The Circus is an interesting watch. Was that the only gig Tony Iommi did with Jethro Tull? If you compare Yoko's performance with side two of Live Peace In Toronto, it's positively melodic. Taj Mahal is great; Marianne Faithfull simply cannot sing well, though as a performer, she does emote effectively & brings something to the table.

The Rolling Stones simply didn't think this through very well. Brian Jones wasn't really a part of the band anymore, and I've read that part of the time his amp was turned down. Plus, outside of being tired after not having slept for more than a day, they were mostly previewing brand new material. Which doesn't seem brand new now, but Beggar's Banquet hadn't been released at the time (or maybe it'd been out for a week, if that). And they did at least one from Let It Bleed, which wouldn't be out yet for a year. They hadn't toured in nearly two years & after all the distractions they'd had during that period they were probably not at the top of their game, live-wise, to begin with, let alone being as tired as they were by the time they were filmed. Plus, they were capable of sucking wildly at times (ample evidence of which was on display a few months later, when they played Hyde Park, though who's to say how much impact the death of Brian Jones impacted that gig...but they had no such excuse for attempting to get through a song included on the extras of the Gimme Shelter DVD with Keith Richards' resonator guitar so out-of-tune it was painful).

That said, that material of course soon became very popular & most anyone watching the program is probably well familiar with it. It's not a bad performance, mind you, just one that stayed in the vaults for nearly 30 years for a reason. I remember the first time I saw a boot of it. My first impression was that the live takes in Gimme Shelter (at MSG, not Altamont, natch) & on Get Yer Ya-Ya's Out (same MSG shows, yet they of course weren't going anywhere near what the Maysles made available only recently) were much better, and that the Circus wasn't bad, just more interesting than good.

But the really surprising thing about how the Rolling Stones would've planned this thing is the inclusion of the Who. There are lots of people who think that the reading of A Quick One was far superior to the Stones' set, and I agree with it (and that's coming from someone who dislikes the Who's live performances by this time as largely a collection of jams that were destructive deviations & extensions of the material as originally written). Some even think that was part of why the Circus sat in the vaults--that they felt upstaged, and not by Lennon, who everyone would expect to be great, but by the Who, who took people by surprise. But they were just off a tour, I think. This is why I've never understood this, because it's the sort of detail Mick Jagger usually would try to avoid, or at least minimize. Instead, in a prime slot, they place perhaps the only outfit at that moment in time who was capable of coming off that much better than the Stones.

The problem with watching it on PBS is having to listen to the pledge drive stuff during the breaks. Yes, we know that the Rolling Stones were great. Some of the background interview stuff was interesting, but...

...outside of the very strange promotional video that the Stones did for 'Child Of The Moon,' the most interesting piece of video that I've seen of them from that period, is in a movie called One Plus One. I think it might be released as Sympathy For The Devil in some countries, and I think that might've been the original title? I don't know. Jean-Luc Godard, if I remember correctly. It's a tough watch: snippets of plotless avant-garde cinema verite, or at least that's my uninformed impression, interspersed with one-of-a-kind footage of the Rolling Stones in the studio recording the song Sympathy For The Devil. The first two or three sessions, the arrangement of the song is so radically different, it's almost unfathomable how the song morphed into the version we've always known. I'm not sure I'd call it a straight-up rock song, but it's a heck of a lot closer to that description than anything having to do with any exotic rhythms such as the sambe it eventually became.

It's the single best example of the musical imagination they possessed than anything else I've ever heard or seen. As you watch each progressive session, and see how the various elements of the song fell into place, compared to what it started out as...I think anyone would be hard-pressed to make a case that even Beatles songs underwent more impressive & dramatic transformations. That is to say, if you listen to the demos on, say, the Anthology, and then compare them to the finished product...this is at least as much an accomplishment so far as I'm concerned.

All of which is not to put down the Circus, but A Quick One is far & away the highlight for me; but do seek out a copy of the SFTD sessions for a watch that says more about what the Rolling Stones were capable of than just about anything I've ever seen.