WE NEVER ACTUALLY SAID IT WAS LIVE

Upset and confusion over in Canada, where radio station Q107 played out a 2002 bootleg Rolling Stones gig on Wednesday evening. Unfortunately, a lot of listeners seemed convinced they were listening to a real invasion of Martians... sorry, a live feed of that evening's Stones gig in Toronto. It seems Q107 may have been hoping for the confusion:

Corus Radio Toronto general manager J.J. Johnstone is also Q107's station manager and Bartrem's boss. He told the Sun yesterday he did not hear Wednesday evening's broadcast. But he said the station made a mistake.

"We put it on and it could be seen, or be inferred, that it was the broadcast from the other night -- but that's not what it was," he said. "We could have been clearer in letting people know that it was the Palais Royale show but, unfortunately, we weren't."

As for suggestions by angry fans on various Stones-related message boards that crowd noise was added to the broadcast to make between-song voiceovers by host DJ John Scholes seem more "live," Johnstone says that didn't happen, that what listeners heard was actual background noise from the bootleg recording.

"We were trying to give a service to our audience who could not make the show that night. And that's it."

Of course, away from the passing-off question, there's also a small matter of the tapes they were playing being, technically, illegal:

As the Sun reported yesterday, Stones management was not angry that Q107 illegally aired an unauthorized bootleg recording of the Palais Royale show, but would be "very angry" if the station intentionally duped listeners into believing the recording was a live simulcast of Wednesday's show.

... but of course, the band would have got their airplay cash from the concert if it was an authorized recording or not.

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