consisting of nothing but stage shots, captured by the great cinematographer Steve Gebhardt and directed by Rollin Binzer, one gets the surreal feeling one is actually sitting onstage. (It’s a wet dream for guitarists eager to follow Keef and Mick Taylor’s fretting technique.) It’s one of two ’72 tour documentaries, the other being Robert Frank’s rarely screened, oft-bootlegged Cocksucker Blues, which concentrates on the stuff of a Stones song (sweet vaginas and needles ‘n’ spoons) rather than the songs themselves. Ladies and Gents … is about the muuuusic, maaaaaan, including lotsa Let It Bleed, Sticky Fingers and at least three Exiles. With no help other than a lean horn section (Bobby Keys on sax, Jim Price on trumpet) and piano (both peerless pounder Nicky Hopkins and longtime roadie Ian Stewart), this is the quintessential ’70s Stones. To celebrate it’s forthcoming DVD release, the film is being screened once in a gazillion theaters tonight at 7:30 p.m. local time, with a newly filmed theater-only introduction from Mick J and other extras. So dig: if you want to see it on a big movie screen, ya gots one chance. Hey, ya can’t always get what you want. (To find out where it’s playing near you, go to fathomevents.com/concertsandmusic/event/rollingstones.aspx, key in your zip code, and go get yer ya-ya’s out!)

Thu., Sept. 16, 2010

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