Friday, April 26, 2024

Fleetwood Mac - Mid-South Coliseum, Memphis, TN, 10-12-1982

I recently decided I wanted a concert recording from Fleetwood Mac's 1982 tour. This was the last tour with the band's most popular "Rumours" line-up all the way until 1997. So I came up with this one.

There's a disc of live recordings from this tour on the 2016 super deluxe edition of the band's 1982 album "Mirage." However, there are some problems with it. The songs come from two concerts (in Los Angeles) instead of one, and they're in a seemingly random order. Also, many songs played each night on the tour weren't included, and all the banter was cut out. I wanted a full concert with all the songs and banter, in the correct order, with the best possible sound. I looked around and found this Memphis concert was the only soundboard bootleg from the tour. (An Oakland concert from this tour is supposedly a soundboard, but in my opinion it's just an average audience boot.) So this is what I worked with.

However, there were some audio problems with it. The biggest was the lead vocals were down in the mix, a lot more on some songs than others. I used the audio editing program UVR5 to fix that. Also, the cheering at the end of each song had an annoying buzzing sound in it every single time. So I generally turned that way down and used the cheering from the super deluxe edition live tracks instead, while keeping shouted thank yous and things like that. The cheering was also really quiet, as it often is with soundboards. So at the same time I made sure to make it a lot louder.

Also, the band played the same exact songs in the same order every night of this tour, so it was easy to see that three songs were missing from the bootleg: "Love in Store," "Not That Funny," and "I'm So Afraid." By luck, the super deluxe edition live disc included all of those, so I used those versions. 

But also, parts of two other songs were missing. About the first minute of "Second Hand News" was gone, as well as the first minute of "Landslide." Neither of those were on the super deluxe edition live disc. So instead I resorted to using the Oakland audience boot for those. I removed the crowd noise on those parts using the MVSEP audio editing program so the sound would fit with the rest. That's why those two songs have "[Edit]" in their titles. Also, about five seconds of "Sisters of the Moon" was missing in the middle of the song. Luckily, it was in an instrumental riff section, so I was able to patch that up with music from elsewhere in the song. So that one has "[Edit]" in the title too.

Previously, this Memphis concert recording wasn't very popular due to the sound flaws and missing songs and sections of songs and so forth. But I feel it's sounding really great now. In my opinion, this now has to be the best recording from the band's 1982 tour, even more than the songs on the super deluxe edition, since this is a complete concert with essentially the same sound quality.

The band did a really long tour in 1979 and 1980 to support their 1989 album "Tusk." That resulted in a live album, simply called "Live." But that tour was a disaster filled with the typical drug and ego problems of famous bands. It nearly broke up the band. Key band members were often so high they were barely functional on stage. The 1982 tour was much more professionally done, resulting in better music. So I think this is better than the "Live" album too.

This album is an hour and 56 minutes long.

01 Second Hand News [Edit] (Fleetwood Mac)
02 talk (Fleetwood Mac)
03 The Chain (Fleetwood Mac)
04 Don't Stop (Fleetwood Mac)
05 Dreams (Fleetwood Mac)
06 Oh Well, Part 1 (Fleetwood Mac)
07 Rhiannon (Fleetwood Mac)
08 Brown Eyes (Fleetwood Mac)
09 talk (Fleetwood Mac)
10 Eyes of the World (Fleetwood Mac)
11 talk (Fleetwood Mac)
12 Gypsy (Fleetwood Mac)
13 Love in Store (Fleetwood Mac)
14 Not That Funny (Fleetwood Mac)
15 talk (Fleetwood Mac)
16 Never Going Back Again (Fleetwood Mac)
17 Landslide [Edit] (Fleetwood Mac)
18 Tusk (Fleetwood Mac)
19 talk (Fleetwood Mac)
20 Sara (Fleetwood Mac)
21 talk (Fleetwood Mac)
22 Hold Me (Fleetwood Mac)
23 You Make Loving Fun (Fleetwood Mac)
24 I'm So Afraid (Fleetwood Mac)
25 Go Your Own Way (Fleetwood Mac)
26 Blue Letter (Fleetwood Mac)
27 Sisters of the Moon [Edit] (Fleetwood Mac)
28 Songbird (Fleetwood Mac)

https://www.imagenetz.de/mkgpa

The cover photo shows four out of the five band members in concert in 1982. Drummer Mick Fleetwood is the one not shown. I don't know exactly where and when the photo was taken.

2 comments:

  1. Ah, Fleetwood Mac... There's no way to be a fan of good old rock and roll and not like Fleetwood Mac - it's like liking classical music and not being a fan of Beethoven. Thank you very much for your post, fraternal hugs.

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  2. Thank you very much for your hard work on polishing up this gem!

    ReplyDelete