Because the Rolling Stones are Fuckin' Awesome, That's Why #1

   The Rolling Stones released Exile on Main Street, their gloomy, redemptive, druggy, shambolic masterwork, in the spring of 1972. They then took to the road in America and laid waste to just about every band that had taken a stage between 1969, when the Stones had last toured, and that year.
   The joy of the 1970s live Stones was their unpredictability; some nights a broken down car, others a winged chariot. The '72 tour (and its extension, in Europe, the following summer and fall) proved to be the band's live peak, at least with Mick Taylor playing guitar. (Some aficianados say that after Taylor bailed the band sagged for good.)
   These two clips (included in a single video), shot at Madison Square Garden at tour's end, in July, show the band at its hard-burning best. Jagger, tiny and fragile-seeming, laces his jumpsuit backstage. A moment later he's on, transmuted into a whole different creature--big, wild, frenzied, hot. The band doesn't so much launch into "Brown Sugar" as tackle it, catapulting crazily, all Keith Richards suspended chords and Charlie Watts drum whacks. "Street Fighting Man," the show closer, finds the band going entirely off the rails. Jagger spins and throws rose petals. Keith grinds down to the core. And Mick Taylor spirals lead lines into bright-lit indoor sky.
   There was a reason that, for a fleeting moment at least, they were able to call themselves, however ironically they did so, the Greatest Rock and Roll Band in the World.
   Here it is:

   (If you want to see it full screen, jump to YouTube here.)