4 reasons 'Anybody Seen My Baby?' sucks live

1.) The bass line was never as good as on the LP
2.) The backing vocals were always crap
3.) The rap section is embarrassing on any rendition (live or studio)

4.) UNDER - REHEARSED!!!

could have been a newer YGMR, but they murdered it even before opening night at Soldier Field.



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 2010-04-12 10:17 by bv.

I consider ASMY in the same camp as ER, both are fine studio tracks that should NEVER be performed live...

If Jagger would stand still for a minute he might be able to handle this song live...

yeah, the biggest struggle was with Mick trying to sing it in tune. He had a hard time with the low baritone vocal, and yes, most likey because he was running around too much! Great guitars on it, but never seemed to get that errie atmosphere.

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chenry9195
could have been a newer YGMR, but they murdered it even before opening night at Soldier Field.

Totally agree with your four reasons, but come on! ... YGMR is a rocker, while ASMB could be even embarassing.

Mick must have saved this one for his solo album.

Never that good a song in the first place really. I mean, borrowing a melody off k.d.lang. Shouldn't have to do that at that stage in the game.

Same problem as with Love Is Strong. Melody line is to low-pitched for Mick to sing live.

Umm...How many show did you see on the BTB tour? I caught about 20; It wasn't the worst.

Actually, I remember reading in an interview that the two songs which he wrote for his 'wandering spirit follow-up' which never happened were actually Out of Control and Saint Of Me - the two best songs, by far, on the album.

[thepowergoats.com]

Some tracks, no matter how great in the studio, just fail to make it in the 'live' environment. Anybody Seen My Baby is one of them.

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ajc68
I consider ASMY in the same camp as ER, both are fine studio tracks that should NEVER be performed live...

Worried About You is great live Emotional Rescue is essentially the same thing but more upbeat

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Come On
If Jagger would stand still for a minute he might be able to handle this song live...

That's not his fault completely, this was the first tour where he had set routines choreographed for certain songs. He is the one who approved the idea, but the choreographer should have made this more focused on his voice.


Also the studio version is slower paced more focused on Darryl, Blondie's hand percussion thing, and someones guitar with a delay effect. None of these three are prevalent live

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jamesfdouglas
Actually, I remember reading in an interview that the two songs which he wrote for his 'wandering spirit follow-up' which never happened were actually Out of Control and Saint Of Me - the two best songs, by far, on the album.

yes!!
saint of me & out of control (togehter with you got me rocking) could have benn great 90´s stuff into the 2000´s live concerts......

Saint Of Me was for a brief period THE sing-along-tune instead of Miss You and You Can't always get.

X



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 2018-07-25 14:55 by UrbanSteel.

ASMB rocked in Charlotte and I was a bit surprised. They also played 19NB and UMT the same night so it was an awesome night.

Well,it wasn't under-rehearsed. It was played plenty of times as the tour progressed.

in my opinion it NEVER came off live ( but then its my least fav song on B2 That little rap interlude by Bernard was such a feeble attempt to be "hip" it was embarassing!

it was a turd in the middle of an otherwise decent show....i just held my nose and i was able to recover....

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fiftyamp
Umm...How many show did you see on the BTB tour? I caught about 20; It wasn't the worst.

I saw 8, have recordings of pretty much every circulating show and it absolutely killed the show stone dead every time they played it.

On record, I think its a really good song (especially Waddy Wachtel's magnificent solo at the end) but when played live it was a turd. DandelionPowderman's reasons are spot on. There was one of the TV broadcasts where it was decent (Bremen, I think) but it was usually awful

Unbelievably, its just came up on my ipod Stones shuffle as I typed this. A 1145-1 chance.

I loved this song on the record, but it seemed to sink badly when they tried it live. Mick couldn't harmonise it very well, and the rap section made you want to look the other way. At least they tried something new with that one, the video looked good too. I have a non-Stones friend who swears this was the best Stones song she ever heard!

came out alright in the end but the start was awful..
as you say DP ( BA!) Mick has to start very deep to end not to high...
love the guitar riff though, esp on the cd.

I loved it live and was a little disappointed when they did not play it live to be honest, although i liked it better when they let ronnie do the solo in the early live versions then dropped the solo in later versions

You mean the song "Constant Craving"?

Seriously, I always kind of liked this tune except for the ill-conceived rap bit in the middle. Always surprised that Keith didn't put his foot done on that. Not a great live tune, but there are plenty as bad.

They couldn't recreate the slickly produced studio version very well, and instead of finding alternate ways of adding new elements to the live version, they simply did a pretty anemic skeleton of the one from the album. Mick's singing was blah, the 'rap' was lame, the rhythm section had all the heft of cotton candy, and Ronnie's try at recreating the solo at the end sucked. That's about it to me. Kind of like what Mick said about Emotional Rescue, not the kind of song you sit down and write, per se, as much as it was a studio creation that relied heavily on polish and production techniques. And even that version, outside of a slinky bass line and some nice guitar riffs here and there, had little of value to offer IMO.