Does Stevie sing 100% live onstage?
 

After Ashlee Simpson was ''caught'' lip syncing to a pre-recorded vocal
on a live performance i'm sure people will wonder who does it and who don't
so i'm just curious if the vocals we hear on the fleetwood stage is reallly
live or are the vocals ''helped'' a little to make them sound good?

I have been on the front row of more than one concert and within the first five of many many more - At every one, I have heard the sound from her mouth - so I say yes she has.

On the SA tour however, during Blue D., I could swear there was a harmony track playing for her to harmonize her lead with - no one else can sound like that :laugh: It is to me VERY audible in the Letterman performance.

But, I think Stevie is 100% live as is LB.

I always thought that they had a bit of "help" on Say Goodbye, but that's just me.

I think they have pre-recorded sound effects, not vocals, on a few songs (Peacekeeper, most notably).

They are singing alright... But of course they are helped out in the music enhancement department too. The chorus for Peacekeeper... The Chorus for Say You Will... and there's one spot during Don't Stop where they clearly took some of the chorus from The Dance recording... there's a place near the end after they say "Don't Stop..........." a bunch of times, I think it's after the third time they sing it... that you can hear Lindsey say "WOO". It's the same place and the same thing as on The Dance. So singing live... yes, getting help...yes as well. And I'm sure there are a few pre-recorded things thrown in as well, like the beginning of Stand Back etc.

Right, they use the most horrific background vocal recordings EVER. Peacekeeper's just FRIGHTENING. Say Goodbye's just creepy-sounding. I think they're most noticeable in the Peacekeeper video and in that neat Buffalo inner-ear whatever boot.

Sampling sure does happen much more frequently lately.

In one of the Q&As, Brett Tuggle mentions how certain things were sampled off of the Say You Will Masters, and then he presses the keys at the right time.

I get thoroughly confused at hearing some live bootlegs from 98 of Stevie singing Edge of Seventeen at some of her concerts... I can almost hear her singing a 'modern' Stevie-low-harmony-to-replace-her-melody type of part, but I can also hear her doing the melody at the same time... The bootlegs aren't usually very clear, so I can't be certain, but it's getting hard!

After to listening to many boots and I'm sure there are other her who have listened to far more than I, I would have to say unequivocally that Stevie sings all of her songs.
I remember seeing her on Solid Gold many years ago, where everyone lip synched. Not Stevie. They played the instrumental part of the track and she sang live over it. Great performance. :thumbsup: It''s one of the things about her that I love so much. She wouldn't even consider doing that.

Stevie changes/forgets/messes up lyrics way to much to ever be tied to lip syncing. I just don't think it would work for her.

I know what you mean about the Buffalo boot too... gives me the creeps just thinking about it. It really ruined Say Goodbye.

I've been following The Mac/Stevie for more than 20 years now, and I've only seen one lip-synch. It was some weird Japanese TV show promoting Behind The Mask. Stevie lip-synched "Freedom", and Christine lip-synched "Save Me" (I think - could've been "Skies The Limit" - the tape wore out years ago...). And it was the freakiest thing I've ever seen from any of them. It was obvious that it was something they weren't used to doing and something they were hardly comfortable with.

But I don't think any of the members have ever lip-synched in concert, for paying fans. Enhanced with samples? Sure. But the Say You Will show that I saw in Houston was one of the best-sounding concerts I've ever attended, so I'll give them their 29-piece backup band and minor computer enhancements. ;)

They lipped Silver Springs for a German television show during The Dance as well. It is very obvious because Stevie sort of forgets to sing her part, which was one of many of the vocal overlays she does :laugh: BUT - it was a rather intense "shipper" moment despite the lipping :cool:

Something I have noticed this tour is that Lindsey is only playing guitar about half the time. He just seems to stop strumming the guitar and then all of the sudden when he is done with his little hand motions he'll go back to playing it and nothing sounds different. I think Lindsey's guitar is sort of burried in the background because of this and he gets lots of help. I would like to see him completely play or not play at all for each song.

Like, if you compare the Dance to Live in Boston- on the Dance he plays the whole time but during Live in Boston he will stop playing the guitar and the song still sounds the same so I wonder how much guitar is actually Lindsey's. (I just don't think his playing is centerstage the way it should be- it gets lost with everyone else's playing)

Hmmm...
 

Stevie/Mac:Live (w/a few backing enhancements flown in...Trust me, I have a rather large amount of 2003-2004 shows and the lead vocals are indeed live.)

Ass-ley Simple-ton:Memorex ("Dance Milli Vanilli, Dance")

Brian j.

That's right! I forgot about that. I call that tape "Orange Juice." :laugh:

There are only three instances I can think of where FM lip-synched a performance....

1982 UK TV appearance, lip-synching "Oh Diane"

1990 appearance on the Japanese TV show, 'Sound Gig,' lip-synching "Save Me," "Freedom," "In The Back Of My Mind" and "Stand On The Rock"

1998 appearance on the German show, 'Wetten Dass?,' lip-syncing "Silver Springs"

Otherwise, I think it's pretty obvious that they sing live... occasional sour-notes, missed-cues, and all. :nod:

There is no God! :distress:

:p

You beat me to it!

Even on Solid Gold Stevie sings live and not even Christine did on that one!

The only other instance I can think of is Stevie during the BD tour video of EO17 overdubs parts of her live vocal with the album cut. I forget which part if it, but it is obvious to me that she does because her lips are not matching the verse and it sounds exactly like the album vocal. But, that was a live performance which was dubbed, so she still sang it :cool:

Yeah, that's what I meant. The lead vocals are completely Stevie and Lindsey.

I think the most important question to be raised is: WHERE IS THE FILE OF STEVIE & CO. LIPSYNCHING "FREEDOM"?! :shocked:

:laugh: :laugh: That is so true! Anyway, I had second row seats in Cedar Falls in July and eventually made my way up to the stage, directly infront of Stevie! I could hardly take my eyes off her and thus, I did not detect a moment when it wasn't her singing (live).

And the thing to keep in mind, with a lot of these teeny-bopper stars (e.g. Ashlee Simpson), is that they're prancing/dancing around so much, dodging pyrotechnics displays, etc., that they kinda have to use pre-recorded vocals. Whereas with Stevie and the Mac, the emphasis is on the music -- they mostly just stand at their mics and sing, so there wouldn't be much need for backup tracks.

Yes I really do wonder how much Lindsey really plays live these days. I bet anyone a dollar, when he stoops down during GYOW to let the people in front strum along the techs turn his gutiar off. In Nashville I was the only playing his right cords for what all over 30 seconds :).

When he's banging the neck with both hands on LIB, his sound is really buried in the mix. Why? Because banging the neck with both hands sounds like ****! It's all for show. So yeah, the other guitarists are covering the sound for him. :(
I wanna know WHO decided that bands could no longer go out as a 4 or 5 piece? That there must be umpteen people in the band....... :distress:

mabye one lip-sync
 

well, unless there is disparity in the audio-video sync, look at the edge of 17 on the live video from BD (HBO thingie). Look closely at "he was no more than a baby then" it seems a bit "off" sync. could be a technical issue, could be a little lip-sync.....hard to know fur shur.

I just want to quickly point out that there's a difference between lip-synching (mouthing the words at the time of the filming), and post-production audio-sweetening and/or overdubbing.

The act of overdubbing the vocals on a line or two (or on entire songs) before the release of a concert video is pretty common. It's done to fix everything from a botched line, to a sour note, to a bit of feedback.

Concert videos are often regarded in much the same way as a film, where editing, overdubbing, etc., is used to make it the best possible product it can be.
Very few are ever completely "worts and all."

The other thing to keep in mind is that, generally more than one night of the show is filmed. Both Stevie & Fleetwood Mac's 'In Concert' videos from the early '80s were filmed over the course of two nights. As were the 'Tango' and 'Live In Boston' videos.
'The Dance' was filmed over the course of three nights... a dress rehearsal and two audience-attended concerts.

So audio from one night and video from another are often intermingled throughout the released product... which sometimes causes a discrepancy between what you see being sung or played on stage and what you hear on the soundtrack.

It's not a case of lip-synching on stage, but rather post-production overdubbing. :)

This is why...
 

most recorded concerts are shot over a few days at the same venue to be able to edit out any mistakes and to have extra footage to fill in the blanks/edits...

I have 3 officially released DVD's in which the concerts were filmed on mulitple dates at the same venue, And ya can tell on each where post-production was done.

Brian j.

Well, what's amusing is, on the Tango DVD, during Everywhere (I think), you can see John just playing normally, but in some shots of him, he's smoking a cigarette, and then they'll show him not.

:D

:nod:

The only ones I've seen that weren't fixed up were the Live By Request DVDs and the Blondie Live DVD. I actually prefer the unedited ones because they give more depth to the performance, they seem more human.

And that's what I don't like about LIB.
Should've been : FM: Live Video in Boston-Most Audio overdubbed.
I agree 100%. The warts give it depth and reality.

I don't think they did much overdubbing, to be honest. I think that, especially for FM, LIB is incredibly raw. If they were going to do a lot of overdubbing, surely they would have gotten rid of her Silver Springs vocals and a lot of Lindsey's screeching. But they didn't and that's why I like it so much.

I'd like to see them do Live By Request, honestly.

I don't think Stevie would ever go for that.
I think I hear tons of overdubs on LIB. Lindsey's fingers are often not doing what the notes we're hearing are(did that make sense?).

Oh, yeah, there ARE tons of overdubs on LIB, but not as many as I had first thought there would be. It seems to me that they didn't go crazy with the overdubbing like on The Dance, which was so sterile that it came off more as a studio album. :laugh: That's why LIB sounds much rawer.

I don't think Stevie would EVER do Live By Request, eihter. I can't picture her taking phone calls and emails, let alone performing a song at a moments notice.

:thumbsup: And i'd absolutely LOVE for Stevie to do a Crossroads on CMT with someone...who, i'm not sure (not Sheryl, not the Dixie Chicks...someone she's not worked with before).

The perfect choice...
 

for a male performer/musician would be, None other than Keith Urban...I think wondergirl (Christy) can back me up on his live performances.

An even better Crossroads would be a Stevie Nicks/Dolly Parton paring, Which would make for an interesting vocal style since a pairing with The Dixie Twits, oops Chicks & Sheryl Crow would just be too obvious.

Brian j.

I watched the music awards and saw him on there. I'm not the biggest fan of country music but I do listen and like some. The two of them might make for an interesting pairing (as would Dolly and Stevie) but yes, definately not the usual suspects, plz. Let's have some new pairings.

What is Crossroads?

Romy

The put a country singer with a "rock/pop" singer and tape a mini show. It airs on CMT. Past performers include:

Heart/Wynonna
Martina McBride/Pat Benatar
John Mellacamp/Kenny Chesney



-Curtis

Brooks & Dunn/ZZ Top
Kid Rock/Hank Williams, Jr.

Actually, I don't really think it's "at a moments notice." I got the feeling that they pick calls, emails, etc, that are asking for what the band's familiar and comfortable with playing at any time. Like with Blondie, we got songs they've been doing for years. With FM, we would most likely get the same stuff: Dreams, Rhiannon, The Chain, GYOW, etc.

But I've only seen Blondie's, so what the hell do I know. :laugh: :wavey:

I love Dolly's voice, and I love Stevie's voice, but i'm not sure the twain could meet successfully. For one, Dolly's range is a million times more than stevie's...I dunno, it would be nice, i'm just not sure how it would work...