Plundering The Vaults

ABKCO

Get Your Ya-Ya’s Out! habitually finds its way onto most short lists of the greatest live rock albums of all time for a very good reason: it is one of them. Documenting the Rolling Stones’ stop at Madison Square Garden during their fabled 1969 tour (the one that would end disastrously at Altamont just days later), the band – with guitarist Mick Taylor now firmly aboard, following the dismissal and death of Brian Jones – was at its most iconic and charismatic. From the opening and closing salvos of “Jumpin’ Jack Flash” and “Street Fighting Man” to the extended “Midnight Rambler” and an over-the-top “Sympathy For The Devil,” the Stones were earning the “Greatest Rock and Roll Band in the World” appellation with which they had recently been bestowed.

The Deluxe Edition expands the package to include a CD of five unreleased tracks, all of which also turn up on the bonus DVD. Of those, the most welcomed are the acoustic “Prodigal Son” and “You Gotta Move,” featuring only Mick Jagger and Keith Richards, who shows off his considerable blues chops on a steel resonator guitar. Backstage and heliport footage including, Hendrix and the Dead is also of interest, and some might get a few yuks from the album cover shoot on an empty, rainy highway with Charlie Watts and an equally miserable donkey. The remaining disc, top-of-their-game opening sets by B.B. King and Ike & Tina Turner, would be worth a listen even if they were released separately from the Ya-Ya’s set.