HAIM

Fleetwood Mac's biggest wave of resurgence in the US in the 90s was the Clinton campaign -- they were the soundtrack of cooler-than-usual-but-not-really-that-cool baby boomers.

I thought The Dance did it...? A month before the performance my local New Times publication wrote a consideration of their career, even reminding people that Matthew Sweet recognized the brilliance of Tusk by hiring Richard Dashut to produce Altered Beast.

Mick Fleetwood plays on that record, too. I don't think Dashut's presence had anything to do with Sweet's specific love of "Tusk," though.

It's a little too tidy to say "The Dance" renewed interest in Fleetwood Mac, because "The Dance" was their reunion/tour, so duh, of course there was renewed interest, since the formerly broken up band was suddenly touring again. I will say this: there was little to no hipster interest in "Say You Will," and that album is weird and awesome. I similarly sense little to no hipster interest in Lindsey solo, and in many ways that seems of even more interest to hipsters, since it's so strange and relatively not mainstream. So maybe it's the vague idea of Fleetwood Mac that is cool - like the girls at outdoor festivals who wear face paint and vaguely Native American headgear - because I'm willing to bet plenty that there is barely a tiny fraction of, say, Vampire Weekend's fanbase that has ever played a single Mac song of their own volition. Musicians and bands into Mac, that's another matter, but that's already a much smaller pool.

yeah the NT reporter's angle was "See? Even Matthew Sweet likes the Mac!"

well he would

as someone who grew up not listening to his parents music, in fact whose parents didnt listen to any western music at all, let me break it down for you: HAIM rules, fleetwood mac have some okay songs and some terrible songs, tango in the night is a middling album. HTH

Fleetwood Mac has put out so many albums in so many modes that I'd be amazed if someone couldn't fill at least an album's worth of awesome.

or five

Seriously, though, per the band's cachet, as such, I think what The Dance" did and beyond is to at least make the band acceptable as more than just yuppie product, differentiating it from other '70s "corporate" rock a la the Eagles or ELO or whomever. It's not that Fleetwood Mac is hip or cool so much as not uncool, which is something. Also, the band's back catalog works as a sort of insurance - if you hate the '75 era and beyond, there's all that other stuff that came before, which not only shows the band paid its dues but also provides hours of hardly overplayed stuff to delve into. And then even further there's all of the '80s Nicks stuff, which is a different sort of touchstone, plus the Lindsey solo stuff, which is more obscure. Lots of open avenues for exploration. This was never a band whose "Greatest Hits" was going to be its biggest seller, or the standard album is everyone's collection.

Also the variety: there are ballads and rockers, some with female singers, some with male, some duets, all equally good but most very different. Plus, the band can play.

yeah but HAIM. they've eclipsed all those things in one album, apparently.

So maybe it's the vague idea of Fleetwood Mac that is cool - like the girls at outdoor festivals who wear face paint and vaguely Native American headgear - because I'm willing to bet plenty that there is barely a tiny fraction of, say, Vampire Weekend's fanbase that has ever played a single Mac song of their own volition.

Well there is this:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HcYT8TzUarI

Everett True says:
October 6, 2013 at 8:58 am
Dismissing the idea of a ‘hivemind’ whilst invoking I Love Music seems a little bit contradictory to me.

To deny that some form of “collective conciousness” often occurs wherever like-minded folk congregate (on places such as message boards, say) seems somewhat disingenuous to me, also. Or perhaps it’s more of a “collective subconsciousness”?

The fact that Dorian felt safe enough to call Scott’s review “sexist” – when it quite clearly is anything but – after seeing it linked from the self-congratulatory, smugger-than-thou ILM message boards is telling. (And also helps explain to me why such an intelligent writer as Dorian saw fit to use such an inappropriate insult in the first place.) I suspect that if he’d chanced across it on his own, his views would have been different. Maybe they wouldn’t have been, though. As he points out above, Scott’s writing is (sometimes) filled with attention-seeking vitriol, (sometimes) directed at other journalists – and it is hard NOT to rise to bait like that.

Who knows? Context, context, context.

congratulations, you guys!

because I'm willing to bet plenty that there is barely a tiny fraction of, say, Vampire Weekend's fanbase that has ever played a single Mac song of their own volition.

hahaha WHAT

i mean there a million really specific genealogies you can trace out--i think the balearic angle is an impt one--but the big picture is just that mac is cool now because they werent cool before and thats how cool works

xpost I know VW covered the Mac, and I know people were into it, and I bet a good number of VW fans claim to love Fleetwood Mac, and I bet a tiny, tiny fraction of them actually play FM, any more than they play, say, Steely Dan or Chic or any African music, for that matter. Which is fine, obviously, but it's a more casual kind of part-of-the-culture fandom to say you like something even if you don't actively listen to it. Do I like Chuck Berry? No, I LOVE Chuck Berry. But it's not often I play any of the many Chuck Berry comps I own.

This is where I'll defer to younger people on the board, since I don't know how old many of you are. I'm hovering under 40 - getting older every day, isn't it a miracle? - and I listen to Fleetwood Mac all the time. Listening now, even. But ILXors out there in your 20s, how often do you listen to Fleetwood Mac? And do any of your friends listen to FM, or do they think you're the weird one for doing so? Strictly anecdotal, but possibly illustrative. I don't really presume to know what anyone listens to. But I do know that even among my peers I don't know a single soul who listens to Fleetwood Mac.

As someone who wasn't that familiar with Fleetwood Mac until last decade (and unfamiliar with a lot of classic rock in general while growing up), the Clinton coopting of "Don't Stop" emphasized the band's uncoolness to me as a '90s teen: it was good-times boomer rock for my parents' generation.

i'm 29 and have been listening to fleetwood mac regularly for years! i know lots of ppl who listen to the mac.

i definitely sell fleetwood mac albums to college kids. mostly college kids.

*anecdotal*

yeah i don't think it'd be far wrong to say that (buckingham-nicks) fleetwood mac are THE #1 classic band for somewhat with-it mid-20s-ish people (e.g. vampire weekend fans) nowadays.

dude at the local used record shop says kids have been buying hell of fleetwood mac lately

I discovered my parents' copy of Rumours around the time of the Clinton inaugural. I knew the Rumours hits and "Little Lies" and "Gypsy" and a couple of Nicks solo hits. On a whim I bought the '88 greatest hits in fall '96 from Columbia House and Tusk and Tango in early '97. By the time The Dance was out I'd converted the entire newsroom of early twentysomethings at my college newspaper to the Mac. My best friend played Rumours constantly when he broke up with his girlfriend that fall.

and let's not forget: The Dance version of "Landslide" was on constant rotation through '98.

Billy Corgan prob has more to do w/ that song's 90s resurgence.

and let's not forget: The Dance version of "Landslide" was on constant rotation through '98.

Yeah, that was that weird era of MTV where you watched and though, really, is this what people want to see/hear?

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1yHBz3K0yKg

I was wearing my Fleetwood Mac penguin t-shirt one day, and this dude in his '50s with a big grey beard stopped me and said "awesome shirt, man." But then later that day, picking up my younger daughter from day care, one of the assistants, an African American woman in her early '20s (in her case, possibly literally from Africa, I think) stopped me and said "awesome shirt" and gave me a thumbs up.

they might have just liked penguins

Everyone likes penguins.

max otm as usual

I vividly remember waking up to "Little Lies" on the clock radio one morning in middle school, and I guess I've been a fan ever since. I'm sure I heard their earlier stuff on the radio, but "Little Lies" is what I remember as the gateway, that and possibly "Hold Me." Much later I know I had a cut out copy of "Out of the Cradle" on cassette, and a copy of "Tusk," which I think I bought via an Xgau review that referenced Eno, and possibly also that famed SPIN listacle that called "Tusk" and (at the time) "Paul's Boutique" a couple of the most underrated albums of all time. Which may have been ... '91 or so?

indie kids in athens at least have worshiped tusk for as long as i can remember. when smashing pumpkins covered 'landslide' it wasn't a sign of corgan's or fleetwood mac's uncoolness. obv were not always so -

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

but fleetwood mac were one of the first classic rock acts rehabilitated or whatever by altrock - after sabbath but before say steely dan.

1995's Melody Maker piece about Tusk by Simon Reynolds might be the first thing i ever read that made me think they could become hip again with my generation. http://reynoldsretro.blogspot.co.uk/2007/10/fleetwood-mac-tusk-from-unknown.html

my take was always "lol boomer soft rock" and my first taste of hipster mac was the Melvins insisting Peter Green era was the jam

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DB19kSIrFNc

Didn't really boomerang back to me until this wave of millenials

Not to interrupt the Fleetwood Mac discussion, but as it relates to Haim, I think part of the disconnect in the comparison is that people who hear "Haim sounds like Fleetwood Mac" expect to hear songs and tunes that sound like Fleetwood Mac, and Haim doesn't really have those -- it's more that they sound like an era of Fleetowood Mac, the influence is much more sonic than melodic. And it's probably overstated even on that count, because they really sound like a whole era of pop-rock, for which '80s Fleetwood Mac is just one reference point. I hear as much latter-day New Wave -- the sumptuous period of Tears for Fears/"Perfect Way"/Thompson Twins etc.

I didn't grow up with Fleetwood Mac and only really heard "Don't Stop" and I dunno, maybe "Rhiannon" as a kid, cause of Clinton/oldies radio. I only really became familiar with them a few years ago when I frequented a Portland karaoke joint where it seemed like every third song performed was from Rumours. And even then it took me breaking down and checking the album out to put together that all those songs were from the same album, let alone the same band. (And appropriately enough given the talk of their diversity above, each subsequent album I've heard has had at least one song where I went "oh that song is Fleetwood Mac?")

My problem with fleetwood Mac is that it all sounds like Girl Talk. I mean wth

Then of course we saw:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nJe25qy4odw

"and my first taste of hipster mac was the Melvins insisting Peter Green era was the jam"

mine was when judas priest did the same song at the end of the 70's! i remember thinking wow this is a fleetwood mac song??? i only knew the (then) current hits.

i got tusk for christmas the year it came out but at the time i really only loved the song tusk. the other stuff on the album sounded weird to me. i was kinda obsessed with that song.

Album beat Timberlake for #1 in the UK. http://www.officialcharts.com/chart-news/haim-debut-at-number-1-with-days-are-gone-2527/

tusk and another brick in the wall were both obsessions for me in 1979. the whisper to a scream thing was so cool. they might as well have been the same song.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8BglEyv5O2Y

I've had no internet access at home for over a week (dead monitor) so I'm just getting to listen to this all for the first time and I think it's good. Some songs are sounding better to me away from the videos and in the context of the whole album.

I hear as much latter-day New Wave -- the sumptuous period of Tears for Fears/"Perfect Way"/Thompson Twins etc.

otm

i always like when kids like stuff that doesn't make me cry. this stuff is fine. if i were a teen they would be my new faves probably. play the album over and over. that kinda thing. okay, maybe i wouldn't, but i don't hate their sound. its congenial. they seem nice.

plus, i hate to sound like a square or something but this right here is just a cool thing for young girls to see. they're doing their own thing and they are good at it. and having fun!

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Pg1X_2MnvUE