Hey, y'all!
I just so happened to be googling a Stevie Nicks lyric the other day, and one of the top search results was from a website I hadn't thought about in a loooooong time. ("Isn't that WeIrD?!") Amazingly, I remembered my login and password; my profile page tells me I haven't posted a word on here in nearly a decade, and not regularly since early 2006. And I was very pleasantly surprised to see some of my favorite old-timers still kicking around.
Anyway! OG Ledgies may recall that I was complaining about Fleetwood Mac being a boring live band as far back as the "Dude, you're gettin' a Dell" days. Exact same setlist every show, same warhorses in the same arrangements year in and year out, even the same stage banter every night. Great to see once, but after that, why would you ever attend a concert again, particularly at the prices they charge? Then again, I haven't been remotely emotionally invested in these people since
March of the Penguins was in theaters, and I greeted the news of Lindsey's recent dismissal with a chuckle and a wistful eye roll. I still listen to the albums when the mood strikes (and had a great time a few weeks back watching
The Dance for the first time in ages), and that's more than enough for me.
I think the last time I saw Fleetwood Mac live was in 2003, on the
Say You Will tour. Stevie I haven't seen since 2001, though my interest was recently piqued when I saw she's been performing "Wild Heart" and "Bella Donna," two of my favorite songs that I'm guessing she still has the voice for. Alas, she's not coming anywhere near New York this year except for some overpriced festival in Asbury Park.
But I did catch Lindsey's show last fall! I think I'd last seen him back in 2007, when he was promoting
Under the Skin. I had a couple of friends who were interested, and I was excited to see that he had pulled out some old obscure favorites like "Soul Drifter," "I Must Go," and "Doing What I Can." Lindsey was in fine voice and put on a great, impassioned performance throughout, but in the end the experience reminded me why I don't really attend rock concerts anymore: too expensive, and more often than not, they sound like ****. Except for the brief acoustic set, it was just a big, loud, sludgy wall of sound for an hour and a half. (Then again, I saw Bonnie Raitt at the Beacon last month with one of the same friends, and she sounded fantastic. Not just her voice -- which was phenomenal -- but her whole band and however they had their amplification set up. So maybe it's just Lindsey. In which case, it's doubly disappointing that a man who has long prided himself on creating interesting, dynamic soundscapes on his records would settle for and offer up such a flat, dull-sounding show in concert.)
Anyway, with that behind me, I think I'll continue to stick to my now-usual live music diet of opera and jazz, where I can hear beautiful, interesting music, unadulterated, for at most forty bucks a pop. Sorry for writing a whole novel, and I hope those of you from the old days are all doing well!
