Shrine '69
 

While not my all-time favorite album of their's, I find something about the tone of the guitars on this album sublime.

http://www.fleetwoodmac.net/penguin/covers/shrine69.jpg

At first I perceived it as too bassy, too fat, and hard to listen too... Then I realized something. With all that bass drive going on it was pushing the guttural mood of the music. The bass was coaxing a certain emotional edge from the live performance recorded that night.

Just like I find I like playing my different guitars in different settings and getting different sounds from them based upon my mood, I found from listening to the CD that the bass was driving the tenor of the entire group that day and it is superb.

The version of the first number; "If You Be My Baby" is a powerhouse of gut-wrenching powerful response w/both the audience and the tune...



Followed by a resplendent version of "Something Inside Of Me" by Danny Kirwan that I think is one of the most memorable of all the versions out there exemplifying his 2nd-to-none left hand vibrato technique...



Simply Marvelous!

Yes, my favourite album as well.;)

Totally agree with your assessment of "If You Be My Baby" and "Something Inside of Me." The guitar work on SIOM is transcendent. And, I find this version of "Albatross" to be one of my favorites as well. Love this ablbum.

Rick

Gear wise; If memory serves me right they played Orange amps... :-?

In the UK & Europe, yeah. I think they were using the big Fender Dual Showman Reverbs during the US tour.

My memory and big ears tell me Orange were at play at Shrine.
As far as I know, they used (huge) Fender's winter/spring 1970,
I have some pics from Gothenburg and Stockholm confirming that...:cool:

Yes, it was Orange during springtime -69 and by the autumn northern europe tour they started to implement Fenders of different kinds, whereof I seem to remember that Peter used a Dual Showman head and Fender speaker cabinet of some kind. When they came back to Europe after the US winter/early spring tour they used a massive wall of Dual Showmans, Peter had two heads and two x two 18" speakers. Nice sound!:]

I read somewhere that they bought the new Fender equipment at Manny's in New York.

Speaking about Fenders and northern europe,
let me dig into my pic's and see what I can find...

My impression is that they went professional (gear wise) at this point of time,
and standardized (requirements) the gear... :cool:

What I can tell you for this particular album; which is a recording of a live performance, is the CD jacket states:

TECHNICAL NOTES (from human memory):
Recorded January 25th, 1969, from Tychobrae Sound's house sound system using a modified Fairchild mixing console with one line out to an Ampex 2-track recorder. Recorded mono, 2 track, 7-1/2 IPS on Scotch 201 tape.


2 track but MONO!???!!

The Shrine performance is great.
Something strange in "If You Be My Baby" - maybe some sort of edit as hear something missing during a solo.

And let's not forget the rude Jeremy Spencer performance that was not included on the official release, but that circulates on bootlegs. ;) "Great Balls Of Fire", wasn't it?

Blue Suede Shoes... :o

Ah, yes. Thank you! ;)