Fleetwood Mac: Classic or Dud

Then Play On is one of the great late 60s hard rock/blues records

Future Games and especially Bare Trees are wonderful albums from the Welch era.

Every Lindsey solo album is excellent FWIW. The three from the 00's might be his best solo work ever.

cosign Then Play On, that's a weird and rocking blues album

I love every Lindsey record, especially Out of the Cradle on. Seen him live a few times and rocked.

Currently channeling: Stevie Nicks stoned in Amsterdam with a bunch of tulips and a copy of Dune. pic.twitter.com/czZTSjzYNu

— emily (@AngstyX) October 5, 2019

pictures of witches who seem to have figured out how to live

Some incentive to watch an excellent TV show that may have held no interest for you.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lNft9sDZ8m8

the whitest of all white lady scenes in any tv series

an excellent TV show

citation needed

Classic

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_TwO2Wfn46o

someone make a mick fleetwood shreds video pls

i interviewed mick a few years ago and he was just the loveliest dude

Was trying to learn a little about laser tag following La Lechera and early rejecter's reminisces on Classic or dud : Jane's Addiction

Anyway, learned that Fleetwood Mac were part of an investment group that bankrolled Photon, the first chain of laser tag arenas.

https://www.vice.com/en_us/article/rbde3r/intruder-alert-fleetwood-macs-secret-laser-tag-connection

Ken Caillat did the soundtrack!

https://soundcloud.com/noisey/sets/photon-soundtrack

Ken's new book on Tusk has lots of interesting stuff on the making of the album, the internecine workings of the group, and a whole shitload of unwanted "I saw a sexy woman and slept with her" anecdotes.

Huh, didn't know it existed. Reviews on Amazon are pretty critical of it, both the writing and the stories.

I didn't know that existed! Will read. His book on Rumours had all of those characteristics. I remember very specifically that the woman from Record Plant who he was infatuated with was named Nina. "Nina!"

He describes a lot of shapely young female bodies in a way that will make you feel ill, and complicit in the leering. But the insights into the making of the album are good.

Like, the subtext, or maybe the text, of the book is basically "Ken Caillat is a producer who fucks".

Yeah I started this the other day and it's good when it talks about the band. I have a whole new appreciation for "Oh Daddy"

the Rumors book that is.
I'm not sure if I care enough about Tusk to sit through another volume

I liked the rumours book despite the very otm cavils itt

Agree. Great book (« Rumours »)when he gets into the details of the recording process. If you’ve ever been in a control room with different personalities all working for a common goal then you’ll recognize a lot of the stuff he writes about. The old goat shit is distracting but didn’t ruin the book for me.

Big fan of the Rumours > Tango run now. Took some years. Thanks, Covid. Always dug them but am now revelling in those harmonies, their smarts when it came to knowing what worked in their hits ( except maybe with the exception of the magnificent "Tusk" ) and their way with production gloss. Whatta band.

Also, this thread made me go back and relisten so thanks ILM as well.

Tush is a real snore and Lindsey’s coked up punk is even worse

counterpoint: shut up nuh unh

Lol at nabisco upthread.

I Said Lawd Take Me Downtown
And Why Don't You Tell Me Who's On The Phone?

There’s a great song exploder episode with Lindsey talking about “go your own way”.

https://songexploder.net/fleetwood-mac

Tush is a real snore and Lindsey’s coked up punk is even worse

It’s my pleasure

odd to be dissing ZZ Top though

Dallas, Texas/Hollywood

Y’all

happy Sunday

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yhau5Q4NENc

I’m so over Stevie nicks

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UXWia0TWAMM

https://youtu.be/RTa6KEE9cZU

Angel please don’t go

Buckingham McVie album is really pretty darn good.

Peter Green is without question my favorite of the British blues guys, but "Then Play On" is just so much more than that. Such a strange psychedelic space blues excursion. Green, Kirwin and Spencer had such an interesting dynamic together.

Was out with some dudes this past weekend, and while they claimed they liked Fleetwood Mac, I think a) that mostly meant "Rumours" and b) they had no idea there was anything before Buckingham and Nicks joined. That can't be that unusual, tbh, at least in America.

Not unusual at all, in my experience. I understand the late 70s era is very attractive for the mythology/narrative, but it’s not like the earlier periods are lacking for it—dropping out to join a cult is surely more epic than swapping partners!

I always play “Hypnotized” for folks unfamiliar with pre-B/N Mac. It’s my platonic ideal of 70s FM radio studio rock.

I always knew there was a pre Buckingham/Nicks version of the band, but it wasn't until I was just out of college that I learned just how long that history had been and how expansive the pre-1975 S/T catalog was.

I was close friends with a guy who had off and on booked clubs in Seattle, and was thus close to big shots in the 00s scene there, and as a result in the past decade got a major job at Spotify… so when I say that he really liked Tusk, he REALLY REALLY liked Tusk, in the way that white music people in the indie/alt space in the 00s were known to, and was way into everything the famous version of the band had done, had gone to see 'em when Xtine came back, etc etc. Eight years ago, he was staying with me in Brooklyn and I said, "you want to listen to the original Mac?"

"Uh, why would I want to do that?"

"Aren't you curious?"

"Not really"

And so we didn't. He liked the Stones, but was not interested in Brit blues that he didn't already know. I played him Raw Power instead, which he had never heard and didn't like. What I realized then was that he and a lot of other friends were all about the classic rock that everyone had grown up with, and the 80s/90s shit that middle class/upper class whites self identified as music people had known from their early adulthood/teen years, and which naturally led to Modest Mouse/ Decemberists/ Long Winters/ Death Cab and other stuff that is pretty easy going down, all things considered. but when it came to stuff that wasn't in the air or was really abrasive, like say Pere Ubu or Beefheart, that kind of stuff wasn't gonna fly.

For whatever reason, back in the early and mid '00s, I got a tremendous amount of shit for liking Bonnie Raitt and Buckingham/Nicks-era Fleetwood Mac. Those two stood out as being unforgivable. It felt like some trendy tastemaker bullshit, and I even remember my friends shitting all over Rilo Kiley's last album because it sounded like Rumours to them. Then sometime around 2009 or later, it was like the pendulum had swung the other way for the very same age group, especially for that era of FM, to the point where I felt like I was surrounded by much bigger Buckingham/Nicks fans than I ever could be. Go figure.

Anyway, I prefer the Peter Green-era, just as I love the album Green did with John Mayall (and the one Mayall did with Clapton, etc.), but I never liked the idea of putting down one era simply because it was different from another. The "middle" years had plenty of gems, especially from Danny Kirwan and Christine McVie, and the 1975 LP, Rumours and Tusk are all great LP's, better than anything their SoCal pop contemporaries were making at the time.

my dad was a huge Peter Green era fan in high school.. “oh well” definitely got some fm play in California at least I think.

For whatever reason, back in the early and mid '00s, I got a tremendous amount of shit for liking Bonnie Raitt and Buckingham/Nicks-era Fleetwood Mac. Those two stood out as being unforgivable. It felt like some trendy tastemaker bullshit, and I even remember my friends shitting all over Rilo Kiley's last album because it sounded like Rumours to them. Then sometime around 2009 or later, it was like the pendulum had swung the other way for the very same age group, especially for that era of FM, to the point where I felt like I was surrounded by much bigger Buckingham/Nicks fans than I ever could be. Go figure.

Maybe those of us who wrote for Stylus and worked for Pitchfork subsequently helped changed this attitude, but by 2004-2005 I remember having drunken rock crit conversations about "I Can't Make You Love Me" and a few years later Tango as Balearic classic.

"Hypnotized" is great, but "Bermuda Triangle" is one of the lamest attempts ever to concoct a followup hit. Probably he had a song called "Sasquatch" ready to complete his trilogy of unsolved mysteries.

Danny Kirwan was the only writer in that 1970-74 era who wrote consistently good songs. Christine McVie was still finding her way.