Browns Eyes w/ Peter and Lindsey
 

Just listening to the sample made me want to buy the whole collection.
Wow, that was so beautiful.

I guess he really did stop by those sessions. :D

Peter on Brown Eyes
 

I'm listening to the "alternate" Tusk on Spotify and it's certainly my highlight! I only wish the lyrics that found their way onto the album proper could have been mixed with Peter's spine-tingling guitar. It's odd that that the only bit of Peter that we've assumed made it to the original album (the last few notes in the fade-out) has been omitted here, although something like them does appear earlier in the track.

The effect of the "alternate" version of the album is pretty disconcerting, it has to be said. After years of listening to a very disparate album and mentally trying to accept it as something approaching a cohesive whole, along comes this collection of demos, works in progress and remixes and it blows the whole thing apart again...

I'm seriously having the same problem. I'm hoping it all comes back together for me. In the meantime, I've got my interests peaked out.

Yes! Brown Eyes knocked my socks off! The lyrics!

Listening to all this goodness makes the original album seem so watered down, dull. Maybe it's just the newness of it all, but I hear so many beautiful vocals and guitar parts that just weren't used. What a shame.

I kind of agree. there's a lot of beauty in a lot of these takes...

I had the same reaction. And not just about Peter's magnificent fills. Christine's voice isn't tampered with here. She sings plainly and openly. Her voice in its natural state can sound like a seductive horn. That is the case here. The whole effect is stunning. I don't understand what the heck happened. I've always loved the final version of Brown Eyes, but now I'm thinking they made the wrong choice.

That guitar is what Brown Eyes needs. Why did they not keep that?

this is by far my favorite song on the release so far!!!!! (without hearing everything yet)

love love love Peter's guitar, and the overall feel of this version.

I seriously obsessed with how good this is. It's really really beautiful!

It really is amazing. I'm sure it was titled "Yesturdays Tears" at some point.

Knowing Christine, it probably was.. lol

You know, you and many, many FM fans are saying the same thing but I have to disagree. I absolutely LOVE this new old version of Brown Eyes. I know it is the best track on the deluxe version. I even cried the first time I heard it a few days ago because of its simplistic brilliance. Let us not forget the version they put on Tusk. That version of BE is 100% perfect in all its plush glory.I am very glad they gave us both versions to enjoy. The reason everyone is saying this new one should have made the cut is because it is beautiful and we have all missed Christine so greatly. But when the newness wears off I'm sure most will remember the original version as the definitive version.

This is quite possible. Lyrically and sonically, the album version is fantastic. However, what I love about this new old version is the way Christine's voice shines in its unaltered, non-double-tracked state. I don't think my enthusiasm for that, or Green's guitar fills, will wane with time.

Viv, you amaze me with such an articulated statement. The points you made were just sloshing around in my mind with no context. Let it BE two equally excellent renditions of the song! Puzzling are the choices they sometimes make, but that is part of their artistic process, not ours. Let's celebrate that alternates such as this exist and they are sharing them with us.

I'm really digging the live complication that reconstructs a set list from select performances from several locations. It makes me wish they did that with the Rumours deluxe. With that stingy issue we only got 12 songs.

I'm not crazy about the lyrics... but the arrangement is beautiful. And the instruments are sublime... Sonically, I love the raw vocal..

It could be ... that ... that was a scratch vocal.. and she was just throwing in pot luck lyrics.. just to get the arrangement down..

I'm enjoying the Tusk tour live discs so much. The sound quality is so warm and crisp, it's like I'm floating on a cloud when I listen to it on headphones. It's an immersive and satisfying experience. I like the way the guitar and keyboards are mixed; the reverb on Lindsey's guitar sounds really nice. I wouldn't mind if they had included Think About Me, but I'm glad they included That's Enough for Me, which I'd previously only heard in a poor-quality audience bootleg from Rotterdam. A couple of the selected tracks might rank as my favorite performances ever of those songs (Landslide, World Turning, Songbird, to name a few). Even You Make Loving Fun is taken to another level due to Lindsey's guitar work. I feel that the band was at their peak in terms of their live sound during the Tusk tour.

Interesting that they start out using a Mirage tour song order. During the Tusk tour, a basic set was more along the lines of:

Monday Morning
Say You Love Me
The Chain
Dreams
Not That Funny
Rhiannon
Don't Stop
Oh Well
Sara
What Makes You Think You're The One
Over & Over (later in the tour, "Think About Me" was swapped out here)
Save Me A Place (was dropped for "Never Going Back Again" later in the tour, as well)
Landslide
Tusk
Angel
You Make Loving Fun
I'm So Afraid
World Turning
Go Your Own Way
Sisters Of The Moon
Songbird


"Blue Letter" was usually played after "Sisters Of The Moon" during 1st encore, "Songbird" was 2nd encore.

In some ways, yes, but personally, I think they peaked in about August 1977. That was the last of Stevie's tour de force "Rhiannon"s, everybody was clicking on all cylinders. Everybody was still riding the crest of the Rumours wave. By the Tusk tour, I think they were kind of reeling from the discord regarding the record company reaction to the Tusk album and the cracks in stage camaraderie was starting to show publicly (culminating in the "New Zealand fiasco" & Lindsey's almost spilling the beans about the band breaking up that final night at the Hollywood Bowl).

For me, their live shows (the Fireflies, I mean) have taken an ever descending slide since those "hot August nights" of 1977. The newly added energy of Rick & Billy in both '87 & '90 kicked the band back in gear for a couple of tours. But, the energy & cohesiveness when "the five" have been together is sorely lost to the ravages of time (and that pun is unintentional). Even Christine's return, while INCREDIBLE to see & hear her onstage with Fleetwood Mac again, hasn't really brought them back. They've caved to "nostalgia" and really have lost that "fire" I hope they prove me wrong with the new material for the upcoming album...and that the creative process sparks a re-ignition of some of that old fire.

The running order on the CDs is true to the order the songs were performed onstage, the only difference being that they put What Makes You Think... after Landslide (normally, Tusk was played in this place). Shows from very early in the Tusk tour (including the St. Louis show) had a different order, but by December '79, the Mirage tour-style running order was already largely in place (Don't Stop as the 3rd song, followed by Dreams, Oh Well, Rhiannon, etc.) The extended jam version of Not That Funny and the solo acoustic Never Going Back Again were added in early 1980 (Japan & Australia Tusk shows) and were kept in the setlist for the Mirage tour. They didn't make a lot of setlist changes for the Mirage tour, besides adding in a few Mirage songs in place of Tusk songs, adding Brown Eyes & making Second Hand News the opener.

And also, Monday Morning wasn't played until much later in the tour. Say You Love Me was the typical opener instead. And Oh Daddy was replaced with Over & Over later in the tour.

Commenting on the live sound on the Tusk tour, it was epic and really in your face, which is a good thing. What I find most notable about the Tusk tour is how they would just jam on a lot of the songs, World Turning, Chain, Go Your Own Way, and it would never sound the same twice. There was so much improv, also with the way Stevie sang her songs. She never sang them the same way twice, and she improved lyrics and melodies on the drop of a dime. Also Lindsey varied his guitar licks/solos so much from the album version to a point where the song wouldn't be very recognizable. That's a good thing and shows what a great player he is to just come up with those things right on the spot. That's very much a contrast from the present where they sort of seem to be in auto-pilot mode. You can't tell one performance from another as it's so rehearsed now, and nothing is varied anymore concerning vocals and guitar parts.

I thought the same thing about them being place-holder lyrics. But they're a bit too cohesive to be pot luck. This first version of the song seems to be written for John as an ode to forgiveness and friendship, whereas the final version, which switches from from that theme to lust and uncertainty, appears to be for Dennis Wilson. Maybe as the relationship with Dennis progressed, Christine reconceived the song...

This is my problem with them, now. Everything is so scripted and it starts to sound stale...

yes to all of this!

i mean, yes if you never saw / heard ISA live, you will be properly impressed. but if you have, you will be bored by everything being at the exact same place and time, from the guitar licks down to Lindsey's "rocker jumps" done the exact same way at the exact same place on the stage etc etc. it's like a theater play, as Lindsey has been saying lately. no changes, no improvisation, no jazzing up the music.