50 great things about Fleetwood Mac's "Tusk"

Road trippin' at the moment and "Walk A Thin Line" came on and I noticed that towards the final third of the song a second Lindsay drum track comes in towards the end and clumsily doubles the already clumsy first drum track.

Over and Over is like ASMR: the musical.

audacious and perfect choice for opener

the guitar that sounds like a scratch track with dozens of small mistakes in "Storms"

this demo, good lord:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=M3w5IGdtbAE

All the Lindsey demos in the delux Tusk are wonderful.

It took me forever to realize/recognize that the Lindsey tracks on "Tusk" are more or less all Lindsey, as far as I can tell.

Where can I get a giant "TUSK IS HERE" poster...

(No, not Donald Tusk.)

every
hour of
fear i’ve spent

Where can I get a giant "TUSK IS HERE" poster...

I actually have a small one of these. I'm looking at it right now ...

the stars must be my friends to shine for me

It’s obviously mentioned but,

the laces
undoing the laces

Is the 5.1 mix one of the 50 great things about this album? Because I downloaded it last night and it’s absolutely amazing.

You mean a stereo mixdown or the actual surround mix?

Actual mix. Was part of the box I believe.

Probably a dumb question, but how do you play a 5.1 mix that you've downloaded? Just laptop (or whatever) -> 5.1 receiver and it works? Can Bluetooth process a 5.1 mix?

Not a dumb question at all. And yes, I use the HDMI output out of my computer into my 5.1 receiver using something like VLC or JRiver to play it.

Pretty sure 5.1 doesn't work via Bluetooth yet, but I believe there are wireless HDMI options.

it's been said above but needs to be repeated, Brown Eyes RULES and for me it's the best christine song BY FAR. It's just incomparable. Those drums! Those sha la las! That Peter Green!

hi!

the twinkling guitar at the end of the “who-ooh-ooh-oooooh”s <3

masterpiece

here's a thing about Tusk that annoys me: why did it come with 4 LP inserts when it's only a double album? It's got two extra inner sleeves jammed in there. Explain this.

Lemme call Mick and Stevie, hold up

I believe the two "inner-inner" sleeves are meant to go into the bigger inner sleeves.

This checks out. They fit, and 2 of them are numbered 1/2, the others say 3/4.

That said, my used copy only has 3 inserts, so now I gotta go to discogs and see which one I'm missing...

(it's the one with the giant ear on it)

I just finished Get Tusked by Ken Caillat and Hernan Rojas, which is mentioned in a couple of other Mac threads but not this one yet. Apparently, one plan was for the record to be released as two albums a few months apart, with the second album slotting into the packaging of the first.

Other highlights of the book are photos of the McVies in SS uniform and blackface for Halloween, descriptions of every mic used on every track of every song, lots of information about the authors' sex lives, a list of Lindsey's favourite punk albums, Brian Wilson's visit to the studio, Stevie threatened with machine guns in Chile... Nearly 40 years later,Caillat is still not fond of most of Lindsey's tracks.

lots of information about the authors' sex lives

these sections were definite turds dropping into the cocktail glass of the book for me

I found my copy of Tusk in a thrift store, completely disassembled, with the records loose in a bin. I remember coming across the extra sleeves and initially getting excited that there was another loose copy of Tusk in the store. I figured it out pretty quickly though. Despite this, it played pretty well.

_ lots of information about the authors' sex lives_

these sections were definite turds dropping into the cocktail glass of the book for me

He ends up marrying the girl in the Tusk book and it all takes a little more centre stage, IMO. But I was listening to the 2nd CD of the 2004-ish reissue of Tusk on the way to camping holiday this weekend and things mentioned in the book popped up in my head, so I'd recommend it for a deeper understanding of the album and its environs.

I met Caillat a few years ago after a talk he gave about Rumours, but the main thing I wanted to do was ask him about the production of "Storms" (whose intimacy, space, and minimalism I find devastating) and he seemed genuinely excited to talk about it. He was basically saying, hey, nobody ever asks me about this track, and I put a *lot* into it.... so let me tell exactly how we set up her mic....

tell *you* exactly

I love stuff like that. Producers are often fascinating, and I love when I get a chance to interview them and get under the skin of projects they worked on. The artists themselves are so often "over" what they made, or feel the need to pretend they are.

It really underscores how infrequently producers - or musicians, for that matter - are asked about *anything* technical, or deeper-dives into what they do. Like, where would that information even be published? There was a recent Tape Op issue that featured an interview with Harry Connick Jr., and it was fascinating, just him talking about the equipment in his studio, his love of analog recording and tech, revealing that he's proficient in lots of surprising instruments (from drums to brass), just tons of stuff I've never read him talking about.

hence the fascination with the Rubin-McCartney interviews

Records are a pretty poor financial investment but I was thinking today that if I cleared out every unplayed used copy of Tusk between the mid-90s and like, 2005 and resold them to normies for $10-15 today I’d be able to pay off my loans

— Eric Harvey (@ericdharvey) August 10, 2021

Add in all the copies of Rumours and the S/T and we're talking house money.

Seriously had that thought a few months ago that if I would have started squirreling away every classic rock warhorse I saw in the bins for consistently less than a buck, I’d definitely have been able to pay off a big chunk of my student loans at the least. But, who knew?

There are no cheap copies of Rumours out there, which is bizarre when you think just how many copies were originally produced and purchased.

i used to have an unplayed copy of tusk i picked up around 2008-ish…. totally disappeared from my apartment ;_;

obv i played it a lot myself

Shit, the cut out bins were LOADED with Tusks in the early nineties.

I don't remember mycopy of Tusk costing much, and it's got like four inlays in there or something

I found my copy of Tusk entirely disassembled in a thrift store bin in 2007. As in both records and each sleeve were in a different location. The vinyl was still about VG+, miraculously.

"Don't say that you love me!" said every vinyl copy of Tusk at Reckless Records in 1993.

Lol Alfred. Now the cover photo makes perfect sense.

One thing that really blows my mind is how expensive the album was to start with. It listed for $16.98 for the vinyl set upon release, which adjusted for inflation today is $63.55. Of course, very few people who actually bought it then probably paid list, but still. I believe even then that was a pretty high price point for a double, although understandable given this was the beginning of 'superstar pricing' not to mention the cost of packaging and the recording itself.

I found a pretty seriously water-damaged copy at my local record store for £7 or so a few years back that plays absolutely fine (the inner sleeves however are all gummed together), and that will do me. My first copy was the CD with the edited Sara, which seems criminal now.

Wasn't there some hoohah about "Tusk" getting premiered in its entirety on the radio, allowing people to record it, and the band/management/label blaming that for soft sales?

edited "sara" and the remixed "i know i'm not wrong," the latter of which was retained for the 2004 double-disc reissue and for literal years made me think my vinyl copy was flawed but just for that particular song

xp