I thought it got a decent amount of promotion from everyone - everyone but the band.

When a record comes out by a band as big as the Stones, obviously there's going to be a lot of media coverage, and for the first few weeks there was plenty. However, record companies will only really push a new record for a few weeks and then (naturally enough) they'll re-focus on something else.

Its really up to the band to keep the public's awareness of the record alive. Their failure to play many songs from it speaks volumes to me for how little they believed in it. I personally found it bordering on negligent the fact that when you went to a Stones concert (where people were paying as much as $500 a ticket!) you could buy every form of exorbitantly priced kitsch tenuously associated with the Stones - but you couldnt buy a note of their music, let alone the record they were supposedly touring behind.

If you include the CD with the price of a ticket (as some acts such as Prince have done in the past), then the audience really has no excuse for not being aware of the new songs (and the band shouldnt be feeling embarrassed or guilty about playing new songs anyway).

They played almost 150 shows on that tour over two years, raked in $550 million and played to something like 6 or 7 million people. The record sold, what, about 2.5 million during the lifespan of the tour? There was no one to blame for that level of underperformance but themselves. It was a good record and the songs were designed to be played live.

Unfortunately, by charging silly money for tickets, the band effectively hands over the control of the show to the audience. Never a good thing from an artistic standpoint. You attract an ageing audience which is largely made up of people with more money than taste (ie, most of them have little interest in the Stones beyond their best known songs, have no interest/knowledge of their new material and are there to see the 'legend') - and the Stones feel 'obliged' to cater for that demographic. They effectively become a corporate jukebox. So, its an easy payday to play a setlist with a higher % than ever before of warhorses. They dont get challenged to take chances with more than a couple of songs in the show, they dont feel motivated to play anything new (by the time the tour ended, they were playing about 1 ABB song per show - in some cases, none at all).  Leavell has even acknowledged how difficult it is to pitch song ideas to Jagger - he wont touch more than one ballad per show and any suggestions from the Jones era that arent warhorses are almost certain to get struck out. The greatest frontman in the world seems to be very reluctant to take the chance of losing the attention of his audience for more than three or four minutes in case he never gets it back. Amazing, isnt it?

To me, the Stones are, or should be, better than that.  Its a nonsense to believe that an audience cant enjoy a show where they hear a few songs they're unfamiliar with. Didnt seem to be a problem in the past and this revisionism towards their back catalogue seems to have only kicked in from 2002 onwards when they finally accepted their status as a nostalgia act. The Stones have a lot of great, great songs beyond what is on 40 Licks.

They played nothing from ABB at the two Beacon shows that were filmed by Scorsese.

They also played nothing from it at the show in Madrid that Gottorollme and I attended in June '07. That said, it was a bit of a weird setlist that night. Sometimes they made changes if Mick was having voice issues (they did that at one of the Twickenham shows in 2006). Maybe in this case it was something to do with them cancelling a show at the same venue in 2006 - the setlist included stuff like 'Night Time' which had been pretty much dropped since 2006 in favour of 'I'll Go Crazy')

Still a very enjoyable show, nonetheless even if Keith had a few 'moments', but it felt a bit odd coming out of an ABb stadium show without a single song being played off the album they were touring behind. I attended the final four shows of the tour (Slane plus the three gigs at the 02) and 'Rough Justice' (played at all four shows) was the only song played off ABB.  

They actually were playing 4 songs a night from ABB on the early part of the tour. It went down to about three mostly but by the time the Euro 2006 tour finally got under way, they'd brought 'Streets of Love' into the set and were featuring a few from it. On one night in Vienna (the 2nd European show in July '06) they actually played five ABB songs for the only time on the whole tour - Oh No, Not You Again ; Rain Fall Down ; Streets of Love ; This Place Is Empty : Rough Justice. They did 21 songs that night, which was quite long for Europe. By 2007, they were playing 18-19 songs - and when they start trimming the setlists, its never the warhorses that get axed.