[face of glass]

Originally Posted by Johnny Stew

"You And I, Part 2" IS on 'Tango.'

Well screw my keyboard and my fingers then.

"Ricky" is lightweight and goes nowhere...

Where would you like the song to go then? I'm guessing here that you're not moved by it emotionally. I personally love the damn thing. I think it is 'beautifully pointless', let's say it like that, unlike "WTTR...S" & "WISYA", which are bit too 'pointy' for me. And it is just as difficult to create a glorious question mark into your head as it is to 'bare your soul' as it has been generally expected of Stevie.

..."Book Of Miracles" is just an instrumental...

While I do believe that instruments convey emotion as much as vocals, I still would like the track with a vocal. No doubt would it have been worked upon later, if the track had been chosen to be included on the album.

"Down Endless Street"... well, it's the second-best of that batch of non-LP tracks, but it still sounds like an unfinished thought.

Another one that no doubt Lindsey would have worked upon further, if Stevie hadn't chosen to get involved in the making of TITN.

Stevie's "esoterica" gives 'Tango' its soul... but whatever.

'Soul' and 'Substance', you're using different words for the same thing.

The soul is just as much in there when the middle eight of "Big Love" starts crying out for help. Or when Lindsey delivers his struggling vocal for "Caroline". Or when he lets rip in the title track. Or when Chris sounds vulnerable in "Mystified" and "Little Lies". Or when "Family Man" arrives to the guitar solo. Or when the 'little child' (my image of Lindsey as he delivers that vocal) of "You And I Part Two" sings to us. And this is in the usually accepted way, mind you, through vocals and lead guitar. I haven't mentioned the arrangemental aspects yet because those can do just as much, although not in a way similar to the confessionalists, that's for sure.
Ear-candy pop? For some, maybe. Not for me.

Honestly, I'm interested in why "Silver Springs" is suddenly in a better situation than these other b-sides in these survivor polls. Yes, it is on the DVD-A and Enhanced CD reissues now, but why wasn't it on the album earlier?

(THIS HAS NOTHING TO DO WITH MY OPINION OF THE MUSICAL CONTENT OF "SILVER SPRINGS".)

The most common explanation that has been given to this is that "it didn't fit in there because of vinyl limitations". I personally think that's not a valid explanation. Fleetwood Mac had a blockbuster behind them and they were most certainly given the access to the best that Warner Brothers had to offer when they went to record Rumours. However, you still hear Mick and co saying that 'vinyl could only hold 23 minutes per side'. The latter is not true, since the '70s had seen several albums with side-lengths approaching 30 minutes, such as certain Todd Rundgren albums or Genesis' Foxtrot and Selling England By The Pound. Of course, at that point the sound quality will certainly suffer, an issue that was obviously important to certain members of Fleetwood Mac.

However, there's been cases where a band has chosen to put more than 23 minutes to a vinyl LP side and the sound quality hasn't still degraded. See Martin Birch's notes from the inner sleeve of Iron Maiden's Live After Death live album:

Cutting Maiden album is often difficult, as they tend to give you fans great value by putting about 25 minutes of music on each side, whereas an album side normally runs between 16-20 minutes. This gives the cutting engineer great problems in getting all the grooves in without losing volume and clarity. However, the best can do it, and we only use the best.

So why wasn't "Silver Springs" put on the album then, if Fleetwood Mac had all the possibilities to do it? Are we speaking of Ken Caillat's and Richard Dashut's incompetence in this regard? I'd like to think not.

So yes, perhaps "Silver Springs" was left off intentionally, not because of time constraints. It's very possible that the 'flow' of the album would have been interrupted by it (and that's why they chose "I Don't Want To Know"), I've seen that as another explanation that the band members have been offering us. However, that must have been their subjective opinion of the track order; we've all seen fans on this board who arrange the track orders of every album to their own preference.

Of course, if people still want to believe that "technical reasons" kept "Silver Springs off Rumours, fine. Then it's my right to believe that "technical reasons" (in addition to the Nicksian reasons ) kept "You And I Part 1" (look, I got it right this time), "Down Endless Street", "Book Of Miracles" and "Ricky" off Tango In The Night. If CD had been the dominant format in 1987, the band members might have put these on the album in addition to what's already on it, of course 'finishing' two of them.

That the band members have recently been stating that "'Silver Springs' should have been on the album" doesn't mean much to me. It's all reflective of the success the track had as a single in 1997 (plus the image of Nicks belting out the words to Buckingham, more emphasis on the drama of Rumours); that's why it was added to the DVD-A and the Enhanced CD.
There hasn't been a proper reissue (like those two of Rumours mentioned above) of TITN. If such a thing emerges soon, will we redo this poll because the b-sides might be tacked on to the end of the original album?

Of course, one could now say that "Silver Springs" isn't a bonus track, since it isn't tacked to the end of Rumours, it's in the middle. However, it's in between the last track of side 1 and the first track of side 2. I know of some reissues that have the same approach; Nick Cave's The First Born Is Dead and The Fall's This Nation's Saving Grace have the non-LP single sides on the cd in between the first and second sides of the original vinyl. Of course, the compilers of the Rumours reissue couldn't just figure out where to place the track yet again, so they chose the easiest route.

But whatever. What's done is done. Poll on!