aaamusic | On 19, Nov 2011

The world’s greatest rock ‘n’ roll band, The Rolling Stones and Bravado, the world’s leading merchandising company, have today launched the band’s first ever

digital archive – The Rolling Stones Archive – and have marked the occasion with a digital release of ‘The Brussels Affair’.  After years in circulation as a bootleg, this spectacular live show from the European leg of the 1973 Goat’s Head Soup tour is now available to music fans allover the world (excluding the U.S.) as an official download from www.stonesarchive.com. 

The website will give fans access to special videos and liner notes, including copies of the original Brussels set lists, as well as rare photographs and a sound player that allows listeners to sample audio clips from every song in the set.

Exclusive daily deals will give Stones fans the inside track on exclusive merchandise as well as rare access to memorabilia, limited photos and lithographs and deluxe box sets. Each item included in The Rolling Stones Archive will be unique and highly limited, making this an incredible opportunity to own a part of The Rolling Stones’ history.

Long hailed by die hard Rolling Stones fans as one of the band’s greatest live performances, the Brussels 1973 show has been a mainstay in the underground music world for years.

Brussels was the penultimate stop on a European tour that the Rolling Stones embarked on in the fall of 1973 to promote their No. 1 album Goats Head Soup. The 21-city tour was met by ecstatic crowds, causing the band to frequently perform two shows a day, as they did at the Forest National arena in Brussels. Despite the frenetic pace, the road trip yielded some of the band’s greatest music on stage.

The Brussels gigs capture that greatness. From the opening chords of ‘Brown Sugar’ to the closing crescendo of ‘Street Fighting Man’, the Rolling Stones were firing on all cylinders: Keith Richards and Charlie Watts churning out a locomotive-like rhythm section, Bill Wyman on fine form with his trademark solid basslines, guitarist Mick Taylor delivering a barrage of blistering leads, with Mick Jagger growling and grinding in his blue-sequined best.

This new digital release, pulled exclusively from the two Brussels gigs, was taken from the original multi-track masters recorded by Andy Johns on the Rolling Stones Mobile unit. Longtime Stones collaborator Bob Clearmountain applied the final mix.