Quote:
Originally Posted by Hawkeye
How would you rate the 4/15/86 How Still My Love amongst How Still My Love's that tour.
|
I love it & I think it's well above average for that tour. It certainly beats the Weedsport radio show version as well as the versions I have from Worcester, Alpine Valley, Poplar Creek, Holmdel, Clarkston, Costa Mesa, Mountain View, etc. By the way, I also think the "Rhiannon" piano-&-vocal from 4.12.86 (a few days before) is one of the absolute best from that whole tour for the sustained upper-register melodic arc that occurs at the 2:22-2:25 mark.
Quote:
I personally think those RAL HSML's are far superior to the WH HSML's.
|
Well, I certainly bow to no one as an idolater of the Rock a Little tour. But there was a definite difference in the power & style of the voice from one tour to the next, the differences of which created strengths on each tour. For example, I think "Outside the Rain" on the RAL tour was superior in general to it on the WH tour, but I think HSML on the WH tour was superior in general to it on the RAL tour. There were all sorts of different tradeoffs in power & effect between the two tours that I'd love to analyze with you or others all day. Stevie's gin-soaked vocals on the RAL tour were terrifically exciting to me in general, but she definitely did not have the ability that year to sustain a howl in the upper registers this way:
http://www.yousendit.com/transfer.ph...8CBB7E43DACA01
And in 1986, often, when she did try to do this, all she could do was just emit a gutteral sort of Mercedes McCambridgelike growl, like an "Exorcist" vocal outtake, or sometimes just go silent entirely. It was definitely a physical or technical difference from one tour to the next: the voice had lost some of its upper range as well as a certain amount of solid projection. A change in technique like that also creates a change in style, too, & sure enough, HSML on the earlier tour had a stateliness that the version on the later tour didn't have: the '86 performances sort of drove forward like a steamroller more. Of course, when you're sitting in an arena listening to a performance, a lot depends on the band, & in 1986 the band wasn't as clean as it was in 1983; Marotta was a "dirtier" drummer than Kunkel, & I think in many ways his style didn't suitably complement Stevie's vocal effect that year. At the San Diego Sports Arena, for example, I remember her vocal mix & the drum mix basically fighting it out for preeminence in this arena, where sound waves ricocheted off walls with bad echo. So her singing on that date essentially had no choice but to turn into a sort of sludgy, tube guitar amp wall of noize. You're familiar with that constant tintinabulatory ringing in your ears after a rock concert? (You can hear it best when you go home & try to sleep.) Well, that's what Stevie's singing sounded like DURING the performance.
Quote:
Of course the only HSML's i've heard from that tour are US Festival and the show Tom Petty was at none of the others.
|
There must be thirty or forty of them out there on audio or video. Again, I prefer the ones on the last leg of the tour (roughly, october & november).
