Gold Dust Woman

[soul_drifter333]

Originally Posted by graywolf1980

Hello,

I am new to the forum...had a particular question. I still have the old 8 track tape of Rumours that I first heard when I was about 3. Being a Rumours person, I have the LP, the 8 Track, Cassette, and CD of this album, and "Gold Dust Woman" is different on every one of these!

To me, the 8 track version is better so far. The screams at the end are more noticeable AND the song does not fade. The problem with the 8 track: too much hiss and not enough treble; there is so much hiss, you cannot tell where the song actually ends, as you can also hear parts of another track in the background.

The LP is also great, as it is "sped up" just a little and the screams are just as the 8 track, but the song fades in and fades out.

The Cassette fades in and out as well, but it fades out very early, as the LP fades very close to the end.

The CD is just right except for two things: one, the screams are buried in the background, and two: it fades right at the end, but it does not quite finish.

Okay, are there any versions out there that might do the song justice? What about The Chain CD set? I don't have that, but it may have the song just perfect on there, if it's on there at all. To me, the end of the song is just as good as the rest of the song, and I'm dying to find a fantastic version out there somewhere. I've the slightest idea if there's a single version, so I haven't went that route yet. Maybe there is a newly remastered Rumours CD?

What about it folks?

Hi, I had the 8-track (and every other format) of Rumours back in the day, but I don't remember the ending being different. I read an article a while back where the band purposely mixed the songs differently for the different formats. They assumed that most people would be listening to cassettes (and 8-tracks) in the car so the whole album was mixed for what they predicated would sound better out of car speakers. There is also the time limitations of each format. 8-tracks were specially unique because each channel had to have the same amount of music for each channel. That is why some songs changed channels in the middle of the song (super annoying). It is possible that they extended GDW to fit the space of that channel for the 8-track so there wouldn't be extra empty space. Just a guess though.

For me, I am a big fan of Straight Back and when Mirage first came out I played the cassette to death. When I finally got around to listening to the album I noticed that SB was much different on the album versus the cassette. There are a lot of layers of vocals missing from the album version. When the remaster came out a few years ago and I saw several different versions of SB I got excited. Lo and behold none of the versions on the remaster are the same as the cassette either. I was really disappointed even though the other versions are good too. I did notice that one version has a slight drop out that bothers me every time I hear it. Not sure how that got by quality control. I burned the cassette version to a CD years ago, but I was hoping that I could get a more pristine copy of the cassette mix.

Years ago someone told me that they were buying the cassette version of another band's album because it had mixes that were not found anywhere else, so this must be a common practice for record companies. For one, it makes you want to buy every version/format of a band's albums just to collect all the different versions. If I could only tell you how many different copies and formats of Fleetwood Mac albums, especially Rumours, that I've bought over the years we would all be embarrassed.