STEVIE NICKS : LIVE 1986

STEVIE NICKS : LIVE 1986 - WEEDSPORT, NY

Gold Dust Woman
Outside The Rain
Dreams
I Need To Know
Sara
Leather And Lace
Stand Back
Beauty And The Beast
Gold & Braid
Stop Draggin' My Heart Around
Edge Of Seventeen
Rhiannon

Label : BRR Records

Venue : Cayuga County Fairgrounds, Weedsport, New York, USA

Recording Date : August 15, 1986

Length : 68:11

Quality : FM recording (A+)

Review : Live 1986 - Weedsport, NY documents Stevie Nicks at the Cayuga County Fairgrounds on August 15, 1986, during the Rock A Little tour, a stretch of shows that found her fronting a big, polished road band and leaning heavily on her solo catalog while still paying tribute to her Fleetwood Mac roots. The set opens with a fiery "Gold Dust Woman" before sliding into a "Outside The Rain" that segues straight into "Dreams," giving the recording an early highlight in that pairing of Mac and solo material. Fan favorites like "Sara," "Leather And Lace" and "Stand Back" showcase the more polished, radio-ready side of her mid-80s sound, while "Beauty And The Beast" and the rarer instrumental showcase "Gold & Braid" offer a change of pace. The show closes strong with "Stop Draggin' My Heart Around," a euphoric "Edge Of Seventeen" and a "Rhiannon" that sends the crowd home happy. Captured off FM broadcast, the recording has the slightly rough, immediate character typical of these radio simulcasts, but the balance and clarity are strong throughout, making this a satisfying document of Nicks and her band in full flight during one of her most commercially successful periods.

Note : Announcer of the Westwood One show Steve Downes never mentions a venue on SS86-22. The same tracks were broadcast as Superstar Concert Series SS87-11 the weekend of June 19-21, 1987. A shorter 2-LP set a Westwood One Pop Concert PC 87-28 was broadcast the weekend of July 6, 1987. The EBAY listing said, "....Westwood One vinyl 2-LP radio show hosted by Phil Hendry, features a superb live concert recording from the Cuyahoga Fairgrounds, Weedsport in New York on September 6th 1986, featuring 6 songs including Dreams, Leather & Lace, Rhiannon and more. First broadcast the week of July 6th 1987...." It's possible the announcers on these rebroadcasts identify the venue as "the Cuyahoga Fairgrounds." I don't own copies so I can't check. But it's also possible the vendor looked it up on the Internet. The Internet is a cesspool of contradictory "facts," so as our pal Doctor Strange put it, we've got to "Scooby-Doo this crap" to figure out what we should believe. First of all...the Stevie Nicks Info website lists the shows for the 1986 Rock a Little Tour at https://stevienicks.info/stevie-nicks-tours/1986-rock-a-little-tour/ That says the Sept. 16, 1986 concert at the Cayuga County Fairgrounds (rescheduled show) was recorded for the Westwood One Superstars Concerts Series. Right away we have a problem. The date of the syndicated broadcast on the Westwood One cue sheet is September 6, 1986...ten days before September 16th. The show can't take place AFTER the broadcast of the show, why, that would wreck havoc with the Time-Space Continuum! Okay...so maybe there's a misprint on the cue sheet? Well, I went into the Billboard Magazine archives and found a full page print ad from the August 30, 1986 issue confirming the syndicated date as September 6. The print ad and the cue sheet agree on the broadcast date. The deadline for artwork for an August 30 publication date had to be at least five days to a week in advance. That's an educated guess from working on newspapers; if anyone knows the actual deadline, leave a comment. Over on Ebay, I got lucky. I found a ticket from the "CCFairgrounds Weedsport, NY" from Aug 15, 1986. That would give them enough time to record, mix, press, and distribute the records. At the same time....WOW! From a concert on August 15 to a record at a radio station on September 6 is just three weeks! When I look at the other shows on Stevie Nicks Info, I see shows in Saratoga Springs August 12, Toronto August 14, and Middletown August 17. These cities are within a four hour drive of Weedsport. A make-up show on Aug 15 would fit right into the calendar while they were close by. By the end of August, the band was playing in Long Beach, California. Would they have driven from California to New York to do a single show? My conclusion is if this is from Weedsport, the date is August 15, 1986, as on the ticket, even though the Stevie Nicks Info website doesn't list the show as even existing. By the way....Wikipedia also says there was a Sept 16 show in Weedsport. It's likely that one source is just cut n' pasting the information from the other without doing any independent fact checking. Weedsport is a village in Cayuga County, New York. It's small; Wiki says less than 2,000 people live there. But it's got the Weedsport Speedway, which was formerly known as the Cayuga County Fair Speedway, a 3/8 mile oval dirt racetrack located on the Cayuga County Fairgrounds. And Wiki also says "in the early 1980s the venue started hosting major concerts by some of the biggest bands in rock music... For concerts the track has attracted crowds as large as 12,000." So that's a likely venue. But the Internet's not done repeating errors. There's more. Remember that Ebay listing up the thread that says it's from Cuyahoga? It turns out there's a handful of bootlegs that say this is from Cuyahoga, too. So...where did the error come from? There's a Guitars 101 post from Jan 14, 2013 that says the show is from the "Cuyahoga Fairgrounds." The very first comment the next day points out, "It's Cayuga County Fairgrounds to whomever made the artwork." The link is still active, so I downloaded it, and sure enough, the artwork STILL says "Cuyahoga Fairgrounds" in 2022. And guess what? The show is in MONO, not stereo. In 2014, the Iconograph label issued "Beauty And The Beast; Live 1986 Radio Broadcast." The back cover says the show is "Live FM radio broadcast from Cuyahoga Fairgrounds, Weedsport, New York, USA 15th August 1986." In 2015, Dol Records pressed up a vinyl bootleg "1986 Live At WWO In Weedsport, NY." Only eight songs were included. The back cover of the record says: "Cuyahoga Fairgrounds Weedsport, New York August 15th, 1986 FM Radio Broadcast Westwood Radio One featuring Peter Frampton on Guitar and back vocals on "Stop Draggin' My Heart Around"" There is also a CD version with the same abbreviated set list with the same wording on the cover released by BRR (Broadcasting Radio Records). This was also issued in 2014. As the CD repeats the short set list rather than the entire Westwood One show, it's likely copied from the DOL Records vinyl. The Transmission Impossible bootleg (released in 2017 by Eat To The Beat) has the full Westwood One show, and the back cover says "From A Live FM Broadcast Recorded At Cuyahoga Fairgrounds, Weedsport, NY 15th August, 1986" In 2019 a 3-CD set called "The Broadcast Archives" was issued by The Broadcast Archive label as BSCD6104. There's no cover up at Discogs but the Amazon description currently (2022) says, "Disc Two includes the extraordinary show Stevie performed at The Cuyahoga Fairgrounds in Weedsport, New York on 15th August 1986." Well, it SAYS that it includes that "extraordinary show," but an Amazon reviewer says "....disc 2 is identical to disc 1. So the 1986 Cuyahoga set is not in this box." There is such a place as the Cuyahoga Fairgrounds, but it's 326 miles west of Weedsport, New York, outside of Cleveland....in OHIO. And the Blossom Music Center (a venue featured in several Westwood One shows) is in Cuyahoga Falls (although not on the Cuyahoga County Fairgrounds, which are 30 miles to the northwest). And Stevie Nicks DID play at the Blossom Music Center in 1986...but on June 13th. The name Cuyahoga is from the Mohawk language, while Cayuga is from the Cayuga Nation. Both peoples are member of the Five Nations of the Iroquois with related languages, and while similar sounding, Cayuga isn't Cuyahoga. There are times when I'm working on a project like this and wonder if it's worthwhile, as the show is already pressed up on silver-cd at a reasonable price. I just sort of ASSUME it is high quality audio because it is on CD. At the very least, this is a STEREO version that's gone through my usual declicking process (which mainly involves LISTENING CAREFULLY for surface noise and then zooming in on the offending millisecond...). So...what have we learned? Don't believe everything you read on the Internet. Or on a CD case!