Fleetwood Mac: Classic or Dud

"Honey Hi" is beyond essential.

― Tim F, Wednesday, May 7, 2014

totally.

i don't think i'd particularly cut anything from say you will either. in fact i'd make it a third longer (mcvie songs natch)

being big and sprawling and overblown is kind of the whole thing of tusk

otm.

i don't particularly like "that's enough for me" either. and yet i think the album would be worse, not better, without it.

maybe tusk is like the white album in that lots of people think it could stand to lose a bunch of songs, but no one can agree on what those songs are.

and "Think About Me" is its "Savoy Truffle."

at the risk of losing my FM fan card, I agree Tusk is too long. Fleetwood Mac tend to succumb to the White Album syndrome really hard, with each member just doing their own thing and using the others as a back-up band.

― Dominique, Wednesday, May 7, 2014 4:18 PM (2 hours ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

I don't usually stan for late Beatles, but the White Album is good enough that I don't really think it makes sense to ascribe to it a "syndrome," unless the primary symptom of that syndrome is "makes a pretty damn good double album in which even some of the filler engages"

Being big and sprawling and overblown in kind of the whole thing of double albums in general IMO. The sprawl, the oddball bits and pieces and curios that would never make the cut on a single album. Stuff that would ordinarily be relegated to outtakes that emerge 15 years later on a bootleg.

"not that funny" and the title track are the only ones I sometimes skip but they're also both p good and funny and I'm glad they're on there

and I've spent afternoons listening to only "honey hi"!

here this willl change your mind:

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

flamingcrystal
5 years ago

Very sexual song. Gotta love it!

btw whatever else about Mirage the tour looks amazing: the older material was professionalized enough to be flawless yet allow the flourishes seen in that clip.

It's...er, amusing how "Not That Funny" became such a jamming vehicle for them live (the '80 live album version is of similar length).

Haha that is one of the most ridiculous live clips I've seen (meant as a compliment)

Just....everything...the hat/vest combo is nuts

I don't think of Tusk as big and sprawling at all. I think of it more in the "Exile" loose and shambling mode. As much as LB-era FB can be loose and shambling. Its nervous, anxious lack of focus is it's focus. And frankly, the album runs 74 minutes, which is not long at all. The most recent Beyonce album, for example, is almost 67 minutes, as are, like, tons of albums these days. Tusk is nothing.

Tusk is everything

I'd cut:

Buckingham: That's Enough For Me
McVie: Honey Hi
Nicks: Angel

But the band itself was at the peak of its powers, so it's hard to fault them as songs. Plus, Haim's "Honey and I" has warmed me to "Honey Hi."

― guess that bunt gettin eaten (Alfred, Lord Sotosyn), Wednesday, May 7, 2014 5:31 PM (6 hours ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

are you MAD?????? ANGEL????????????!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

good god!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

SN's best song imo

That Mirage concert was the first FM I ever saw. I was a little kid, and the fire between Lindsey and Stevie on The Chain was electrifying.

And that 1980 live album, as I've probably said several times on ilx, is my favourite thing they've ever done. http://thefoghatprinciple.wordpress.com/fleetwood-mac-live-warner-bros-1980/

First few posts in this thread are such faint praise. "Rumours, Mirage, Tusk etc are worth the charity shop 50p." Yeah I reckon so.

The consensus that Lindsey/Stevie-era Mac were A Good Thing is still pretty recent. I remember writing an NME 'buried treasure' thing on the 1980 album when I started there, in 1999, and the next week's letters page was brimming with ire that this music had been taken seriously (though Swells was editing the letters page that week, so it may have all been his invention).

That rascal Big Jim Swells

they got lumped in with the eagles, who remain shit

Yeah, my mom actually hates them (though her younger siblings like them well enough). Fleetwood Mac were so big at the time, it's easy to see why people would hate them (just like it's easy to see why people would hate ABBA). Pretty, rich, lots of drugs -- they were celebrities making pop music, and if you were of the mind that "real" music meant big messages, or politically correct ideology, they could very easily seem superficial, egotistical, the glamorous cousins to the Eagles' faux-rootsy, but equally "vapid" LA pop.

I feel like this band got its re-appraisal once the kids who didn't have to live through their initial fame could look back and just listen to the music, or see pics and not be offended at the disconnect between FM's fame/fortune, and their own lives/ideals.

(note, none of this really pertains to the pre-Nicks/Buckingham era)

that sounds about right.

as an analogy, i find it pretty impossible to listen to radiohead just because (a) they were so overplayed and overdiscussed for a while in the 1990s/early 2000s, (b) the worst sort of rockist discourse circulates around them such that they seemed to become hidebound "classic rock" just 10 years into their career.

but i'm sure they made great albums that i've ignored.

the eagles, who remain shit

― i also enjoy in line skateing (spazzmatazz), Thursday, May 8, 2014

HOW CAN YOU SAY THIS IT IS UN-AMERICAN

Well, yeah.

My friend, who grew up in the AM radio era, has emphasized to me just how ubiquitous Fleetwood Mac was in the '70s, just as unescapable as the Eagles (who he hates), and overexposed enough that he never heard anything after Rumours, because he had had enough listening stuck in the back seat on long road trips. But I made him a copy of Tusk a while back and he loves it.

you really shouldn't compare fleetwood mac to the eagles.

there was a peculiar smug, self-satisfied, superficial, artificial, supercilious vibe to the eagles that even a coked-out, arrogant fleetwood mac can't approach (and i might be imagining those criticisms of fleetwood mac).

I would never compare the two, beyond the superficial, but I bet it's really hard to like something when you are limited to the radio and they're playing the same songs, again and again, anywhere you go. Basically like now, but x10.

over and over

was listening to the radio and somebody called in with a request for go your own way. Like they needed to waste a request to get that.

I'm 43: a bunch of friends, 10 years older than me and roughly or precisely affiliated with the Norton Records/Maxwell's/late 70s-early 80s CBGB's milieu will never, EVER, forgive Fleetwood Mac. They are dead-enders who sneer that the Rolling Stones were finished in 1971, nothing after the Flamin' Groovies and the Ramones or Andre williams will do, etc etc.

then there's a pal who's ten years younger than me. Loves (and is involved in booking) the War on drugs and the 30something, post-shins, post-Wilco indie-rock diaspora afoot these days that indeed does seem to be indebted to the El Lay cocaine cowboy paradigm. He loves Tusk with uncommon fervor, but when I suggested that he check out "rattlesnake shake" or "Green manalishi" or "Oh well," he sneered, "why the fuck would I want to listen to that?" He also startled me when he said he hadn't heard Raw Power and wasn't interested.

i like all of these things!

this is why I don't have friends

FWIW in the 70s mainstream radio was WAY less repetitive than it was now, not that this negates any of your arguments. i wouldn't argue that the mac weren't ubiquitous once upon a time, i should know i was around then.

i can't believe it's been over a decade since "say you will"

OK, but it is fundamental that many self-identified and often asshole music people will always insist that the present era fucking sucks and cannot go any lower. if you wuz in yr 20s-30s and say was into Pere Ubu or teenage jesus and the jerks, you'd believe with every fiber of yr being that 70s mainstream top 40 radio was the nadir of humanity.

It wasn't just 70s mainstream, it was 70s AM radio, which both dominated and reached everywhere.

OK, but it is fundamental that many self-identified and often asshole music people will always insist that the present era fucking sucks and cannot go any lower. if you wuz in yr 20s-30s and say was into Pere Ubu or teenage jesus and the jerks, you'd believe with every fiber of yr being that 70s mainstream top 40 radio was the nadir of humanity.

― veronica moser, Thursday, May 8, 2014 6:09 PM (2 hours ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

i wasn't arguing w/ you btw, i am wholly in agreement. just pointing out that the 1970s ubiquity of fleetwood mac probably doesn't approach the contemporary ubiquity of, say, katy perry.

FWIW in the 70s mainstream radio was WAY less repetitive than it was now

this is not true.

and fleetwood mac was every bit as ubiquitious on mainstream radio as katy perry is today. as were the bee gees. and the eagles. and the no-longer-existent beatles. and a few others.

but they were not as ubiquitous in other corners of pop culture. they didn't constantly show up on tv and on page 6 and on the not-yet-existent internet. THAT is a big difference. but it has nothing to do with radio.

Saturation was defined differently then. In the Marc Eliot Eagles book, he mentions one of the problems Don Henley faced when he finally launched his solo career is that he was a guy who'd sold millions upon millions of records to a public who knew what his voice sounded like, but more often than not couldn't link that voice to his face or name because The Eagles didn't do a lot of press, generally kept their photos off album covers, and their heyday ended right before the beginning of the video era.

is that book any good?

It's pretty good, mainly due to the access Eliot got to Geffen, Azoff, and Henley--probably, prior to the documentary, the most lengthy discussion they gave to anybody about this stuff. It's pretty obvious that in return for that access (and also his admitted Eagles fandom), Eliot pulled some punches re: dirt, and at times the fact-checking is laughable and/or ridiculously vague, while the narrative is a little too jumpy in places (For example, he'll seize on Frey for several pages, covering his personal life up past the breakup etc, before going on "Anyway, the On The Border album...").

It's worth picking up the Da Capo edition for the exclusive afterword, which details Eliot's ordeals dealing with the Donster when the book was finally published, which provides a nice dark cherry on top of what came previously.

Dark cherry? Take it away, Don 'n' Glenn...

Taking sides: "Oh Well" Vs. "Well, Yeah."

http://076dd0a50e0c1255009e-bd4b8aabaca29897bc751dfaf75b290c.r40.cf1.rackcdn.com/images/files/000/003/249/original/original.jpg

BEEEEP-bombom... chk. chka chk-aaaahh

this is not true.

well, you ARE fact-checking cuz, after all.

i had been under the impression that current hit radio formats repeated songs more often than in any time in American radio history. obviously that's just one measure of ubiquity, of course. but i could very well be wrong -- was AM hit radio in the late 1970s more repetitive than its equivalent now?