At the Air Canada Centre The Rolling Stones have drolly dubbed their current concert tour “50 and Counting,” but this show’s gotta be rolling to a close soon. I don’t mean that in a nasty, “Get off the stage, you old men!” way, by any means. If anything, last night’s Stones gig at the Air Canada Centre — the first of two Toronto stops of just an aggregate 29 dates on the 50 and Counting jaunt begun late last year with a smattering of dates in Paris, London, New York and Newark, N.J., with another local show to come at the ACC on June 6 — served notice to cynics that the aged rock ’n’ roll combo is still capable of hitting its stride from time to time. From time to time. I want all of you delusional Boomers living on that planet where you come out of every single Rolling Stones gig declaring “They’ve still got it! That was better than ever!” to repeat that with me: from time to time. Because it’s not all great anymore. It’s still pretty good by times, don’t get me wrong. It’s the freakin’ Rolling Stones up there, after all, and Saturday found the late-sexagenarian core of Mick Jagger, Keith Richards, Charlie Watts and Ronnie Wood — bolstered by such long-serving side players as bassist Daryl Jones, keyboardist Chuck Leavell and powerhouse vocalists Lisa Fischer and Bernard Fowler — making more discreet use of an army of backing players (and teleprompters) than on most recent tours and largely carrying on as best they could after 50 years as the rough-’n’-ready rock band they once were rather than a sprawling “revue.” And they could still hold it down. They really could. Early, early single “Get Off of My Cloud” provided a decent approximation of scrappiness as the opener, and the Stones followed that up even harder with a reasonably buzz-sawing “You Got Me Rockin” — not to mention a well-timed Rob Ford joke from Jagger to break the ice and get Toronto’s major contemporary conversational preoccupation out of the way. Read more http://www.thestar.com/entertainment/music/2013/05/26/rolling_stones_concert_review.html
