Music Review: The Rolling Stones, Totally Stripped

Another Rolling Stones album. Yeah right. Another live Rolling Stones album. Yawn. But back up the truck. While Stones fans always appreciate more from the aging rockers, even after 50 years, this really is a worthy collection. It certainly forced me to reassess my position on new Stones material coming our way.

Totally Stripped, the album, recorded live at Amsterdam's Paradiso, Paris' L'Olympia and at the Brixton Academy in London, between May and July 1995, finds the Stones at the top of their game.

All three venues were relatively small so they couldn't deliver their usual stadium sound mix. With production ace Don Was in the driving seat, the stripped back delivery brings a Rolling Stones album that's high class, and isn't that a gas.

Opening the line-up is a rarely played early Stones hit, in fact it was their first single in the US, their cover of Buddy Holly's Not Fade Away.

Everyone is on top form, especially Mick Jagger's harmonica playing.

The set-list does lean on the lighter side of the Stones' big catalogue which is perfectly fine by me.

The Girl with the Faraway Eyes, Dead Flowers, Honky Tonk Women and Shine a Light all build the momentum to a tour de force of familiar but fresh classics, Dylan's Like a Rolling Stone, Midnight Rambler, Brown Sugar, Rip this Joint and a barnstorming version of Street Fighting Man.

There are various choices with Totally Stripped, some including a DVD, some two DVDs, but let's celebrate the 50 something years of a band that can still nail it.

We can easily become blasé about a new Rolling Stones release. Forget that and check this out. You'll be very pleasantly surprised.

Rating: 4/5 stars.