Rolling Stones

Recorded in Virginia on Keith’s 38th birthday, the Hampton show was one of the first ever pay-per-view events on television. Now mixed by Bob Clearmountain, the energy in the band’s performance is palpable. The new sound mix by Bob Clearmountain is perfect and the restored video is gorgeous!…

It's often unfair to compare the Rolling Stones to the Beatles but in the case of the group's mono mixes, it's instructive. Until the 2009 release of the box set The Beatles in Mono, all of the Fab Four's mono mixes were out of print. That's not the case with the Rolling Stones. Most of their '60s albums – released on Decca in the U.K., London in the U.S. – found mono mixes sneaking onto either the finished sequencing or various singles compilations, so the 2016 box The Rolling Stones in Mono only contains 56 heretofore unavailable mono mixes among its 186 tracks…

Having not hit the road for most of the 80s, The Steel Wheels Tour was an astounding return for the Rolling Stones, not least as it was the longest tour they had by that point undertaken. It was also to be their last with Bill Wyman. Steel Wheels Live was recorded towards the end of the band’s 60-date run through the stadiums of North America, in the second half of 1989.

Universal's 2018 set The Studio Albums Vinyl Collection 1971-2016 isn't the first time the Rolling Stones] post-Decca catalog has been boxed up. Back in 2010, all the albums up to 2015 (which means it didn't include 2016's blues record Blue & Lonesome) were offered in a set that was a companion to the similarly limited-edition box The Rolling Stones 1964-1969. In a sense, the 2018 set functions as a cousin to ABKCO's The Rolling Stones in Mono – a 2016 box containing mono mixes of all the material the Stones officially released on Decca – but where that set was issued on both CD and LP, The Studio Albums Vinyl Collection 1971-2016 is, as its title suggests, explicitly designed as a vinyl package…