1) I promised myself (and stuck to it) that I would neither fuss nor cry about getting/not getting tickets to the Licks Tour triple threat. I wanted to see the Stones. Have done so every time since 1975. But I heard some sad-ass stories about ticket-begging so lowly, it's made me want to start a fund for impoverished industry insiders if the Stones ever come around again. Having gone through Stones Wars before, I knew Jagger Inc. tends toward the cheap. (Though it was funny, by end of night one, there were more Stones-cronies "offering" tickets than there were scalpers.) Besides, the real event of Stonedom is bumping into them whilst city-slicking, à la 1616's Cirque du Soleil opening party or at one or all of Starr Group's many restaubars (see Icepack, page 46). Anyone paying attention to eventology will realize Sept. 19 was a pretty banner day for Philly: the Stones milling about between shows, 60 Minutes was here, J-Lo and Affleck, Prince Andrew's arrival, Cirque du Soleil opening and Wire playing Gasoline. That last one's most important as it leads into...

2) The Rolling Stones are old. Really old. As deeply lined as tree trunks. The big screens accordioned across the wide, uncluttered stage at Vet Stadium did them no good. Cheap-ass looking outfits -- especially Jagger's tacky-pimp wear during their cover-tune section: The O'Jays' "Love Train" at the Vet, Otis Redding's "I Can't Turn You Loose" at FUC -- didn't help. No one can get away with Members Only-looking leathers, headbands, pseudo-pirate gear or choppy chicken-headed shag haircuts. No one. But age did not deter from raging energy. Maybe Jagger's irritating arm-akimbo dancing is better left to 'N Sync. But where playing's concerned, the Stones got rage in their agelessness. (A quick aside, though: the equally seminal Wire, without the benefit of catchy hits or billion-dollar marketing, wore age even better and with a modicum of minimalistic force eye-popping to hear.)

3) At the Vet, the first eight songs made me real nervous due to their overt messiness. This was not the usual Stones' sloppy-rock ethos we've grown to love. Just the yuckiest "Brown Sugar" and "Tumbling Dice" ever, a ruinous "Undercover" which would've benefited from its LP-version tribal terror, garbled Jaggerisms and a new tune, "Don't Stop," you only prayed would cease.

The Great Stuff

1) Keith Richards can sing. From his dusty cowboy harmonizing behind an exaggeratedly drawling Jagger on the quaintly elegiac "Wild Horses" to his incandescently ragged but crystal clear and lucidly soulful voice on the slow-sloping brassy "Slipping Away," the tarnishing "Before They Make Me Run" and the rumbling gospel mumble of "Tumbling Dice," all show a Richards in complete control of his emotive vocal prowess.

2) Whether it be the in-tandem, rubbed-raw rhythms of Ron Wood and Richards, the occasional Richards lead, Wood's sitar-strain country-blue studies on steel and lap steel ("Love in Vain") or the steam-rolling blues-bound train to hell that was the choppy epic "Midnight Rambler," the Stones' guitar mix never sounded gutsier or more unbound. Never.

3) The Stones in general have never come off so inspiredly on fire, so released, so freak-funky soulful as a unit, so willing to strip away the varnish of being "the greatest so and so..." -- which therefore proved they might be. Epics like a slithering "Gimme Shelter" -- lifted by the high-ghostly whines of singers Lisa Fischer and Blondie Chaplin and Chuck Leavell's lolling pastoral piano -- were deliciously diabolical. On miniscule stages in both arena settings, you got not so much the feeling of a small club, but rather the punch of being vacuum-packed with a million people yanked into the tiniest vortex. The funky, punky C&W drawl of "Let It Bleed" (complete with boogie-down production, whining guitars and Jagger at his most jaggedly caustic yet casual vocal), a fluidly anthemic take on Dylan's "Like a Rolling Stone" and the lovely Spartan, churchy feel of "You Can't Always Get What You Want" nearly brought me to tears. Jagger -- who, OK, can take your breath away on occasion with his rhythmic chatter and his command of tart romantic vocals -- rode his background choruses' chant in wifty hippy heaven. Even "Sympathy for the Devil" -- one of rock's most over-typed tunes -- managed its full-tilt Voodoo-Loungey power, a moment as deathly red as any of Scorsese's finest filmic moments.