I really enjoyed reading your thoughts on these albums Eric.
I just wanted to say though that the timings they list on some of the FG tunes are wrong. "Woman of 1000 years" is NOT actually 8 minutes (though it sounds like it seems it for you Eric
I respectfully disagree). My CD player shows it as 5:23 when it ends. Though this will undoubtedly vary with all of our CD player's counters, it will be still be in the FIVE and NOT EIGHT minute regions.
I also noticed that "Morning rain" is a full minute shorter than what the album credits list.
I guess whoever was timing these orginally was smoking some good stuff.
"The derelict" will probably grow on you over time like it has on a few of us. I've already said my piece elsewhere on DW here so I won't repeat but I do respect the opinions of those that aren't big on him.
I DO agree though that the Mac stuff in general but perhaps Christine's tracks in particular were/was VERY interesting at this time as they were vulnerable then, they weren't sure what THEY wanted to do so they sniffed around (musically speaking as Eric says). OK, Welch wanted to get more heavy rockin' at that time and the others didn't want to but generally speaking, they did much more toe dipping then than they had/have in any other time in FM's history (in any real sense). By the time of the BN stuff they knew what sold and they just did that. As said, I enjoy what they did then as well but there's something to be said for being your own artist rather than being a label's robot (well, OK, Mick mainly).
John