The Rolling Stones
The Park at
San Diego, CA
May 24, 2015

Nakamichi CM100s/Edirol R-09HR/xACT/FLAC

1. intro
2. Jumpin’ Jack Flash
3. It’s Only Rock N’ Roll (But I Like It)
4. All Down The Line
5. Tumbling Dice
6. Doom And Gloom
7. Bitch
8. Moonlight Mile
9. Can’t You Hear Me Knocking
10. Street Fighting Man
11. Honky Tonk Women
12. band intro
13. Slipping Away
14. Before They Make Me Run
15. Midnight Rambler
16. Miss You
17. Gimme Shelter
18. Start Me Up
19. Sympathy For The Devil
20. Brown Sugar
21. break
22. You Can’t Always Get What You Want
23. (I Can’t Get No) Satisfaction
24. outro

Don’t get too excited, folks — this is not a great recording of the first date of the Stones’ “Zip Code” tour. At best, it’s a surprisingly decent capture considering where it was taped from — far, far on right field up in the nosebleeds, fairly in line with the hard-right speaker stack but pretty distant and full of echo off the back half of the stadium. But for some reason, no other tapes of this show have surfaced thus far, and I’m hoping maybe putting this out there will help shake the tree a little bit. It seems unlikely mine was the only tape running in that entire, immense space, and surely somebody was recording from a better location.

But if by some wild chance this is all we have, it’s better to have it than not to - the show was very strong, light on setlist surprises in the second half but superbly-played as always and full of tremendous work by Jagger and Wood in particular. The quieter numbers are the finest here, I think: “Moonlight Mile” is breathtaking, and sounded especially good with Mick’s ghostly echo reverberating through the stadium, while any chance to hear Keith sing “Slipping Away” is to be cherished. As for the more uptempo stuff, “All Down The Line” and “Street Fighting Man” and “Midnight Rambler” are mighty - and good heavens has Ronnie ever risen to the challenge of playing Mick Taylor’s parts on “Can’t You Hear Me Knocking”! It was a bit disappointing, to be sure, that we only got half of “Sticky Fingers,” but I’m not sure “Sister Morphine,” say, would have worked in a stadium anyway.

Obviously, if you have a better tape, please share it. As for this one, do with it what you like - convert it, remaster it, trade it, post it. Once you’ve downloaded it, it belongs to you. Maybe refrain from selling it, just because that would be incredibly uncool, but then again if you can find somebody foolish enough to pay for something that sounds like this, maybe I ought to encourage you to take advantage. All that matters is, support the Stones, and maybe more importantly live music in general, and tell your friends if they’re on the fence about seeing these guys this summer that they still sound amazing and put on a great night’s entertainment. Buy records, go to concerts, pick up t-shirts from bands that support themselves that way, and generally do all the things I probably don’t have to encourage you to do, since you’re all good music fans anyway. But enjoy this, and everybody who’s seeing “Zip Code” this summer, please tape and share!