Ok... Hi again folks. I decided to list this one because there might still be a few people that do not have this yet out there. And, of course, because the quality of this is just phenomenal in every way.
Here is all the notes from this one below -
A 21 track expanded album collection and including a very comprehensive and informational twelve page color booklet and printable disc label.
Tracklist:
01 - Crying In The Night
02 - Stephanie
03 - Without A Leg To Stand On
04 - Crystal
05 - Long Distance Winner
06 - Don't Let Me Down Again
07 - Django
08 - Races Are Run
09 - Lola (My Love)
10 - Frozen Love
11 - Crying In The Night (Single Version)
12 - Dont Let Me Down Again (Mono Single Edit)
13 - Sorcerer
14 - Garbo
15 - Cathouse Blues
16 - That's Alright
17 - Candlebright (aka Nomad)
18 - Without You
19 - Lola My Love (Live)
20 - Races Are Run (Live)
21 - Rhiannon (Live)
This collection begins with the ten tracks that comprise the self titled album from Buckingham Nicks, their only commercially released album. While the album saw several vinyl issues, spurred on in part by curiosity after Mac became hugely successful, it has never seen any legitimate commercial release in the digital age. Lindsey Buckingham and Stevie Nicks own the full rights to the album and have come close to releasing it several times. Sources close to the pair state that Stevie very much wants it to be released but that Lindsey is the reluctant party.
The source for these tracks as they appear here is the original DLedin 16 bit vinyl rip of the album. This effort is considered to be one of the few consensus “must haves” in the crowded internet music trading pool. This is due not only to the fact that the album has never been released on CD (some bootleggers have made quite a bit of money as a result), but also because the quality of DLedin’s work here is magnificent. It is significantly better than any of the myriad for profit bootlegs that have materialized over the years. In fact, as bold of a statement as it may seem, there is ample evidence to suggest that a commercial CD release from the original master tape would fail to live up to the lofty aural standard set by the “needledrop”. First off, original album producer Keith Olsen stated that when preparing the digital master for an aborted 1999 release of the work, it was necessary to bake the master reel due to oxide flaking of the tape. This statement could lead one to assume with some probability that even ten years ago the analog master had suffered some deterioration. Even more compelling evidence can be found by way of two tracks that have seen commercial distribution. The first is “Stephanie” from the promotional compact disc “Lindsey Buckingham Words and Music”. The second is “Long Distance Winner” which appeared on Stevie’s “Enchanted” box set. Please find those tracks and compare them to their corresponding offerings here. The results will speak for themselves.
Tracks eleven and twelve are Galemark vinyl rips of two BN singles. The first, “Crying in the Night”, is more than a simple remix. The original session for the album track is retained, but is augmented with at least two extra guitar tracks from Lindsey (and/or perhaps session ace Waddy Wachtel) and some additional backing vocals. As a result, the song takes on a more aggressive nature that belies the album’s laid back SoCal feel. The second single included here is “Don’t Let Me Down Again”. This one is not a rerecording or remix, but simply a single edit which relieves the track of twenty seconds of soloing at the end, making it more “radio friendly”. This drop came from a white label promo 45, having the stereo edit on one side and a mono fold down on the flip side. The mono is chosen here to present the song in it’s full 1970’s AM transistor radio glory!
The next six tracks are demo recordings which have circulated extensively under the misnomer “The Coffee Plant Demos”. This title is in reference to a small storeroom in the San Francisco coffee plant of Lindsey’s father, where they installed a used Ampex four track recorder. “Sorcerer” and “Garbo” are widely reported to have been written after the couple moved to Los Angeles, and the tapes themselves have several characteristics that allude to them having multiple points of origin. As odd as the title of this bootleg is, the configuration in which the songs are offered is even more unusual. The most common version of the bootleg presents seven songs. Each song is repeated for a total of fourteen tracks. Several of the tracks appear in two variations, one track with vocals and guitar only and another with the same vocal track and bass only (as an example, they vary from song to song). Some of the songs appear twice in the same configuration, but are titled as being different (the original bootlegger may have not had very acute hearing or perhaps wanted to pad the track count). Why the tracks circulate in this form remains a mystery, but one possible explanation is that Lindsey had distributed these mixes to other members of the Buckingham Nicks touring band as a rehearsal tool, showing each player what he wanted for a given song. The songs with distinct mixes are the ones likely recorded in LA, while the others may have come from the coffee plant tapes. One song that appears on the bootlegs, “Goldfish and Ladybug” sounds as if it was recorded on an office type cassette recorder with a built in microphone. The vocals are quite distorted and the guitar is very distant in the mix. For these reasons the track was not a good candidate for remastering and is not offered here. The fourteen track configuration is the most common way that these tracks circulate, but some enterprising individuals, realizing that the same vocal appeared on each version, have attempted to line up the tracks into a “pseudo-stereo” (sometimes referred to as “true stereo”). This offers a more complete mix, but suffers from an overly pronounced vocal track and of course a terribly inappropriate stereo soundscape. Galemark sought to relieve these problems by starting with a new pseudo stereo alignment of the tracks. From this the goal was to perform isolations of the vocals and instruments. The vocal isos were not very good, but the instrumental versions came out with varying degrees of success. From this point, the pseudo stereo tracks and the instrumental isos were dumped into ProTools to create a four track that served as the basis for what is presented here. If the bass appeared in the left channel of the fake stereo version, an amount of the bass iso was mixed to the right. Since the iso is mostly fundamental, the attack of the note still came from the left, but the expanse of the sound came from both channels. Similar decisions were made for each instrument in each mix down. This approach relieves many of the problems that have always been inherent in these tapes. The volume balance is greatly improved and the stereo image is much more natural. Finally, literally hundreds of tape dropouts were corrected and a dusting of EQ and spot noise reduction was employed. The notion that these songs are musically significant and not simple historical curiosities is borne out not merely by opinion, but by the fact that four of the six songs were resurrected at later points in the BN/FM saga. “Sorcerer” and “Candlebright (aka Nomad)” were returned to as part of Ms. Nicks’ 2001 album “Trouble in Shangri-La”. They appear as two of the five Sheryl Crow produced tracks. Ms Crow is a voracious student of rock history and an unabashed Stevie Nicks fan, who once said that “Stevie bridges the gap between…Janis Joplin and Grace Slick, and what’s going on today”. Perhaps Sheryl was already familiar with these demos and suggested that the lost songs merited proper treatment. “Garbo” appeared in 1983 as the b-side of Stevie’s “Stand Back” single and can still be found on the “Enchanted” box. Two years prior Fleetwood Mac revisited “That’s Alright” on their “Mirage” album. That leaves only two tracks that remain on the shelf. “Cathouse Blues” demonstrates that Lindsey’s finger picking technique is well suited to a style in which it is not often utilized. “Without You” serves as an apt coda to this set of demos. Lyrics like “If I’d not heard your laughter, maybe I wouldn’t love you. If I’d not sung your music, I’d not come rolling after you” foreshadow their later use of lyric as autobiographical therapy session that became so famous in songs like “Go Your Own Way”.
Speaking of foreshadowing, the last three tracks of this set are fascinating in large part for the way in which they point to the future. This small live set remarkably is not the only live recording that exists of Buckingham Nicks, but is far and away the one with the best quality. Even with a good basic tape to work with, Galemark still had a lot of remastering work to do. The tape suffered many dropouts, not just the fine and complete type, but also large patches of tape where there was mal-alignment, causing fluctuations in the frequency curve. These were corrected or minimized as much as possible.
DLedin and Galemark hope that you enjoy this presentation of what is (for now) the definitive collection of Buckingham Nicks.
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