Working my way through FM
 

For part of last week and the next two weeks I'm working in a store that is about 45 minutes drive from home, plus I do drive around a bit for work. So, I've decided to start at the dog and dustbin album and work through some sort of chronological order of the FM back catalogue. It is actually harder than you think because I don't know where to fit such albums as Vaudeville Years, the three Live in Boston, etc, so for now they are going to get missed out completely.

So far I've got through the following:

PG's Fleetwood Mac
Mr Wonderful
English Rose
Pious Bird of Good Omen
Then Play On
The Original Fleetwood Mac

Tomorrow morning I'll start on Kiln House. Once I have got through the Stevie/Lindsey Live in Boston (which I think is the most recent album if memory serves me correct?) then I'll maybe go back and pick up some of the compilations.

So far I've come to the following conclusions:

1. Jigsaw Puzzle Blues and Fleetwood Mac (the instrumental) are better than Albatross.
2. Listening to Mr Wonderful, English Rose and Pious Bird of Good Omen in the same day is just too much
3. The Original Fleetwood Mac album is way too underrated
4. Some of the best stuff didn't make it onto these albums

Hello Chris: Sounds like a very ambitious project. One that will bring you great pleasure for a long time to come! Be sure to let us know what you think of each cd. I'm sure you'll get plenty of responses. Have fun! Madelow.

Where's Blues Jam At Chess???

To me, English Rose trumps both Mr Wonderful and Pious Bird Of Good Omen....OR, the latter two should be listened to in lieu of the former (Or, preferably, the former should be listened to in lieu of the latter two). Yeah, listening to all three gets tedious & redundant.

Vaudeville Years (& the subsequent ShowBiz Blues) set(s) should be played directly BEFORE Then Play On

The three Live At The Boston Tea Partys should be played directly AFTER Then Play On

The Original Fleetwood Mac should be played directly AFTER Dog & Dustbin.

I'll ignore the blasphemous statement regarding "Albatross" (but I'll just let it seethe internally and it'll come out in some unrelated way in a later post) :cool:

Have fun! This is essentially how I've listened to the Mac since I've become a hardcore fan. I don't know how everyone else does it, but I have one large playlist on iTunes called "Fleetwood Mac". With over 1000 songs, I have all the Fleetwood Mac and solo member albums in chronological order. Well, all those that interest me. I have a selection of pre 1971 songs - then every Mac album from Future Games to LIB. All Christine, Stevie, Lindsey solo albums and some Bob Welch plus Buckingham Nicks are also thrown into the playlist in chronological order. I have a live show after most of the albums. Whatever live show they did to back up the album, of course. Not all live shows include every song that was preformed during other shows, so I throw any rare songs that weren't always preformed at each show into the mix where they could best fit. I also include soundtrack songs on here.

I love listening to the Mac this way - I couldn't do it any other way! This entire playlist takes me at least a month to finish 1 listen completely. After that I listen to my 100 some demo songs, (also in chronological order) and sometimes I'll listen to my "Favorites" playlist, with my favorite Mac and solo songs. After that I'll listen to other artists for about a week, and then I'm back to the first song on my Mac playlist - Love That Burns. (the playlist ends with Silver Springs from Unleashed, fyi)

Sorry that was so long! I'm just happy to find someone else listening like this, and I'm curious to see how others listen. I thought I'd share my process!

The problem with listening to all of these in a row - plus Blues Jam at Chess and Shrine '69 is that I will:

a) never get time to listen to anything other than the PG era FM
b) hate the PG era FM by the time I'm finished
c) have heard some songs so many times I will scream

So many releases for the PG era, which is weird as it only covered such a small timeframe.

:shrug:

think you missed the point
 

There were not that many releases by FM during that period.
There were so many different fleeetwood macs during that period that these "posthumous" releases are necessary
If you listen to Vaudevill Years or Showbiz blues you might begin to understand how a blues band could evolve to kild house in such a short period of time
If you listen to the Nicks Buckingham FM you go from evolution to creationism and stay there

doodyhead

What's this not including "Blue Again" in the playlist at the end? Granted it is not an "official" Fleetwood Mac disc, but it could be for all intents and purposes.

I go through and listen to all of my favourite artists works in order of release on a somewhat regular basis. I find it a fun and interesting "walk down memory lane" type of exercise where I try to remember where I was the first time I heard that disc or this/that particular song. It also reminds me of some material I may not always immediately recall that artist having recorded. Honestly, I thought I was sort of a freak for doing, but now that I know I'm not alone, I feel much better!!

Right now I'm listening to my entire iTunes collection in alphabetical order on my iPod. I'm somewhere in the "O"s at the moment.

I nominate this for "QUOTE of the year!".


Seriously, why did it take so long for The Boston Tea Party shows to be officially released on LP (on a third party label) in 1985? If Peter Green remained in the band beyond 1970, Warner Brothers would've released those Tea Party tapes in late '70! WB was so scared of FM without Green they buried him before he lost his way a couple years later. As it turned out, had WB released the Boston shows on 2 LP's, Peter Green would've returned to sit in for the absent Jeremy Spencer with more inspiration. Despite Green's reluctance to play his music, the popular live FM album from Boston '70 would've forced Green to play what he knows.

One suspects that the post '75 band didn't want any undiscovered material from the pre '75 band released during their "run" to ruin their illusion.

Well the same argument could be almost said for Tramp for the Mick Fleetwood Zoo albums...

Anyway today I decided to back-track a little and take in Showbiz Blues, managed to listen to both discs, so might do Vaudeville Years tomorrow. Then I might do Shrine 69 and maybe Live in Boston but I think I'll give Live at the BBC and Blues Jam at Chess a miss. Sorry ChiliD!

However, I have to say that a track on an album should not be longer than 4 or 5 minutes. Really I do like Peter's playing but I don't need to hear 15 minutes of Green Manalishi.

Not to long at all, that process do appeal to me... :-)

/z

I love Albatross, but the instrumental called Fleetwood Mac is also great--and I prefer it! I too like Jigsaw more than Albatross, but I realize these are just matters of taste and that all three are excellent.

Kiln House is to my way of thinking FM at its best, which is surprising, given there's no significant Christine participation and a lot more rockabilly than I normally enjoy. But who the heck cares! It's an amazing, honest, unpretentious record. A band that could record three consecutive studio records (Then Play On, Kiln House, Future Games) of such varying character and yet consistent quality is quite rare. Those three records represent the breadth of a band like FM.

After a day of Shrine '69 and Vaudeville Years, I'm well and truly over Peter Green's FM and am moving onto Kiln House tomorrow. Should I get through everything by the end of next week then I might go back to BBC and Boston albums. If I get bored and desperate I might do Blues Jam at Chess (never my favourite album at the best of times).

What I have discovered, perhaps more about myself than the band is that I can only take PG's FM in relatively small doses (if five days of it is considered a small dose).

I have particularly enjoyed Jeremy's work on Vaudeville, particularly his impersonations - Alexis Korner, John Mayall, etc. Danny's work as always is excellent, I can't ever really fault his stuff.

I was playing Jeremy doing Blue Suede Shoes last night when my wife came in and was trying to have a serious conversation with me. Hard to have one of those while in the background Jeremy is suggesting you should suck and lick a certain part of his anatomy. :laugh: Melissa was not impressed!

I did wonder though when he was singing that song, whether that was the one he used to do with Harold the dildo sticking out of his fly.

Two quotes from Vaudeville which made me laugh today while driving:

Just before we start can I just say, for those of you who live in Timbuktu...[a few seconds of silence follow]

and

It's got to be good its the only bluesy thing on the whole f**king LP! [in reference to Showbiz Blues]

One day I'm going to go to Timbuktu and play the song to find out what the message was :lol:

If I knew anything about the internets (and a bit more about Fleetwood Mac), I would embark upon a full-scale timeline of Mac-related releases.

someday

This is why Fleetwood Mac is unique. As much as I've tried to compare this band to Chicago, the differences in style over the years are much more stark in comparison to the band that had the horn section with the brilliant guitarist who decided to play Russian roulette, and lose (he thought there were no bullets in the gun).

I've read you wrong chriskisn, I thought you were a Peter Green fan. I never tire of the Peter Green era, it's like listening to something new each time I hear Peter Green play the guitar, even if I've heard it many times over. I've come across many guitarists, most of them bore me to death. That includes Eric Clapton, Duane Allman, and Jimmy Page. Yet Peter Green never bores me. The way he played a solo is so special, it's original, melodic, and captivating at the same time. He never played the same solo twice, and it never bores me compared to the guitarists named above.

Personally I can take Led Zeppelin in relatively small doses. That means I was once a teenage fan of Led Zeppelin, but their overexposure to this day bores me because they were never as good as the media, and sycophantic fans under the age of fifty seem to think they were.

If you really want to hear Fleetwood Mac in the studio with Peter Green, "The Original Fleetwood Mac" (the 1999 Blue Horizon box set version), is the best example. It will explain my hatred towards Led Zeppelin (Track 1), and includes the original blues jam that spawned the name of the band.

Fleetwood Mac from 8/'68 (Danny Kirwan)-5/'70 had all the parts to be that big great band that Led Zeppelin became. Peter Green's timing was off, and he left Fleetwood Mac just as they were to make a breakthrough tour in the US during the summer of 1970. Green quit because he saw the grueling tour schedule ahead, and couldn't take it.

I am...don't get me wrong, I just can't listen to his Fleetwood Mac stuff for five days...:lol:

I actually prefer Peter's solo stuff and some of his more "gentle" songs such as Man of the World.

I do like Peter's guitar playing but it does all start to sound the same - only the lyrics vary. It is kind of like my opinion of Jeremy's Elmore James inspired songs.

I think I do have a renewed appreciation for Danny Kirwan though...