Dud Sea Scrawls The Writing, clearly, is not on the wall!

This is a blog I wrote a long time ago, Friday Apr. 4, 2003 to be precise. The day of the concert. I am posting this here now because SSM was talking about the Stones’ concert scheduled sometime next month or so.

Hot muggy Friday evening in Bangalore and it had to rain. To cool the ardour of those thousands of Stones’ fans… some of whom were too stoned to notice when it began and when it ended.
I was stoned too, but on a different psychotropic substance… the high that “Sister morphine” gave when I listened to Sticky Fingers… Sixty year old has beens? never let it be said of the Stones that was the message given. Still rock and rollicking, these guys just blew everyone with their own special brand of on stage antics… but, the important thing that was clear was, they still dig their music… after all these years, they still dig what they do… the effortless ease of the Keith and Woods’ guitars’ plaintive shrieks, accompanied by those powerful vocal chords of Mick, nay Sir Mick, and Charlie Watts drumming those kits to kingdom come… loud and obnoxious, someone called them. They were that… and more… TALENTED.
Their showmanship surpassed all the other artistes whom we had seen here before, their on stage energy and enjoyment of music and their personal chemistry, evident for all to see.
The music as would any Stones’ fan say was excellent… it helped that I was standing about five feet away from the stage but when Mick came too close, thought that his mouth needed plastic surgery… impeccable selection of songs…the choice of songs neatly paced, never a dull moment through the two and quarter hour show. And when they finally sang “Jumpin’ Jack flash”, the audience still sang “I can’t get ( no satisfaction )”
I loved it as everyone who dug Stones’ music did… I wasn’t quite prepared for this kind of an evening. An unbelieveing audience tried to shake themselves out of a musical reverie and literally had to be pushed out of the enclosures by the security personnel… unbelieveing that the musical madness had ended… and Sir Mick and company were off to Mumbai to cast their spell on an, I’m sure, equally unprepared audience.
Set list:
Brown Sugar
It’s Only Rock’n Roll
Start Me Up
Don’t Stop
Rocks Off
Angie
You Can’t Always Get What You Want
Bitch
Miss You
Tumbling Dice
Slipping Away
Before The Make Me Run
Sympathy For The Devil
Midnight Rambler
Gimme Shelter
You Got Me Rocking
Honky Tonk Women
Street Fighting Man
Satisfaction
Jumping Jack Flash (encore)

It was unfortunate that Ki2 couldn’t join in to have fun… but I’m sure he won’t miss it when this concert, with suitable censorship, will be telecast sometime in May on Sony Max… Atleast for sometime from today, Bangalore will be divided… those who were there for the Stones’ concert and those who weren’t…
Hopefully those who were there will be more merciful to those who
weren’t, than I am… and spare those poor souls more torment by not talking about those few amazing moments in the company of a few good musicians…