REQ: The Other Side of the Mirror
 

This is a favor I've been meaning to ask for a while:

Before I packed up and moved to Europe, I bought myself and iPod and ripped all of my CDs to my computer so I wouldn't have to bring them with me. Somehow, TOSOTM just got lost in the shuffle among hundreds of other CDs; I never ripped it, and I've been living without it since September. Suddenly, though, I've got a hankering.

So, is there somebody who has the album and has a little time on their hands wouldn't mind doing me a favor? Like ripping the CD at 192 kbps and putting the files up on YouSendIt for me? I'll gladly reciprocate if I've got a bootleg or something else that you might want. Just PM me if you don't mind.

Thanks to someone in advance!

Jyqm, someone should help you with this. I personally refuse to because I don't believe in spreading more copies of this album than are already out there. It's a poorly produced pile of telecommunications.

Meanie. :p

I kinda wish Stevie would rerecord those songs--Long Way to Go, Ghosts, Fire Burning, etc.--because those are good songs. If she & . . . oh I don't know. . . somebody . . . would do the album all over again, I might really like it. But as it stands . . . Rupert Hine is a Gertrude Stein "There's no there there."

Yes, I know, most of it is pretty bad, but there are a few musical bright spots. Plus, I like to listen to "Juliet" and imagine what it could have sounded like if it had been produced and mixed and properly.

Brian has been kind enough to help me out, by the way.

The only track that I really have a serious problem with, production-wise, is "I Still Miss Someone."
It's one of her best vocals on the album, but the track is marred by circus-styled instrumentation.

Do they not sell it where you are?

Also - I like a good 4 songs on that album! Okay, really I only listen to Long Way to Go and Fire Burning.
But Long Way to Go is easily one of my very favorite Stevie songs.

David - can you be more specific on a poorly produced section? Like on LWTG, for instance, what's the problem?
It's obviously overproduced, but I think sometimes Stevie's late voice needs that.

I have no reason to look in the Stevie Nicks section when I'm at a record store, so I have no idea if any place in my vicinity has it in stock, but even if they did, I paid for it once, why should I buy it again? I simply forgot to transfer the album to my computer and have no way to get at it, and Brian is being nice enough to upload the songs for me.

That song confuses me mightily .....

But the rest of the album kicks ASS!! Her very best. :woohoo:

The music is :confused: but good song none the less.

OSOTM her best album? Interesting...

Maybe she figured Johnny Cash's reputation and repertoire were so in the toilet by the end of the 80s that she wanted to do something nice for him and make him look comparatively better by butchering one of his best known songs.

Maybe because there are a few verses missing in Stevie's version. The original (and other covers) are very different. :)

It's the whistling that gets me most of the time ... :confused: :laugh:

Even though this is my #1 album I kind of have to agree with you. For Example, Alice on Stage turned it into a far better song IMO. I loved what her band did with it...sounded so much better than the album version.

this album is magical, really, to me. I love the echo effect Stevie's voice seems to have. I really, really love Alice, Juliet, Long Way To Go and Ooh My Love,

I don't recognize "overproduction" as a technical problem in any area of pop music (it's an artistic choice the producer makes, it's his vision, his conception of the song), but bad engineering is pretty recognizable. Think of the way the volume drops out about halfway through "Escape from Berlin." Also, somebody mentioned the whistles on "I Still Miss Someone." But the problem with the whistles isn't that they're there, it's that they're recorded & mixed poorly. They are tintinabulatory tinny to the fastidious ear because they are too high end & engineered poorly. Remember, engineering is the craft of correcting the problems you had with microphones & recording (& even with bad vocal takes). But if your engineer is asleep at the wheel, or just not very gifted, or possibly suffering from a cold or a sinus headache that day--anything that would affect his ear--you get a track with bad sound & bad levels in both instrumentation & vocals.

Er...I can't think of those parts, that's why I asked you to name something on LWTG.

I've never been able to pinpoint exactly which part of the song you're referring to, when you mention the "volume dropout." Everything in the mix sounds intentional to my ears... the only spot that I can find that I think you might be referring to, is at the 3:52 mark, right as the song kicks into its climax. But even that sounds intentional to me, rather than a goof or a lapse.

Also, though you mentioned you'd like to see Stevie re-record some of these songs with someone other than Rupert Hine, it seems that you have more of a problem with whomever it was that engineered the album than with the actual production.

People tend to forget that OSOTM is Stevie's magical album - the production represents this, and I personally think it sounds fine :shrug:

There's nothing magical about synthesizers. They're about the most unmagical instrument I can think of.

Ditto Kenny G.

I think quite the contrary (sp?), I think it is very magical.

Whenever I listen to I Still Miss Someone I always think that there's a ... something of a gap, I guess, between her words and vocals, and the music, with the whistling and all. It sounds like she sang this song in all seriousness, and someone put the whistling in behind it as a joke. It's not a happy song.

Apart from that I love that song. And the rest of the album.

I've always thought of this album as "The Rupert Hine Show with special guest Stevie Nicks".

- Jim

I know it's easy to blame the musical arrangement and production on the failure of this song, but I really think an even bigger problem than the silly whistles is the fact... that Stevie... sings it... so... slow... and flat. She almost makes it a dirge. The fact that her version is more than twice as long as the original without even including the second verse is telling. Stevie's recording just drags and drags. It's listless.

Which isn't to say that this song can't be sung slowly and in more of a ballad-type arrangement than the original. It can. But there needs to be some oomph there, in both the music and the vocal. It's got to be sung with at least some level of emotion and power. Stevie takes the pitiful jilted lover routine to a new low with her vocal on this, though. She sounds like she's just downed a whole bottle of Klonopin.

That's cool. I just don't think Kenny G.ish "smooth jazz" is magickal. When Stevie is bellowing like a banshee on the title song "Wild Heart" in 1983, THAT is magickal to me.

The executive producer probably oversees the engineering. I have about an equal problem with both, to tell you the truth. Techne + ideation = both bum me out.

God help me, but I love synths... at least when they're balanced with traditional instruments. 'Mirror' is a little too synth-heavy, in my opinion. Whereas her two prior albums had enough guitars and real drums to give them legs, 'Mirror' only has drum machines and Kenny G.

I think Rupert Hine was the right producer for some of the songs, but I don't think he was at all right for many others.

I think Stevie's vocal is the only saving grace for "I Still Miss Someone" (though I'm sure that doesn't come as too big of a surprise). My opinion is that the backing music is just all wrong.

I introduced one of my cousins to Stevie's music around 1989/1990, and, oddly enough, one of her favorite songs on 'Mirror' was "I Still Miss Someone." Even to the point that she was disappointed it was included on 'Timespace.'

As far as listless, Klonopin vocals go... my vote for the absolute worst offender, is the 'Street Angel' outtake of "If You Were My Love."
Ugh. Talk about sapping a song of all of its passion!

Kenny G. was the LAST person who should have played on that album. I still cringe when I think about it.

I'd like to add Bruce Hornsby. Puke.

Zuh? Hornsby's piano is one of the few distinct, interesting instruments on that album.

Yes, but please remind him not to sing. Interesting? Distinct? Yeah equally as impressive as Kenny G. Nothing special going on here.

Fair enough, "Two Kinds Of Love" is utter dreck (though that's as least as much Stevie's fault as it is Hornsby's), but Hornsby's piano playing is far better than Kenny G's saxectomy. The man is a great talent on the keys.