Quote:
Originally Posted by David
This current configuration of the band had every judicial opportunity—and every reason—to invent a new core and throw the stale past to the wind. It did not. It opted to once again deliver The Chain, Dreams, Say You Love Me, Everywhere, Rhiannon, Gypsy, Landslide, You Make Loving Fun, Gold Dust Woman, Go Your Own Way, and Don't Stop with the same performance approach and even the same spatial place in the set.
The new stuff—Black Magic Woman, I Got You, Tell Me All the Things You Do, Don't Dream It's Over, Free Fallin', All Over Again—was mildly refreshing. But it was obviously presented as addenda to the old set, not a substitute. The 2018 set was created because it was familiar to audiences, not because it was new to them.
After casting off an iconic member and hiring two new members, Fleetwood Mac had every good reason to reinvent itself. It did not. It's merely pretending to be what it has been for forty years already. With this band mindset, we'll see whether a new album comes out of all this—new albums generally come out of a collective desire to forge ahead down some other road, the road less traveled.
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David, I understand what you're saying. As a FM fan of several years, and having seen them several times (well, 5 different tours, anyway), I would love to hear deep cuts instead of the usual 10 songs. But there is no way the new lineup could have been expected to not sing those 10 songs we all know so well. They are a new band and had to prove themselves to the audience, and the best way to do that was to include the hits or standards we all know. Now, if Lindsey had still been in the band, it REALLY would have been brave to do deep cuts. But can you imagine a FM concert where Lindsey doesn't sing Go Your Own Way? He even sings it on his solo tours! Stevie not singing Dreams? Christine not singing You Make Loving Fun? No way would that go over well with the audience. So if the new lineup hadn't sang the standards/hits, the tour would have bombed. I think they did a fantastic job with the set list this tour, they gave us the best of both worlds!
If Lindsey was still in FM, I would have loved to see them in a more intimate venue, with the deep cuts we'd all die to hear, like Brown Eyes, Over and Over, Save Me a Place, Storms, That's Alright, Mystified, Crystal, I Don't Want to Know, That's All For Everyone, etc. These songs wouldn't go over well in a big venue, as we could see by how Storms was received on this tour. But to expect ANY lineup of FM to tour arenas and NOT sing the hits is unrealistic.