The Rolling Stones: The Biggest Bang [Blu-ray] [2009]

The Rolling Stones: The Biggest Bang is a kick-ass concert that gives us 18 tracks over 93 minutes, starting with the relatively recent You Got Me Rocking. Well, I did say 'relatively recent' as it came out in 1994 on the album Voodoo Lounge, which has been followed by only two albums, Bridges to Babylon in 1997, and The Biggest Bang in 2005.

Next comes more classic fare in the form of Let's Spend the Night Together, but for me the bulk of the enjoyment comes in the second half of the concert as while there's less well-known songs early on, the biggest hits come later, such as Under My Thumb, Get Off of My Cloud, Sympathy for the Devil and Jumpin' Jack Flash to name but four.

The Biggest Bang is a cracker of a concert, this time performed in Austin, Texas, set on a magnificent stage on which I didn't realise at first has rows of seating either side of the main stage, as well as a zillion audience members in front, standing up. A huge screen also sits at the back of the stage twhich is sure to reach out to those at the back of the audience. I would've preferred more of the classic tunes for a Blu-ray release such as this, although I appreciate the fact it came off the back of a particular album as opposed to a greatest hits.

If there's a downside to the presentation it's that the original DVD came on four discs, which also took in concerts in Brazil and a selection of songs from China and Argentina (see here for more info about it), whereas most of the content we get comes from discs 1 and 4, as described below. It's also a shame that this disc doesn't actually feature every track from the gig itself, as 43 mins in as Charlie Watts is introduced, we can see the set list and that it also includes Bitch, Start Me Up and You Can't Always Get What You Want, the latter of which is one of the encore tracks. Why would Universal do this? What's the point in filming a gig and not show every track?

The concert is presented in a 16:9 anamorphic ratio and looks stunning, representing a gig bursting in lush colour and terrific atmosphere. For the record, I'm watching on a Panasonic 37" Plasma screen. The sound is naturally outstanding in DTS 5.1 - it's the Stones doing what they do, and there's nothing that can be taken away from that.

The extras are as follows:

* Salt of the Earth: A Bigger Bang Tour Documentary (67:21) Broken up into 11 chapters, this documentary looks at all the different stops of the tour as well as rehearsal footage and an early club performance where they get back into 'stage mode' in preparation for the main gig. Tgere's also a look at their Super Bowl performance from 2006 and the effort that went into that including building the mammoth stage in 5½ minutes.

* Mini-documentary (5:54): This gives a glimps of the band performing back-stage but doesn't go into any great detail.

* Extra tracks (13:36): Taken from the concert at the Saitama Super Arena, Saitama, in Japan, here you get Let's Spend the Night Together, Rain Fall Down and Rough Justice. These look a bit clearer as they haven't had the same film effect applied as the main feature.

* Jukebox: Rather than play all the tracks in order, you can select which tracks you want to hear and in what order.

The disc menu features a gorgeous piece of CGI leading to it, and then a looped piece of Jumpin' Jack Flash. There are subtitles in English, French, Spanish, German, Dutch, Italian, Portuguese and Japanese. However, these are just for the documentaries and sadly not the song lyrics which is a great shame. For the chapters, there's one apiece for each track plus an opening piece and the closing credits, so you couldn't ask for more from those.

The full list of tracks included are :

1. You Got Me Rocking
2. Let's Spend the Night Together
3. She's So Cold
4. Oh No, Not You Again
5. Sway
6. Bob Wills Is Still the King
7. Streets Of Love
8. Ain't Too Proud to Beg
9. Tumbling Dice
10. Learning The Game
11. Little T&A
12. Under My Thumb
13. Get Off of My Cloud
14. Honky Tonk Women
15. Sympathy for the Devil
16. Jumpin' Jack Flash
17. (I Can't Get No) Satisfaction
18. Brown Sugar

Film: 7/10
Picture: 10/10
Sound: 10/10
Extras: 4/10

It's a pity that it's just one dvd instead of the original 4 dvd set, but the quality of both sound and picture are great. You can see almost every wrinkle on Mick's face. And ofcourse the guys are still having lots of fun during playing and rehearsing. Still the greatest rock'roll band in the world!

I had the 4 dvd set of 'the Biggest Bang' and naturally wanted to upgrade when it was released on Blu- ray. There is only one Blu- ray disc and given that you can easily fit 4DVD's worth of material onto one Blu-ray I was expecting to see the same content. What a shame then that half of the DVD content has not been included, the reviewer above has already helpfully set this out. It's very irritating as the Copacabana beach concert is well worth seeing along with 'the rest of the world' only some of which is on the Blu ray. unless there is going to be another 'special' Blu ray of Copacabana, I cannot see that this release is anything more than cynical.

The music and filming are first rate but I deduct stars because of Universal's apparent contempt for fans. The Stones are a big enough band to have the muscle to stop this type of thing happening.