New old Rolling Stones movie "Some Girls - Live in Texas" (1978)

[Aussie Mark]

I went to the sole big screen session in Sydney last night (there is only one screening in each location all over the world) of this new concert flim from the Fort Worth show on the 1978 US tour.  The DVD/BluRay is being released later this month.

The film and audio quality were first rate - lots of camera angles, well edited.  George might be able to chime in on this technical aspect - for an old film there were no spots, blemishes or artifacts to be seen at all - presumably this is thanks to the digitising process?

Fans of the Stones will enjoy this movie, and casual fans or people wanting to relive the 70s should like it as well.  As a historical snapshot of the Rolling Stones at a period in time it is very revealing.

Jagger is clearly coked to his eyeballs - actually his eyeballs are what gives it away .... that, and his very obvious 90 minute erection.  Despite the coke, he is in fine form vocally throughout the concert, with some fantastic adlib vocal tweaks, and he sways between being menacing and playful.  At times you get the impression that in the absence of a woman on stage he's very close to wanting to rape Ronnie Wood.  Mick plays guitar on a lot of songs, not that he's doing much or you can hear what he's playing (probably a good thing) - he tends to wear the guitar like a prop most of the time, Elvis style.

Ronnie behaves like he smoked two ounces of weed before the show, and is super mellow, but towards the end of the concert you can see him starting to get annoyed at the attention he is getting from Mick.  Ronnie plays some excellent slide this night.

Keef is wired on an indeterminable substance and covers a lot of acreage on stage (as does Ronnie at times), and seems to be having a lot of fun.  You can hear his harmonies really well, which I like - his voice always blends so well with Jagger's.

Charlie and Bill are their usual selves, holding it all together in their wonderfully understated manner while the other three head off in different directions.  Bill is playing the custom Travis Bean and treads his usual well worn straight line path back and forth between his rig and the front of the stage - although you never see him actually move, which makes me think that roadies lift him up and move him to a different part of the stage whenever the camera is not on him.  Of special interest is the fact that Bill is playing with the middle and ring fingers of his left hand taped together, having broken a knuckle a week beforehand when he was leaving the stage, stepped through a curtain and fell 9 feet to the ground, knocking himself unconscious.  Watching and listening to Bill's playing at this concert you would not know that he is playing with two fingers strapped together - amazing.

There are no horns (other than Mick's), and no backup singers.  Ian Stewart and Ian McLagan are both playing keyboards at the side of the stage.  There are more Ampeg SVT's than you can poke a stick at, plus a couple of Mesa Boogie combos (maybe for Mick's Strat).

Some great audience closeups too.  Overall a very enjoyable and interesting concert movie.

[uwe]

Sounds good! I had forgotten that Some Girls was already with Ronnie (it had to be, he joined around Black and Blue), but of course his steel guitar and slide playing is all over tracks like Faraway Eyes, to this day one of my favorite "you'll always have the laaaaaaawd by your side" Stones tracks ever.

[Aussie Mark]

Given the concert was in Texas, Mick really hammed it up on Faraway Eyes too!

[OldManC]

I'll have to check out that Blue Ray. On any new release (or re-release) they will have gone back to the original negative (or a duplicate of it) and re-transferred everything. Most likely all done digitally as well (so even any blemishes from the original negative would be fixed up during the process). With the Blue Ray being released as well I'm positive that's what they would have done with this.

These days (even if they shoot on film) many movies are scanned into a computer at the beginning and never leave digital space until they're shot out onto a film printer making release prints. It ends up being hard drives passed around between facilities or files on a central server somewhere with each department doing their bit as it moves through post production.

[Chris P.]

Cool! I wanna see it!!

[uwe]

It's funny, back in 1978 I was 17 and considered The Stones somewhat washed out old guard. Now looking at this they look like kids to me! Jagger has a hard time not cracking up here too (and finally fails at 1.53)!

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xVp-TJ0CQ7Y&feature=related

[eb2]

I remember them doing Shattered on SNL.  Mick sounded like he gargled with Lestoil, and kept sticking his tongue out to act like he was trying to french Ronnie Wood, who was smoking a cigarette the whole time.  It ended up being a strange homoerotic anti-smoking moment.