Crystal Visions… The Very Best Of Stevie Nicks (CD/DVD Set)
Picture:
C Sound: B Extras: B Music/Videos: B
Before
the Mirage album concluded the first
block of the Lindsey Buckingham/Stevie Nicks era of Fleetwood Mac, almost all
the members did solo projects.
Buckingham did his bold solo debut Law & Order, Mick Fleetwood
launched his Zoo, Christine McVie eventually made her first “official” solo
album and Nicks made Bella Donna. It was
easily the largest success and she even surpassed Bob Welch as the most
successful solo artist from the band’s long decades of existence. Though she has had a hits set before, Crystal Visions… The Very Best Of Stevie
Nicks (2007) updates the previous set and adds a DVD.
Tracklisting
for each disc is as follows:
CD:
- Edge Of Seventeen
- l Can't Wait
- Sorcerer
- If Anyone Falls In Love
- Stop Draggin' My Heart Around (with Tom Petty)
- Silver Springs (with Fleetwood Mac)
- Dreams (with Deep Dish)
- Rhiannon (Live)
- Rooms On Fire
- Talk To Me
- Landslide
(Live with The Melbourne Symphony)
- Stand Back
- Planets Of The
Universe
- Rock And Roll
(Live)
- Leather And
Lace (with Don Henley)
- Edge Of
Seventeen (Live with The Melbourne Symphony)
DVD-Video:
1)
Stop Draggin' My Heart Around
(with Tom Petty)
2)
Edge Of Seventeen (Live)
3)
Stand Back (Scarlett Version)
4)
Stand Back
5)
If Anyone Falls In Love
6)
Talk To Me
7)
I Can't Wait
8)
Rooms On Fire
9)
Whole Lotta Trouble
10) Sometimes It's A Bitch
11) Blue Denim
12) Every Day
13) Sorcerer (with Sheryl Crow)
The CD is
smart in offering alternate versions of familiar hits, including a few Mac
tracks and the long-unavailable Silver
Springs in its original cut. It is
easy to loose track of her hits and this is a nice summation. The live tracks are interesting and it makes
you wonder why she did not do more duets later since the early ones worked out
so well. The DVD is a decent collection
of her often memorable and extravagant Music Videos, something she started
doing just before Mac did. This includes
the hilarious first version of Stand Back,
set during The Civil War, costing much money and then shelved because it was so
wrecked. There are live clips, but most
are big productions, especially where singles where launching albums.
The
context itself is very strong and Nicks deserves more credit than she gets for
holding up despite personal crisis. The
picture quality of the videos are usually poor and most are 1.33 X 1. Though most are filmed, effects were added
with analog video and has aged them more than they would be otherwise. For future HD presentation, we hope these get
upgraded. The PCM 16-bit 2.0 Stereo on
both discs are pretty good (44.1 kHz for CD, 48kHz for DVD) and do not sound
second generation.
There are
also a few extras. One is a long
half-hour Making Of Bella Donna piece that features old analog NTSC video of the
album being recorded that somehow survived.
Even better though is optional audio commentary by Nicks on all the
Videos that is often a hoot. Like Pat
Benatar and Suzanne Vega did on their Videos on DVD, Nicks tells it like it is
about her work and makes some great observations. There are even a few howlers in there. You should watch the Videos first, then
listen to her comments. That alone is
worth the price of this whole set, but Reprise has done a great job in putting
this set together and we can only hope more artists get to do the same with
their career retrospectives.
- Nicholas Sheffo
