The Rolling Stones - El Mocambo Tavern, Toronto, Canada, 3-5-1977

It occurred to me that it's been a long time since I've posted any music from the Rolling Stones. I'm going to try to make up for that by posting a bunch of things in the near future. This is a "must have" live concert from them, in my opinion.

This was a highly unusual concert, to say the least. By 1977, the Rolling Stones were playing huge stadiums. But they wanted to release a live album (which would eventually come out under the name "Love You Live"), and they decided to include some unusual song choices from an appearance at a small club. They chose the obscure El Mocambo Tavern in Toronto, Canada, for some reason. It only held 300 people.

They had a local radio station run a contest for people to show what die-hard fans they were. The winners would get to see the popular Canadian band April Wine for free. The 300 winners all met in a certain spot, and then were secretly brought by bus to the club. When they got there, they were astounded to find that April Wine was the opening act for the Rolling Stones! Somehow, even though they did this two nights in a row, the secret was kept out of the media until after the shows were over. Then there was a big controversy in Canada, because Margaret Trudeau, the estranged wife of Canadian Prime Minster Pierre Trudeau, went to the shows and apparently was having a fling with one of the band members. If you listen carefully, Mick Jagger mentions Margaret's name at one point in his banter between songs.

The first show apparently went pretty badly. Keith Richards found out just before going on stage that his two-month old baby had died of natural causes. He also had been arrested in Canada a few days earlier for drug possession, and it looked like he could serve a long prison sentence. (He eventually wiggled out of it.) Also, there were lots of problems with the recording of the show for the live album.

Only some of the songs recorded for the second night have made it to this bootleg. (Four songs were included on the "Love You Live" album, but they're all heavily overdubbed.) This show is great because not only is it a professionally recorded soundboard, with the ambience of a small club, but the band played a very interesting bunch of songs that were quite different from their usual set lists in the late 1970s. While they did play some big hits, they made a point of playing some songs from their early years that they hadn't played since the 1960s. They also played "Worried about You," a song that wouldn't get officially released until the 1981 album "Tattoo You."

This recording is an hour an five minutes long. As great as it is, it would be even better except for the fact that many of the songs played that night didn't make it to the bootleg. It's believed the band also played "Crazy Mama," "Tumbling Dice," "Happy," "Hot Stuff," "Worried Life Blues," "It's Only Rock and Roll," "Rip This Joint," and "Luxury." Let's hope that the full concert gets officially released someday. (A recording of "Crazy Mama" exists, but it's incomplete and with poor sound quality, so I didn't include it.)

There were a number of problems with the recording. For one, the songs were out of order compared to the set list that die-hard fans of the band have confirmed. So I rearranged the songs to put them in proper order. Also, many of the songs lacked an audience reaction at the end, with the recording coming to an end as soon as the song ended. About half of the songs were like that. I fixed that by finding some generic sounding audience cheering from other songs and patching those in. It sounds better now, but some of the transitions still aren't totally smooth.

The song "Fool to Cry" got cut off before it ended. Luckily, it was near the end. I used a section from earlier in the song for about the last ten seconds, and then added in crowd noise. I don't know if the song would have gone on for more verses or solos, but at least it sounds complete now.

A few of the songs don't sound quite as good as the others. For instance, "Star Star" doesn't sound as good to my ears. But that's just in a relative sense. Overall, this sounds really good, because it was recorded by the band for possible use for their live album.

Unfortunately, the last song, "Jumpin' Jack Flash," sounds terrible. It starts fine, but after about a minute and a half, it suddenly turns to total crap. Obviously the source material must have switched at that point. It sounds so bad that I'd just as soon scrap that one. But for those who want to have it anyway, I've included it as a bonus track.

UPDATE: On June 3, 2022, I deleted the link because this show has been officially released as the album "Live at the Mocambo." Furthermore, the album is better than this, with better sound quality and more songs. However, I think my cover is superior. so you might want to use that one.

01 Honky Tonk Women (Rolling Stones)
02 talk (Rolling Stones)
03 All Down the Line (Rolling Stones)
04 talk (Rolling Stones)
05 Hand of Fate (Rolling Stones)
06 [Get Your Kicks On] Route 66 (Rolling Stones)
07 Fool to Cry [Edit] (Rolling Stones)
08 talk (Rolling Stones)
09 Mannish Boy (Rolling Stones)
10 talk (Rolling Stones)
11 Crackin' Up (Rolling Stones)
12 talk (Rolling Stones)
13 Dance Little Sister (Rolling Stones)
14 Around and Around (Rolling Stones)
15 Star Star (Rolling Stones)
16 Worried about You (Rolling Stones)
17 talk (Rolling Stones)
18 Let's Spend the Night Together (Rolling Stones)
19 talk (Rolling Stones)
20 Little Red Rooster (Rolling Stones)
21 Brown Sugar (Rolling Stones)

Jumpin' Jack Flash (Rolling Stones)

The cover art photo comes from the concert in question. (Well, at least it's from that night or the previous night.) For the text at the top, I used the actual sign of the club out front, which is written on an artificial palm tree. I had to rotate some of the letters 90 degrees in the word "Mocambo" so they'd be easier to read.