The Rolling Stones share live cuts from club shows they played as ‘The Cockroaches’ in 1977

The Rolling Stones have shared a brace of previously unreleased live recordings, taped at intimate club shows in Toronto in 1977.

The raw takes on Tumbling Dice and Hot Stuff will get an official release on the band’s forthcoming Live at the El Mocambo album, which is set to emerge on May 13 via Universal Music.

Taped on March 4/5, 1977 at the quintet’s shows at Toronto’s 300-capacity El Mocambo club, for which the Stones were billed as The Cockroaches, the album features the full March 5 show, plus three tracks from the March 4 recording. The full show has never previously been released.

Mixed by Bob Clearmountain, the album is being formatted as a double CD, a 4-LP vinyl set, and a digital download.

Rolling Stones fans were attracted to the show after local radio radio station CHUM FM organised a contest in which the prize was tickets to see Canadian rockers April Wine, supported by an unknown band called the Cockroaches.

“The plan that we constructed,” CHUM FM’s Duff Roman told The National Post in 2015, “was to have a contest: ‘What would you do to see the Rolling Stones play live?’ This way we could select the 300 top entries and guarantee that real fans would be there for the event. The prize would be a chance to see April Wine at the El Mocambo. 

“People wrote in and we cherry-picked the best ones. As you might expect, there were lots of nude Polaroids. When the band came in to judge the winners, they slipped the photos into their pockets and took them home.”

On the nights themselves, April Wine were the opening act, with “The Cockroaches” taking the stage as headliners. April Wine recorded their own set for a live album, also called Live At The El Mocambo and released the same year.

Source: loudersound.com