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Despite my advocacy for them to now gracefully exit the stage, I will always be a huge fan of The Rolling Stones, for many reasons.  Don't worry, I'm only going to cover 34 or 35 of those today.  Oh, and Happy Wednesday.

Kidding.  I only need one reason, and it's the new record from these geriatric legends.  It is later-era live Stones, but holy smokes.  Because they've finally released the famous Wiltern show. 

More precisely, the 4 November 2002 performance recorded in front of approximately 2,000 pretty fortunate people at the intimate Wiltern Theater in Los Angeles.  Or is that 2,000 fortunate pretty people?  Regardless, both Tom Petty and Neil Young were in attendance, at least physically.  Sadly, we were in our beloved SF and somehow missed the entire thing.

I still find this new release a revelation.  Of course hearing songs they never or rarely play live is exciting.  But the entire band's clear commitment to quality playing throughout this show and the fidelity of the recording itself are just as important. 

I rate this up there with the 17 October 1973 Brussels concert (captured in its entirety on the expanded version of Goat's Head Soup), and it's certainly as good as any of their other gazillion live albums.  That includes Ya-Ya's, and even my personal favorite, the wrongly-derided Love You Live.

Here are their ages when this kick-ass concert was performed, and I am only including the main guys.

Mick:  59 years old (26 July 1943)
Keef:  58 years old (18 December 1943)
Charlie:  61years old (2 June 1941)
Ronnie:  55  (1 June 1947)
Darryl:  40 years old  (11 December 1961)

Impressive!  And yes, Darryl Jones, who I feel deserves more love.  A reminder he's played bass for The Stones for the same amount of time that Bill Wyman did.  I get the difference between both eras, but still.

I am shining a spotlight on this disc today for a couple of reasons.  First, as a reminder of just how Diamond Certified this band is live.  I've listened to a lot of live Rolling Stones recordings over the years, and as above, this new release stands among their best.

The second reason is that they can stop now, because, well:

Mick:  80
Keef:  80
Charlie:  RIP
Ronnie:  76
Darryl:  62

I can hear some saying, "Well then, Portico, what about Biden?  Isn't he in his eighties?" 

Sure, he's old, too.  But I feel he's taken a bit better care of himself.

It was a news flash from André Aurich, and it was not a good one.  He informed me that one of our go-to's, the Killer Presidio Social Club, is reportedly closing.  I did not see this coming, at least not post-pandemic.  It would stun me if the Presidio Trust didn't have somebody already lined up to move in. 

Because there aren't many locations like this one.

In response to my Filthy Lucre post, this came in from our niece Nicki Vale.  She is clearly getting ready for the next phase of her life:

And an anonymous reader agreed that Shittybank's fees are usurious, in terms of my foolish Admiral's Club credit card.

Well, in Shittybank's defense, the annual fee for their Shitty/AAdvantage Executive World Elite Mastercard is only $695.  It was an additional $75 for a second card for Julie, which only then brings the total to $770. 
 
Look - I understand that an expensive card with perks is a no-brainer for some people. 

Because I used to be one of those people.

Thank you for reading this newsletter.

Let's stay with the self-proclaimed "best rock and roll band in the world."

But first, here's a new equation for everyone to memorize:  T²⁴ x MO∞ = CP, where:

You can be the judge of its accuracy by using the following.

It is a playlist of live Rolling Stone recordings, but this one is different. 

I looked at a Wikipedia page listing all of their tracks and sorted them by chronological order.  I then found the best versions of each track from their many live albums, and here is the result, on both TIDAL and Spotify.   

I left out the nonsense, and I ended up with 72 different live tracks, each one fairly special, from 13 different Rolling Stone live albums.  You can see what's on it and from which albums here.