Spoiler-Chris Isaak-Christmas!
 

Just finished watching (And recording) the "Chris Isaak Christmas", So do not read below the green line if you do not want to be spoiled:

v
v
v
v
v
v
v
v
v
v
v
v
v
v
v
v
v
v
v
v
v
v
v
v
v
v
v
v
v
v
------------------------------------

It was a great looking Stevie tonite on the "Chris Isaak Christmas" episode of Soundstage...She looked damn sexy, Much better than she did on the "Live In Boston" Soundstage/DVD/etc. Even a few camera closeups from the side proved she looked much sexier than ever...And her voice sounded great, But sounded just undermixed a tad.

Chris Isaak introduced Stevie the following humorous way:

"One of the nice things about being in show business is to not only to be able to entertain but to also find and discover new talent and we have somebody tonight I think you will hear alot of in the future and I want you to give her a warm welcome, Stevie Nicks...Remember that name."

Of course she sang on "Santa Claus is Coming to Town", But only after being teased with a few musical bars of a song Chris called a "Christmas classic". Once the jazzy music started, the piano player, Scott Plunkett, lead everyone on the forementioned "Christmas Classic" alright, A few short bars of Rhiannon to which Stevie was amused to hear. (It sounded quite cool...They should have played the whole version of it in that jazzy-esqe sound!)

Stevie finished the song ("Santa Claus is Coming To Town") and after a very short intermission she came back to the stage with the other special guests, Brian McKnight & the other guy whos name escapes me at the moment to sing "Rudolph the Red Nosed Reindeer" in which Stevie sounded great.

Btw, The credits showed the following phone number where you can purchase the "Chris Isaak Christmas" DVD, Which includes bonus footage not shown tonite for $19.95 (Maybe some bonus Stevie footage???)

1-866-383-4643

I recommend watching this show if it airs on yer local PBS station...Very entertaining and very humorous!!!

Brian j.

I couldn't agree more. I thought it was a wonderful performance...the only downside being that it came to an end far too soon.

Thanks Brian - just ordered it!!!!!!!!!! Who knows WHEN Atlanta will air it :laugh:

Yeah...
 

my DVD burner's counter had it at 56 minutes...Shoulda/coulda been much longer IMHO.

Brian j.

When I get mine (should be like two weeks) I will check it against your's - etc. :cool:

Cool...
 

I may order it myself since it was a great show!

Brian j.

From what I heard, it sounded incredibly good and yes, despite having no picture, I laughed at Chris's jokes. I think i'm going to end up ordering it :thumbsup:

Yeah...
 

his jokes were pretty good, But the "Christmas Classic" song was the best one :thumbsup:

Brian j.

I just ordered one...but she said "it should take 3-4 weeks" lol o well i will watch it after christmas

Thanks for the review, Brian!
I'm really anxious to see this... hopefully at least one of my two local PBS stations will air it.

Mine didn't air it!! :mad: :mad: :mad:

Soundstage was a no show here in RI and only in Boston IF you have digital which I don't. :(

No air here, either. :( :mad:


It was on at 5 am, but I went to the bar and got home around 2 and needed much sleep. If I stayed home, I was going to just get up and pop in a tape since my TV timer is whack. Oh well, such is life. :o

Hmmm...so who is gonna be the first to put this performance onto a wma file and post it somewhere? hellooo?

Chris

PBS in Houston is now split into two channels - digital cable and air broadcast (which also shows up on primitive cable).

The digital channel premiered the special last night, and is showing it about 15 times this month. If you have regular cable or are watching PBS with rabbit ears, you have to wait until Dec. 18th. The only other time the regular broadcast will show it is on Dec. 24th.

Which sucks, IMHO. :nod:

I saw it! It was on at 4 AM last nite, I taped it, forgot to check this morning, but went home for lunch and ff-d thru everything else to see Stevie! Did anyone notice her tambourine ribbons? Were they red and green, or different shades of red? She sounds FABULOUS on both songs. And Chris Isaak should do stand up, he's damn funny! :thumbsup:

Re:
 

friggin' awesome!!!~ it didn't air here until 11 am this morning & then again periodically thruout the day, it was a gr8 show, the whole playing of the beginning of "rhiannon" was priceless~ loved all the humor & stevie's was the best "comet, cupid, donner & blitzen", i have ever heard!!! :nod: :thumbsup: :nod: ~ i also orderd it on dvd, i can't wait 2 get it, i thought when they showed the phone #, they said there was more footage than showed during the hour show :shrug: ~ oh yeah & i loved & the end when chris introduced her, he said "little stevie nicks", lol, how cute was that?

Ok-did it not sound like Stevie was singing in a sweet much higher than usual voice? And didn't she look effortless doing it??? Was it just me??? Does this prove she hasd not lost her range? If yes, why does she constantly try to make us think she has lost her range??? She sounded so good and looked 100 x better than any of the times I saw them on the SYW tour. Why couildn't that have been her standard dress for SYW tour? She looked so great. I didn't even mind her toned down air guitar and drums.

Call me deluded (shut it, dissention :p), but I've never thought she's lost all of her range... I really do think it's a matter of her just not singing with it. My belief is that singing night after night proves to be too much of a strain on her voice if she goes beyond the range we typically hear from her, so she avoids it in order to preserve her voice.
But one-off performances like this are a different story.

She sounded beautifully sweet on "Say Goodbye" too, on various recordings I've heard from the tour... but that's another case where it's just one song on which she's not singing lead. So something like that is probably more "do-able" than singing several songs that way, as the lead vocalist.

Anyway, that's just my theory... I'm sure others will completely disagree! :laugh:

Yes- there are times where she does still pull out the higher voice. I thought it was funny how she'd sing so pretty and high but when she walked up to the microphone and said "hi Chris" it was in the much deeper voice. I also notice when she was singing higher there was not really any vibratto to it-I always kind of wonder if that is natural or affectation?!?
Anyways...sheesh...too bad the early-in-the-SYW-tour-TV-appearances couldn't have been a little more like this. This was the Stevie we all know and love and clamor for. I remember when Rolling Stone did a review of one of the Tango shows and they said something like "Stevie Nicks, the eternal time-warped love-goddess casts her spell again...". This performance made me think that again. F*ck!!! She looked so good!!. And even though she looked a little hippy (i.e. her hips looked a little on the biggish side) I think that dress was more of what she wants as far as "slenderizing black". The sheer, sort of tiered or layery effect worked well...or maybe it was the boots (YEEHAW!!!!) giving her legs an extra 6 inches!! :D

Stevie looked and sounded great!!!!
 

Loved Stevie and loved how her dress sort of matched Chris's jacket. ;)
By the way, the little white dog at the end of the show is so cute :) :) :) I guess it belongs to Chris Isaak.

I havent seen the special yet. However on the debate of Stevie's range. Almost all singers after 30 years in the business will lose some range, it's inevitable. I recently saw Whitney Houston on some show and although she sounded great, she most definately lost some of her range. I have a friend who sings in a band and on some nights she sounds awesome (her Silver Springs is great) and on some nights, well even she knows it just was not happening. She says that some days her voice just does not want to get up and go to work.

After seeing some 12 SYW shows the only one I can think of where Stevie was a tad off was the Nassau Coliseum show. Another instance is Stevie's storytellers. I was at the taping and that voice was all over that damn room. When she sang HAEWAFY, I got chills she reminded me of Streisand (whom I'm not a fan of), the effect was overwhelming. However when I viewed the show on TV, it sounded like a different taping.

That's what I thought...
 

but I also thought it was just my over sensitive ears...Her voice did sound a bit higher than what I have heard as of late (As compared to the SYW shows/concerts)

Brian j.

I saw Chris Isaak perform in San Francisco this past Thurs. night and I got to meet him afterward. The dog is actually his personal assistant's dog, but as she said, "Chris thinks it's his dog." It's so cute. I got a picture of it. He brought it out on stage for the last song, but it got up and walked backstage again. I guess it didn't feel like entertaining that night. :D

Susie

Hi, Deluded! :wavey:

Of course she hasn't lost all of her range, otherwise she'd never be singing amazing versions of Beautiful Child. But she's lost a LOT of her range from misusing her voice for years. Anyone who tries to say that her current voice is just from aging is nuts, she killed that voice of hers and it's a bloody miracle that she can even speak, let alone sing a song. If she had sung properly, she'd probably only have lost a fraction of what she has. Look at Ann Wilson or Patti Labelle or Cyndi Lauper or Debbie Harry or Linda Ronstadt or Martha Davis. Between them, they haven't lost much range at all because while they knew when not to f*ck with their voices and they knew how to sing properly; they learned one way or another. Stevie didn't learn until the nineties and that was when most of the damage had been done. :laugh: I wince when I hear those reels where she says she takes care of her voice with cough drops and when she breathes in moist air to "open up" her voice. No wonder she had a sore throat constantly.

I've taken voice lessons for years and the worst thing to do is to sing with your throat. When you start doing that, your voice starts shredding, cracking, and running out of steam by the third or fourth song. You lose your range for that night and if you keep up, you lose more and more eventually. :nod: The reason Julie Andrews had so many vocal problems is because she didn't song properly for quite a long time.

Ugh...vomit vomit vomit...(this is me, agreeing with Dissention...it hurts my everything :nod: ). He's right on. YEARS and YEARS she screamed out Rhiannon and a myriad of other songs. She never had formal training until recent years and had she not received that formal training, I fear her voice would be shot to sh*t by now. However, I love Stevie's voice...always have.. always will. But, had she properly breathed and sang from her diaphragm and not her throat, we might be hearing a different Stevie now. I kind of like her as she is though :shrug:

:xoxo: :xoxo: :xoxo:

I did my good deed for the day. :laugh:

Yeah, but so what? that didn't happen, and we have millions of great performances because of it. And now we have this Stevie. I mean, it's not as though by talking about it we can go back in time and make Stevie sing properly :shrug: (thank goodness) You know, Stevie shoulda done this and that, blah. Well, she didn't, we have still an astonishing number of incredible performances, and get over it! :wavey: :p

Aren't you the one who thinks Stevie should wish for her range and mobility back? :p

This place is here for discussion and if people want to bring up her voice and how it has or hasn't lost range, they're welcome to. :wavey:

I don't disagree at all with anything you said. She's most definitely lost a lot of her range (of course, as I've said before, I LOVE her current voice -- it has such substance and character). I just wanted to point out that, contrary to popular belief, she hasn't lost all of it. She still has an upper range beyond what we get to hear on a regular basis, but for one reason or another, she doesn't sing with it. But when she does... it's stunning.

You didn't bring this up, but I'm definitely in the same camp with those fans (which I know you are one of) who would much rather see her focus solely on recording now, and semi-retire from the road (a one-off show here and there would be cool, or maybe a short tour after every other album).

But that's the selfish side of my fandom. If Stevie really does still enjoy touring, then she should do what makes her happy.

I wouldn't call it stunning because it's too weak for that moniker, but I would definitely call it refreshing. :nod:

I agree. I think that if she could do things differently like playing new songs and making the show simpler instead of theatrical, she'd have a lot more energy to put into the shows and the songs themselves, so I'd enjoy them. But since this will not happen in my lifetime, I'd like to see her record instead of tour. Honestly, she's in her golden years, she should concentrate on recording lots of good music instead of time passing her by as she sings Rhiannon for the twelve millionth time. :nod:

It's the frailty of it that I find stunning and beautiful... and, in that frailty, it's very powerful. At least in my opinion.

Other singers may be able to hit the notes better or with more strength, but I find far more beauty in Stevie's weird little imperfect voice, which sounds like it might give out on her at any time. :shrug:

I just think that it sounds like she's really straining to hit those notes sometimes. I like her voice when it's powerful but still warm and emotive, like around Street Angel and The Dance.

Is it common for singers in US to tour in theatres? I'm asking it because I love those kind of shows, the emotions are much stronger, IMO. Stevie could risk more in a small venue, both in the setlist and the performance.

Romy

Well, not COMMON. A lot of bigger artists will tour theatres after they do a large tour, just for fun, or the more intimate feel like you said. Stevie did a small theatre tour in late 1999. She did a couple of shows extending it past the New Year in 2000, I'm sure you've heard about it..the Millenium Tour as she called it....pretty cool.
Just depends on the artist really...People like Norah Jones, Jewel, etc do theatres a lot...Heart does a lot of theatres

Chris

It depends on the performer. I'm sure Stevie would see performing in a theater a step down for a tour of hers, whereas people like Bob Dylan and Neil Young thrive in small venues and play them every time they're on the road. I'd love to see her tour small theaters and clubs, though, she'd be a natural and the performances would be spectacular, I would imagine.

Maybe I'm in a wierd minority...I love her albums...but I enjoy the tours better...

Chris

right, and then i can say, to the people who b*** incessantly about how much she sucks, and why, to get over it, we can't go back in time. And yes, i'm talking about you. :)

Ooooh Ammmber deeaaar....I believe I ended my post by saying, "...I kind of like her as she is though." If I thought she was horrible, I assure you, I wouldn't have spent a ton of money following Fleetwood Mac around the east coast for 13 shows over the past year and a half to see them. Honestly, if we could turn back the hands of time, I wouldn't want her to sound any other way. It's THAT voice that has appealed to the masses for all of these years. JS is right...there is a frality about it that no matter what the reason is for having it is incredibly unique and yes, to me stunning AND refreshing in comparison to PEOPLE WHO BELT IT OUT THAT DON'T HAVE THE ABILITY TO DO SO (a la Jessica Simpson and many many others).

My response to Dissention was certainly not to knock Stevie in any way shape or form. However, it was to agree with him that yes, from a vocal point of view (this is also coming from someone who's been singing since she's been a tyke) Stevie is unable to have the same register she once had NOT ONLY due to aging but due to the fact that she never sang properly up until the past few years. Let's also not forget that this is the woman who smoked a ton of cigarettes on a daily basis and in general, didn't take very good care of herself.

All I can ever ask from a performer when I go to see them in concert is that they go out there and give 100% and I believe wholeheartedly that she does both emotionally and vocally. She's not Ann Wilson, she's not Cyndi Lauper or Debbie Harry. She's Stevie Nicks and I think she's pretty damn fabulous :nod: