Bootlegs, be gone. Taking two From the Vault, as it were, the Rolling Stones open a new CD/DVD series with a pair of vintage concert recordings direct from the group’s archive; a 1981 show from Hampton, Virginia, and a 1975 night at the Forum in Los Angeles. Each has been sonically and visually restored and remixed by industry titan Bob Clearmountain, and both provide winning testaments to the full-spectrum splendor that is the Rolling Stones.

The Hampton Coliseum set is a December 18, 1981 appearance, the first of two nights at the venue, and remains unique in several regards. Falling on Keith Richards’ 38th birthday and ramped up by its pay-per-view broadcast nationwide, this was the penultimate concert of the band’s extensive 50-date U.S. tour that featured mostly outdoor stadium performances. Scaling that massive production to the size of the Coliseum, the otherwise larger-than-life stage was adapted to the more intimate, indoor confines, and accentuated by a raised track that encircled the fans on the floor, permitted an unrelenting Mick Jagger to indulge and carouse in up-close access with his audience. Consequently, this proximity to the masses also enabled the infamous stage crasher during encore “Satisfaction,” an ill-conceived breach that ended with Richards leveling his Fender against the interloper’s forehead before being dragged away by security as Jagger and Co. kept right on rolling. With a tracklist much in support of Tattoo You, the album cuts and the classics, respectively, are delivered in befitting fashion, bridging the gap between the punkish, post-disco fury of the previous decade’s end and the new-wave, pastel dawn of the ‘80s.

In comparison, the_ L.A. Forum Live in 1975_ collection revels in unabashed, mid-‘70s sexuality. The Jagger swagger, which launched a thousand imitations and parodies, dominates, with hardly an indication of the existence of bassist Bill Wyman, comfortably tucked away in the shadows. Instead, the show belongs to Mick, with honorable mentions to guest keyboardist Billy Preston, with two songs in the spotlight and as Jagger’s dance partner, and newly-minted Stones guitarist Ron Wood, whose weaving lines intertwine intuitively with Richards for brilliantly budding interplay on this, the inaugural tour of the partnership. For a band that once issued the compilation album Sucking in the Seventies, it can be safely assumed that the descriptive was hardly meant as pejorative. Rather, the self-proclaimed ‘Greatest Rock and Roll Band in the World’ was exactly that in 1975, and the two-and-a-half hours of silky, sweaty, shimmy-shaking Stones in L.A. leave no doubt.

Part of the Rolling Stones’ recipe for success is to be a great band both in interpretation and in spite of the musical climate and its corresponding cultural indicators, and by nature, this duo of concert recordings offers less a contrast of style as it does of time. 1975 and 1981 were each a significant and somewhat transitional year for the group, and both concert recordings are exemplary in their representations of these eras. Two true delicacies of the remarkable and raucous Rolling Stones.