Crate: Christine Perfect by Chris Johnston for The Age (Australia)
Date January 1, 2015 - 11:45PM
Read more:
http://www.theage.com.au/entertainme...#ixzz3NdCWbk9O
Christine Perfect (1969) Christine Perfect
Some records seem as if they are dreamed up, that they are not real and too good to be true, in both the sound and the story. Thus it is with this much-sampled, elusive masterpiece by Christine Perfect – who married John McVie to become Christine McVie and join him in Fleetwood Mac. But that was just a bit after this. Perfect is her real maiden name, by the way; she had a band called Chicken Shack in the first-wave British blues explosion, in 1967, playing piano. Then she fell in with the Fleetwood Mac people who were playing a wonderful spacey brand of blues at the time and she ended up playing keyboards on their second album, Mr Wonderful. Soon she would marry bass player John McVie and set forth on the Mac's hedonistic journey through the 1970s as one of the highest-selling and highest rock bands of all time. But first she would make Christine Perfect , another so-called "lost gem", a kind of folk-funk-soul record with a bunch of scratchy, itchy drum breaks sampled by the likes of Dilated Peoples and Mos Def.
She wrote some of the songs herself, others were by Little Walter, Tony Joe White and Etta James. Little Walter's Crazy 'Bout You Baby (which he did in the 1950s as Can't Hold Out Much Longer) is a Stax-like soul stomp; it's brilliant. As is I'm On My Way, a more standard southern blues in the Bobby Blue Bland style, rendered here quiet and emotionally rich by Ms Perfect. It's interesting listening to her as the sole vehicle for the songs here; later in Fleetwood Mac she was just one voice and usually in a double-vision with Stevie Nicks. Yet on this great album it's just her and it's definitely worth trying to find.
Read more:
http://www.theage.com.au/entertainme...#ixzz3NdCcfiGj