Quote:
Originally Posted by Kubrick2788
Not that long ago I started fiddling with the track list and added Belle Fleur, Lady, The Dealer, If You Were My Love, and Sad Angel/Miss Fantasy to replace some Lindsey songs. 15 tracks may be a bit heavy, but it makes me happy.
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To complete the sense of an album in your scenario, do you also imagine those songs played by Fleetwood Mac and arranged-orchestrated and mixed by the Mac team? To me, swapping tracks from other projects in and out doesn't give me that satisfying sense of a Mac album because a song is just a song, and Fleetwood Mac, as much as any other pop band, puts its sonic imprint on a song and singularizes it. Take
If You Were My Love, for example. From Mirage outtake to 24K Gold, it just isn't even the same song. Profoundly different.
That's why I never cared which "song" got put on an album. What makes a Fleetwood Mac album sound like Fleetwood Mac is Fleetwood Mac's recording treatment of all those songs (also considering that they haven't always done cool things to songs). Long way of saying that what prevents Buckingham McVie from completely sounding like a Fleetwood Mac album is Stevie's singing, not her songs. A Fleetwood album has never been just a playlist, and a playlist is never a Fleetwood album. That idea of what Fleetwood Mac sounds like with Lindsey helping (or handling) production and arrangement is also at the heart of the disappointment with his departure. I like hearing
The Chain played the way he played it with Mick drumming (particularly in 1978 and 1980), and that's now dead. That's what I missed in 1987 at the Forum, and that's what I miss today. The fact that
The Chain is still part of today's set means nothing to me (just as it meant nothing to me as part of the 1990 set). The fact that
Gold Dust Woman was part of the 1994 set meant nothing to me (other than a mild curiosity). I'm attracted (or not) to what I
hear, not to the mere presence of something to pay tribute or fulfill a legacy or meet a marketing expectation. Of course, sometimes the cover job really does excite me based on what I hear: for example, I seem to recall hearing an old concert from the Welch years where Bob did
Black Magic Woman. I loved it. Bob was ferociously good on guitar on that. (Did you guys ever hear that?) My two.