In this case, I’m not talking about computers, but rather Fleetwood Mac. In 1973, the folk duo Buckingham Nicks released an album on Polydor. Apparently nothing happened, as with most albums. But as producer Keith Olsen told it in an interview I read a while back, he was trying to get a gig as producer for the next Fleetwood Mac album, a British group who had enjoyed only moderate success to that point. Olsen played the record for Mick Fleetwood to demonstrate his work. Not only did he and assistant engineer Richard Dashut get the gig, but Fleetwood Mac added Lindsey Buckingham and Stevie Nicks to the group, to spectacular effect.

Unfortunately the Buckingham Nicks album has never been re-released on CD, except as a bootleg. Apparently the two bought the master tapes from Polydor, but have never done anything with them. Since I recently acquired a turntable (thanks, Buzzz!), one of the first things I digitized is this record. I always liked it, but it’s even better than I remembered. The songs have been stuck in my head for days. Since there doesn’t seem to be any other way for anybody to hear them, I thought I would post two songs here.

I picked the first song on each side of the album (remember albums? They had two sides!) since they seemed like radio singles and a good introduction to the artists, but that’s pretty arbitrary. The original version of “Crystal,” which appeared on the next Fleetwood Mac album, is here; there is the Cat Stevens-ish “Without a Leg To Stand On,” the magnificent epic “Frozen Love”—oh hell, the entire album is catchy as can be. So here you go:

“Crying in the Night” running time 2:59, 4.9 MB download

“Don’t Let Me Down Again” running time 3:51, 6.7 MB download

Tech notes: I digitized the turntable output through an Adcom GFP-555 II into Pro Tools, where I applied noise reduction to cut down on the surface noise of the record. I just got that plug-in, so I may not have gotten it quite right; I also EQed a bit, cutting out some troublesome boominess around 120 to 150 Hz and adding a little “air” with shelving at 8 KHz or so. The record is over 30 years old, after all. I don’t usually do LP restoration and I don’t claim to know what I’m doing. But at 1 in the morning it sounded pretty good.