Brian Jones encouraged Jagger and Richards toward camp exotica – some of the Stones' best mid-'60s pop sports mock-elegant strings and sophisto embellishments. Brainchild of producer Chris Kimsey and arranger Jon Astley and pimping the London Symphony Orchestra, Symphonic is dedicated to Jones but lacks his wit. Ludicrously, this misguided tribute to the Stones plays it straight. Real indignity befalls the rockers – "Street Fighting Man" and "Paint It Black" as kitsch. And although Jagger and Marianne Faithful respectively redeem "Angie" and "Ruby Tuesday," even the ballads drown in a violin soup that makes Andrew Lloyd Webber seem tasty. Michael Hutchence assays a poetic reading of "Under My Thumb," "Sympathy for the Devil" becomes an aria ... you catch the drift. (RS 686/687)

PAUL EVANS