Live Album Reissue (April 9, 2021)

[David]

Originally Posted by lbfan

3. Think About Me ** Kemper Arena, Kansas City, MO (8/24/80) [3:15]
4.What Makes You Think You’re The One ** Kansas Coliseum, Wichita, KS
(8/23/80) [4:13]
10. Tusk ** Kemper Arena, Kansas City, MO (8/24/80) [6:25]
12. Sisters Of The Moon ** Omaha Civic Auditorium, Omaha, NB (8/21/80) [7:05]
13. Songbird ** Omaha Civic Auditorium, Omaha, NB (8/21/80) [3:55]

These tracks are very exciting. I couldn’t be happier. I am always drawn back quite nostalgically to the final month of the 1980 tour, and consider that month the band’s live pinnacle (not counting the blistering Green days, of course). The most heavily invested jamming I can ever remember the band doing — the most playful sort of musical circumnavigation and the brashest, snottiest attitude — was during that month on all of Lindsey Buckingham’s battering-ram songs: “What Makes You Think,” “World Turning,” “Go Your Own Way,” and above all “Not That Funny.”

We got a great little taste of the final month on the Tusk Deluxe, with an incendiary “Rhiannon,” a “Landslide,” and a memorable “Songbird” (with a trippy and difficult-to-play little musical bridge). So being able to add these cuts is hard to beat.

Perhaps I’d make one change: as much as I love the “Tusk” performances in August (very long and narcotizing in a good way), I would have included a “Tusk” from the Los Angeles Forum in December 1979 solely because the USC Trojan Marching Band was there with the band, and it was not just corny but damned exciting.

But with these individual tracks from Kansas City, Wichita, Omaha, and Tucson between the two collections, why oh why can’t we just get the entire shows from these cities?