And your ears shall hear…

Did the Stone Roses really sound like shit at the 1995 Féile Festival? The EP I’ve discovered says, “NO!” But, most fans who were there say otherwise. 28 years ago in the month of August, the Stone Roses played a festival in Ireland where this so called extended player was recorded. The Crimson Tonight EP contains four songs that capture the ‘Roses in flux, but still playing to their strengths. Fresh off their highly anticipated sophmore album, Second Coming, an album that took them nearly five plus years to release, they lost their drummer, Reni, to infighting, but carried on with their tour, which brought them through Ireland to the Féile Festival (Féile means festival in Irish). Drummer Robbie Jay Maddix took over for Reni, and the Roses headlined one of the greatest festival lineups to date. The Beautiful South, The Boo Radleys, Black Grape, Blur, Chemical Brothers, Elastica, Lush, Kylie Monigue, Massive Attack, The Verve, Trashcan Sinatras, and Tricky to name just a few, and as one reporter wrote, “The festival did not degenerate into a drugs-and-sex orgy.” So, that’s a start, right?

The festival almost never happened because the original location in Mondello Park, a motor racing center near Dublin, no longer wanted festivals wreaking havoc on their town. But in the end, after acts were booked and tickets were sold, the fair would play on in Cork. Regardless of all the shenanigans, the Stone Roses complete their end of the bargain, and we have these four tracks as proof. John Squire’s guitar sounds ferociously bluesy, aggressive, and dirty, while the band sounds practiced and tight. Ian Brown never had the most amazing voice to begin with, but it has always suited the Roses just fine. Here, in 1995, Brown has traded the light, spiritual, whispering part of his delivery for a hip-hop flow which he found through his arc as a solo artist. I am a bit wistful thinking about his haunting vocal on “I Wanna Be Adored,” but on this live version of “Daybreak,” Brown is in the rap zone and it works. “Keep on keeping strong / Keep on keeping on,” he sings, and then continues, “So why no stack for black/On a radio station in this, the city.” Maddix sounds tight with the rest of the band and what he lacks in finesse he makes up in rhythm.

First off, finding any sort of live Stone Roses material to purchase is near impossible, save for a few live b-sides, box sets, or remastered editions. These days, most of the live music you can encounter from the past is on YouTube. This EP, from the mid-90s, is one of the official releases you can find, if you’re lucky. Originally released with special editions of Second Coming in Australia and Japan, Crimson Tonight has great energy, and is worth your time if you missed this band live, though more specifically, this tour. Let me be candid, I grabbed this EP from Reckless Records for around $10, and thought it was great. I didn’t realize that Reni wasn’t part of the band at that moment, until I did a deep dive on this performance and found out that he left before the tour began, after an argument with Ian Brown. Sad but true. So, after writing a whole blog about how great the band sounded together, I had to go back and rewrite everything. Regardless, I wanted to bring a little light to this EP because I’ve been enjoying it.

What struck me most about this set of songs was how immediate the playing sounded. On “Breaking Into Heaven” Squier’s guitar is absolutely fierce. Though he runs rampant at times, his tone is blistering as he moves through bluesy scales, and his technique is immaculate, he never really misses a note, and knows exactly where he’s headed. Ian Brown still has the magic here, taking down the gates of heaven with a chainsaw, making his way into paradise without an invitation. “Heaven’s gates won’t hold me, I’ll saw those suckers down. Laughing loud at your locks when they hit the ground.” To me, it sounds like the band is having a lot of fun, and the audience is into it. You can hear the excitement in the screams of the crowd after “Breaking Into Heaven” ends, like they’re losing their minds. It’s absolutely riveting and makes me sad that I never got to catch the Stone Roses live. They came to Chicago once, as far as I can tell from my research, in 1995, playing the World Music Theatre in Tinley Park for the Q101 Jamboree. I missed it somehow, but since hearing this live EP, I’ve been on the hunt for bootlegs, vinyl, or CDs.

The ferocity of Squier continues immediately on the third track, “Driving South,” which sounds like Led Zeppelin meets the Smiths. Listen to the fire behind his guitar with a tone reminiscent of Stevie Ray Vaughan at moments, and the attack of Maddix’s drums can’t be understated here as he’s driving the band forward. Brown has had this fascination with selling his soul since their debut, and he aptly carries on with the theme, singing, “Well, you ain’t too young or pretty, and you sure as hell can’t sing. Anytime you want to sell your soul, I’ve got a toll-free number you can ring.” There isn’t much of a hook here but the the riff is addicting, and the band is playing as a single unit, which any music fan can appreciate.

“Tightrope,” slows things down but surprsingly works well as the outro track to Crimson Tonight. It gives both the band and the audience a moment to breathe, as they go acoustic. “And it’s a tightrope, baby, nine miles high/Striding through the clouds, on my ribbon in the sky/I’m on a tightrope, baby, one thing I’ve found/I don’t know how to stop, and it’s a long, long, long, long way down.” For as much grief as people give Brown, I like his voice here, yet still,“The Stone Roses were shit” became the Féile phrase that has most been repeated over the past 25 years.

They were the band with the biggest buzz, and fans came from all over the country to see this set. “This was going to be their first gig in Ireland or the UK since 1990, and some fans had even crossed the Irish Sea to see it.” According to Des O’Driscoll, “Cork had become even more significant when a planned Glastonbury appearance in June had been canceled when guitarist John Squire broke his collarbone in a mountain bike accident. The era-defining tracks of the first album now sat alongside the average blues-rock of its successor, and the strife within the band that had led to the departure of drummer Reni a few months beforehand possibly added to the insipid nature of the performance. Worst of all was vocalist Ian Brown who sounded like a guy down the pub who’d grabbed the microphone for a drunken singalong. Yes, the Stone Roses really were shit.”

Well, there you have it, from the mouths of babes. But I found reason to write about it because, on the contrary, I really dug it. There is so much lore around the Stone Roses and their career that for many people, the chance to see them live felt personal, and it seems many came away feeling ripped off or less than. I say, if you have the chance to grab this single, go for it! For those of us who never got the chance to see this band, it’s the closest we will get.