Best Reissues of 2015, Something Else Reviews 1/6/2016 by Nick DeRiso

http://somethingelsereviews.com/2016...reissues-live/

No. 10. FLEETWOOD MAC – TUSK (REISSUE): You’re reminded all over again of this deeply underrated Best of 2015 favorite’s brilliant weirdness, and its splashes of very real emotion. An expanded double-album format allowed Lindsey Buckingham to experiment with the punk and New Wave sounds of the day, even as Christine McVie and Stevie Nicks mapped out the aftermath of heartbreak. “Sara,” for instance, works almost as a response to “Dreams,” her career-making hit from Rumours. Meanwhile, the frank simplicity of McVie’s “Over and Over” is all the more powerful on a bracing, left-turn-filled release like Tusk — which had, as its bizarre lead single, this paranoid excursion of a title track that includes the USC marching band.

Just confirming before I buy -- the live is new performances, not a reissue of "Live" right?

Right,it's not a reissue of the 1980 release of "Live"

I wish the vinyl was released in 45 format instead of 33.

The vinyl sounds spectacular to my ears.

I bet it does!!

I bought a new recordplayer for it. And for the vinylversions of Lindsey's Gift Of Screws and that wonderful red vinyl double-album for the Seeds We Sow tracks. That one sounds awesome.

The most rewarding track to hear on vinyl is definately Great Day. As if twelve singing Lindseys are surrounding you in your room, playing Rythms on all your furniture and guitars, topped with a screaming rythmic solo that crack your walls as well as your soul.

Yes its live on Memorex.Pun intended.I wish it was on film.I got the original copy here too.

It would be great if the shows were filmed in Imax 70 mm .They would look great on blueray today.

I'd love to see them put out a proper blu ray of all their
videos.

It could look better than some expect. Videotape was
used to record Elvis' 68' Special and Aloha: From Hawaii
(1973). And the official DVD's look very good considering
the source.

___________________________________________________

I finally got to do a "serious" listen to Tusk 5.1, and I have
to say that I think it's the best 5.1 mix of any album I have.
Finally someone did it right!!!.

A few more discs to go. I've listened to disc one and disc two,
then jumped to the DVD.

To anyone reading this. Don't wait - this set is a must have for any
serious Fleetwood Mac fan.

Album Review: Fleetwood Mac – Tusk (2015 Reissue) Published On November 20, 2015 | By Marcus Floyd | Albums, Music - See more at:

http://renownedforsound.com/index.ph....Guoln4Ek.dpuf

4.5 of 5 stars

The best words to describe supergroup Fleetwood Mac would be iconic and timeless; even today the group remain one of the world’s most influential bands. In October 1979 it was time for the group to release their follow-up to the incredibly successful Rumours; thus Tusk was born and it was their most experimental release at the time. Having had multiple remasters and reissues over the years Tusk is still a fan favourite today.

The 2015 reissue consists of 5 discs including a remastered version of the original album, an alternate version with outtakes that have mostly been unreleased, various single/demos and remixes; and you also can’t ignore unreleased performances from their Tusk tour, a DVD, and a 2LP 180-gram vinyl. The new masters of the original LP recapture the splendour that amazed fans, retaining the group’s precision when it comes to their finished product. 26 years later the album proves to be just as relevant and wondrous as ever; hearing classics like Tusk, Sara and the underrated Sisters Of The Moon will either make you nostalgic or deeply appreciate this work once again.

The remixes include the upbeat Think About Me Single (Remix) and the smooth That’s All For Everyone (Remix) among others. Soon you sit back in awe as you hear the initial recordings of a selection of songs; the first take of Walk A Thin Line was surprisingly sung more nasally, the Tusk (11.5.79 Demo) was also an interesting listen, and Sara (3.10.79 Demo) is just as charming as the final cut. The live tracks aren’t limited to Tusk and are derived from performances at Wembley, St Louis and Omaha between 1979-80: it’s nice to hear other hits like The Chain, Don’t Stop and Landslide.

This reissue of Tusk is a must-have for diehard fans or enthusiasts, it delves deeply into the group’s mindset in the lead up to the release as well as the chance to enjoy the original album again. If there’s something to be picky about it would be the inclusion of so many different versions of Tusk and I Know I’m Not Wrong; regardless of them being alternate takes it may be too much for the average listener. The new reissue is definitely something to be excited about, reminding the world that Fleetwood Mac is one of the most influential rock groups of all time.

- See more at: http://renownedforsound.com/index.ph....Guoln4Ek.dpuf

I'm starting to think I prefer the alternate Tusk to the 'real' version.
There are a number of songs that sound so much better, to the point where I wonder how they could have ever thought the final versions were superior (Lindsey's songs are much more pallatable). Overall, I think I prefer listing to the alternate- it just sounds more like a ....Fleetwood Mac album.

One thing I find though, is that I can't stop myself from naturally singing parts that aren't there on the alternates of Lindsey's songs.

Me too, but not on all the songs. Lindsey's, yes, especially Walk A Thin Line and Save Me A Place.

I don't care much for the alternate Brown Eyes or Sisters of the Moon.

The live Sara in tucson is amazing. The back and forth between Lindsey and Christine from 6:55 is stunning. They were at the top of their game. The Chain, Over and Over all amazing. Why weren't these the ones chosen for the live Album??? They also seem much rawer but still full sounding.

I was just listening to Sara Tucson, yesterday. The piano and guitar blow me away.. The audio is so good. I agree it's stunning.

Tusk, BY MATTHEW FIANDER 12 February 2016 Pop Matters

http://www.popmatters.com/review/fle...eluxe-edition/

DESPITE POPULAR NARRATIVES, TUSK ISN'T ALL DRUGGY, UNABASHED EXCESS. INSTEAD, THIS NEW SETS SHOWS THE RECORD AS A DEEPLY SELF-CONSCIOUS DOCUMENT, THE SOUND OF A BAND THAT DIDN'T REBEL AGAINST SUCCESS SO MUCH AS IT MISUNDERSTOOD THE PRIVILEGE IT BRINGS.

usk, Fleetwood Mac’s 1979 double album, is full of backstory. If its mega-successful predecessor Rumours had the Behind the Music-made backstories of deceit and division, Tusk (like the album itself) had several conflicting and chaotic backstories. It was the first record to cost over a million dollars. The affairs and divides of Rumours had, by 1979, grown into wider fissures between band members and, in some ways, full-on breakdown. There’s also the notion that this is the cocaine record, a product of excess and disconnection from sense.

Perhaps connecting all these stories together—or fracturing them further—is the idea that Tusk was Lindsay Buckingham’s brainchild. In the liner notes to this new Deluxe Edition of the album, Jim Irvin lays out Buckingham’s mindset post-Rumours. He didn’t want to lean back on success and make the same record again. He was also, so the essay suggests, influenced by the growing punk movement. That Irvin himself seems disingenuous about punk, referring to the movement as a “grubby breeze” and to the moderate chart success of the Ramones or the Damned as “if they were mould spores ready to discolor the musical wallpaper.” And though he sees punk and new wave as music with a “youthfully abrupt” attitude to the past, he does concede that Elvis Costello and the Clash, among others were “speedily evolving.” His attitude, colored by a clear love of the “plush delights” of Rumours, seems to echo Buckingham’s. He borrows the ethos of punk in claiming that Tusk was a “**** you” to the business of music.

Digging into this new 5CD/DVD/2LP version of Tusk, with all its bonus tracks and liner notes and photos, suggests that Buckingham’s view of the record and its making veers us away from the notion of coke bloat. The album isn’t truly about unabashed excess. Instead, this new edition helps us to re-see the record as a deeply self-conscious document, wherein Buckingham’s turn to the Talking Heads and the Clash (influences largely absent on the actual music of Tusk) seem to suggest an any-port-in-the-storm approach to making new music. The truth, though, is that the success of Rumours was hardly a problem. Tusk suggests that Fleetwood Mac was for a moment—due to inexperience, drugs, personal rifts, whatever—unsure not of how to follow up Rumours, but of how to make any other record. The “idiocy of fame” Irvin suggests as a target for Fleetwood Mac rings as naïve even now. Buckingham’s genre-hopping was little more than diving into of-the-moment trends. Mick Fleetwood, according to liner notes, wanted to make an African record, calling it a “native record with chants and amazing percussion.” These starting points for Tusk suggest not a rejection of success, but rather a fundamental misunderstanding of the privilege it brings.

That misunderstanding bleeds into the confused album itself. But this misunderstanding, and all the other confusions that went into the record, is what makes it so fascinating to listen to. For one, Buckingham’s conceits of ambition distract from some of the album’s purest pop moments. “Sara” shimmers” on clean, crisp pianos and beautiful vocals (Stevie Nicks and Christine McVie are actually the voices that keep this record together, though their influence is undersold in the liner notes in favor of the Buckingham defiant-burdened-male-genius narrative). “Over & Over” is bittersweet, dusty country-rock. “Storms” feels both spare and dreamy, leaning on vocal harmonies and tumbling guitar phrasings. “Angel” is stripped down and lean, letting the rhythm section take over rather than Buckingham’s layering. “What Makes You Think You’re the One” is catchy, straight-on power-pop, even with the high-in-the-mix snares and Buckingham’s unruly, edged vocals (which appear plenty on the record).

There is new territory here that works, namely the shift to a focus on drums in “Tusk.” Some of the skronky and brittle guitar tones feel fresh, though they sometimes land (“I Know I’m Not Wrong”) and sometimes fail (“Ledge”). But Tusk is at its best when it merely twists the band’s sensibility into something a bit more edgy and challenging than Rumours. The out-and-out experiments—like the hazy layers of “That’s All For Everyone” and the oddball chug of “Not That Funny”—feel awkward and pretentious, as if Buckingham didn’t quite understand the trends he was immersed in. Meanwhile, other places like “Honey Hi” just pile on the too-polished layers to saccharin effect.

Hearing Tusk now, all the ambition and hand-wringing around its creation feels largely unnecessary, with Buckingham’s ambitions for the album more relevant as ways to square with success that gave far more than it took away. But absent of all that outside story, it plays like a fascinating, uneven record. It is, like so many double albums, too long, but it also pushes the band places it hadn’t gone before. That those places are still firmly rooted in their pre-existing pop aesthetic, the very thing they claim to be turning away from, adds an interesting wrinkle.

The extras here further drive home the self-conscious nature of Tusk, suggesting even more that its excesses were more tantrum than rebellion. The “Alternate Tusk” included with largely unreleased takes is a compelling listen. It definitely doubles down on the album’s eccentricities. Buckingham’s vocals are as edged and shrill as ever. An extended take of “Sara” feels more spacious and haunted than the album take. “Storms” is spare and acoustic, with layers peeled back to reveal the song’s broken-hearted center. It plays like a long shadow to “Landslide.” “Tusk” gives the synths more space than the horns, but all the notes feel 8-bit next to the drums in the mix. Overall, this version is more disjointed and odd than the album version, and certainly worth a listen. But assembled here for a massive reissue, there’s a constructed feel to it that seems canned and, like so many other things around Tusk, overwrought. Like the original version, it is fascinating both when it struts with confidence and when it trips over its own self-aggrandizing ambitions.

The singles and outtakes drive home the defensive nature of Tusk, as well as the obsessive tinkering that happened as a result. Single versions of several songs skew any discoveries back to the middle. “Think About Me” is mixed to be all vocals and drums. “Sara” gets cut to a truncated, claustrophobic four-ish minutes. Even “Not That Funny”, a bad single candidate, sounds tame when those bleating guitars get sanded down. There are some interesting versions here, especially early takes on “Storms” and “Never Make Me Cry”, but while the evolution inherent in six versions of “I Know I’m Not Wrong” seems compelling on paper, in practice none of the takes stand out.

The two discs of live performances from the Tusk tour are—surprise, surprise—both fulfilling and frustrating. For one, they put songs from Tusk alongside songs from the band’s catalog, and the fit once again suggests the fleeting nature of the ambition of this double record. But the performances themselves are often ragged, sometimes exhausted. Nicks labors through a version of “Landslide” as if she’d prefer never to sing it again. Meanwhile, for a band not interested in repeating early success, they really stretch out a bombastic performance of “Go Your Own Way.” Between exhaustion and wanking, the band does sometimes nail it, though, especially a version of “Sara” here, a solid take on “Tusk”, and a charged, scuffed-up take on “Dreams”.

Tusk is an album that is excellent—and these uneven extras add interest to it—because it seems to come from such a flawed perspective. Buckingham and company spent over a million bucks on an album supposedly influenced by punk. The band was railing against a system that paid for that record. And, in the end, those pretenses of rebellion give way to simple artistic uncertainty. Even now, this set seems unsure of which way to present the album. We get a remastered version, an alternate version, a surround-sound DVD version, and a new pressing of the record on two LPs. This edition is an expansive, if expensive, gift to fans, and worthwhile in that regard, but its presentation also reminds us that Tusk isn’t the product of a burst of creativity or a major shift in artistic vision. Rather, it’s the sound of a band that didn’t know where to go, so it went everywhere at once. If that sounds dismissive, it’s not. Beneath all the conceits and mythologies that surround this record, it’s the basic fact that it’s always reaching that makes it the strange, great record it is.

TUSK (DELUXE EDITION)
Rating: 9 out of 10 stars