Fleetwood Mac – Mirage, C/D?

We never polled this iirc? Could it be because Gypsy would be the ahem, "landslide" winner?

I would like a proper release of this haunting SNicks demo of Gypsy with just her on organ/vox.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bKIC_Kza4Ek

^^^ Never heard this before. Gobsmacked...

whoa, that demo is awesome!

I'm assuming that's Nicks herself on organ, right?

this is pretty awesome indeed. i assume that's a wurli, no?

Dang, that's something else.

Found this, too, which reveals the bluesier roots of a song I never really though of as such:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MxdJLw9C830

And wow, this link reveals a trove of demos and outtakes out there, somewhere:

http://www.inspiredangel.com/fmdemos.php

http://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:http://www.guitars101.com/forums/f90/fleetwood-mac-25-years-the-mirage-sessions-101500.html

Hey, look: more Mirage demos and outtakes!

hxxp://www.megaupload.com/?d=Z55QPYSU

Hmm, Tango outtakes here, but I'm too lazy to download them track by track. At least not right now:

hxxp://www.mediafire.com/?sharekey=e04e41db6a83767229740b9422d524b62be59dce5cb22dd03ff3359729d970a0f7b0c90c72f4ee13dea6cde8539f3470

"Joan of Arc" is a spacey, drum machine-driven Nicks song in which the line "There's a few murders in our century" gets a lot of play.

has anyone read Timothy White's Rock She Wrote -- a collection of '80s interviews with Keith Richards, Bryan Ferry, Elvis Costello, Bono, etc? He includes a fantastic session with Fleetwood Mac from the summer of '87, just after Buckingham announced his defection. The band is pissed, which explains their touching enthusiasm for Billy Burnette and Rick Vito.

Anyway, Nicks mentions a song left off TITN with the fabulous title "What Has Rock and Roll Ever Done For You" that I've been wanting to hear for years.

sorry: Rock Lives

So glad this is finally being reissued by Rhino - have nearly broken down a few times and bought it on CD because I was getting tired of waiting...just realized it's been seven years since the last batch. Probably still my sentimental favourite of theirs.

Also all the love ITT for "Eyes of the World" surprising and OTM.

Yeah, I've always hesitated about updating my cassette (!) copy.

"Eyes of the World" is amazing, is there even anything else remotely like it in the world ever?

Another Fleetwood Mac song?

Man, I have to pick this up, only know the singles, which I like. Seems like it must be a common cheap vinyl find but I don't remember seeing it offhand.

the version of "eyes of the world" on the live at boston cd, in which it transforms into a regular rock song, absolutely burns through everything in its path.

oh also fuck yeah at the say you will talk upthread. the buckingham songs on that record are my favorite material of his, such dense thickets of ideas and guitars curving in and out of the mix and all of those voices galloping through. and his fucking guitar playing on that record.

stevie's stuff on that record is cool too but beyond "thrown down" it doesn't really rise to the same level.

h8 u 'oh diane'

so much

it's funny this got revived today, b/c i happened to listen to "hold on" today for no particular reason, and newly struck by its greatness i wondered why i never really delved into this album. as pointed out by most everyone on this thread, it turns out that it's pretty amazing, with crazy layers of buckingham ideas pervasive throughout it (including some great little lead guitar bits by him)

i kinda burned out on tusk a few years back, so i'm glad to have this to work with

fwiw i think "oh diane" is pretty great!

mirage is maybe their densest album in terms of ideas and sound design and its weird that you'd think they'd want to scale back after tusk and *yeah i guess its not a double album* but otherwise this is crazy ornate. Like eyes of the world is packed w/ batshit notions.

Like eyes of the world is packed w/ batshit notions.

yeah the reason I think this is pretty one of a kind is that it's simultaneously really hooky but also just a patchwork of these really great utterly distinct little fragments. Also it's like, the singing comes in at 11, it's like he had five climaxes for other songs that he then just combined into one song.

I don't think there's anything on Tusk really like this - obv "The Ledge" is a bundle of fragments but also sounds like it, while stuff like "What Makes You Think You're The One" is like a great song with great ideas grafted onto it.

OTOH "Hold Me" aside the McVie songs feel a lot more straightforwardly performed and produced than on Tusk.

hold me aside is sortof a major proviso there tho

undeniably, yes. My point is more that Mirage feels like a weird combination of Buckingham both retreating from the edge of Tusk while also intensifying past it - I'd say "Book of Love" and "Empire State" are also more insane than anything on the previous album.

everyone is killing music w/ wooooords

idk i love how insane this album is but at the same time yeah, a lot of the time tho still manic its contraptions feel sortof cast-iron. the looseness of previous albums starts to disappear. i cannot remember the drumming on this album at all.

This is their weakest Buckingham-McVie-Nicks album, and it augurs what was fully realized on Tango in the Night: awesome production touches hiding okay to terrible songs. I endorse "Eyes of the World," "Hold Me," and "Gypsy" as the classics, while "Love in Store," "Can't Go Back," and "Book of Love" as second-tier goodies, but the rest are bland.

Not enough contemporary reviews of the album are extant, but I wonder if "Hold Me" (a massive hit in the US -- #4 for six weeks) was the sort of thing that made people reevaluate Buckingham as a producer of genius. As in, "Oh, wow, we really underestimated Tusk's weirdness, didn't we?"

plax is OTM.

FInding myself in rare agreement with Alfred... what could this mean?

I'm on record endorsing Termite Art like Mirage, so while I agree with Tim on the degree to which the band pushes against the economy (staidness if I'm feeling sinister) of the arrangements, the results just aren't as satisfying.

TITN actually succeeds as the against-all-odds triumph.

Not that it matters, but Buckingham is not fond of this one at all. He admits now that the album was the culmination of two years of intra-band/record company pressure to "release another Rumours."

i cannot remember the drumming on this album at all.

Hold Me has a couple neat fills (intro -> verse 1,

How many of Christine's songs does Lindsay do "more than just a bg vox", it's almost like doubling. Notice this a lot on my faves and even on my not-so-faves (ie, "Don't Stop")

yeah, the drumming on "Hold Me" is amazing -- that little fill before the outro guitar solo.

yeah i thought maybe hold me would be the exception but this album has no breathing room like the end of over and over and mick fleetwood never feels indispensible like on what makes you think your the one for eg.

A friend and I, listening to the "Seven Wonders" 12-inch a couple of months ago, wondered aloud if a Big Corporate Band ever released so un-1987 album as Tango in the Night. When other dinosaurs camouflaged missing parts with synclaviers or whatever, Buckingham used stacked or accelerated harmonies and all manner of synthesized chimes, celestes, toy pianos, and such. I can't think of two songs that sound so out-of-time as "Little Lies" and "Big Love."

Whereas, I dunno, even my favorite Mirage tracks sound like expert 1982 studio-rock.

How many of Christine's songs does Lindsay do "more than just a bg vox", it's almost like doubling. Notice this a lot on my faves and even on my not-so-faves (ie, "Don't Stop")

Obv "Think About Me" (my favourite example, esp. on the line "I don't hold you down / maybe that's why you're around...") and "You & I", nothing else immediately coming to mind...?

I endorse "Eyes of the World," "Hold Me," and "Gypsy" as the classics, while "Love in Store," "Can't Go Back," and "Book of Love" as second-tier goodies, but the rest are bland.

"Book of Love" is totally first-tier!!!

But I'm certainly not saying this album is an out and out classic, read my posts again.

Which song do you guys dislike most: "Straight Back" or "Welcome To the Room...Sara"?

i mean when i finally heard mirage and tango i was shocked at how good they turned out to be but in the end you have to admit that rumours and tusk are unfuckwithable and these will always be lesser dented albums

welcome to the room sarah is some full on garbage but you can tell just by reading the name come on

Would agree re the singularity of Tango's sound but OTOH I sort of see it as the culmination of post-Gabriel late-eighties exoticism in mainstream rock which a lot of people were dabbling in but less successfully (am I correct in remembering that you don't much like "Tonight Tonight Tonight" alfred?).

I'd rank them:

Rumours
Fleetwood Mac
Tusk
Tango in the Night
Mirage

Which song do you guys dislike most: "Straight Back" or "Welcome To the Room...Sara"?

"Straight Back" is a like a smoke machine hiding nothing, but "Welcome To The Room...Sara" actively does harm to Nicks' standing in my eyes.

its where buckingham drowning bad songs in crazy production really just resembles him jumping up and down on the other side of the room trying to create a diversion while stevie nicks sticks coke up her arse

but the exoticism is discrete and isolated: the title track and maybe "Caroline" (that's where I assume you hear the "Tonight Tonight Tonight" allusion) and the Rousseau cover art.

I love typing the ellipses for "Welcome To The Room...Sara."

I do kinda love the friend-in-need bits in "Isn't It Midnight" and "When I See You Again" -- Buckingham just says, "Alright, bitches, stand back: I'm taking over."

just about never agree on music.

We like some of the same things, just different parts. That's one of the things I like to learn on this site.