[David]

Originally Posted by bwboy

I guess it's just perspective. Being a teenager when Lindsey left in 1987, I was devastated, freaked out, depressed, you name it, but I didn't hate or begrudge Lindsey for leaving the band.

Memory Lane. I was 22, I guess. I wasn't devastated or depressed (like the suicides following the Beatles breakup?). But I was a little freaked out—surprised because, although I knew that there was trouble in Mac-Land, as I've written in other threads, I didn't think the trouble would climax with anyone literally leaving. That part seemed slightly unreal to someone who hadn't yet firsthand experienced anyone leaving from Mac. Guys we know like Steve Denison, who experienced several band departures firsthand, probably thought, "Oh, boy, another one down."

Originally Posted by bwboy

When FM added Billy and Rick for the tour, I skipped the tour, because I felt it wasn't really FM.

That's sort of an odd response, I think. It's like standing on principle when principle is irrelevant. What's relevant to seeing a concert is whether there's anyone or anything onstage you want to see. In that case, four of the five Rumours people are still there, playing and singing. Didn't you want to see them? Even if you no longer considered the band Fleetwood Mac, how is seeing the concert any different from seeing Stevie play live with Todd Rundgren or Kenny Loggins or Walter Egan or Bob Welch or any of the other guys she cameo'd with? You should have gone to the concert and just imagined you were seeing Stevie and Christine cameo onstage with some anonymous group.

Originally Posted by bwboy

Then I read all the reviews, and then later I bought their Greatest Hits and fell in love with As Long As You Follow, which gave me hope that a new album by FM would be worth checking out.

Aside from Rick and Billy looking and sounding sort of swallowed up when they were playing big Mac hits in 1987, I think I began to worry about the future after hearing As Long as You Follow and No Questions Asked in 1988. They were both sludgy and pudgy to my ears, which were more attuned to the previous era's crystalline mixes. The new tracks sounded like bland pop songs that had inexplicably been mixed for a heavy metal album on vinyl. So I began to worry that the guy with the great ear was out of the picture quite noticeably.

Originally Posted by bwboy

And when Save Me came out, I was hooked again, just like when I heard Big Love for the first time on the radio.

Nothing on Behind the Mask hooked me, but I did have fun singing along to most of the songs, especially the Christine songs Skies the Limit, When the Sun Goes Down, and Do You Know. Stevie's vocal style post-drughead held no appeal, but I liked it when she wore a beret and long earrings and tossed her head like a Beverly Hills cookie.

Originally Posted by bwboy

So for me, there was life for FM after Lindsey left.

For me, there was life in the sense that there were some good ideas: Rick's quietly mourning I Loved Another Woman in concert, for one—made me want to hear an entire Fleetwood Mac concert of slow, minor-key blues from that configuration. And I thought everyone in the band was airbrushed beautifully in photos on the album and in the press. Bunch of handsome people!

Originally Posted by bwboy

I'm going to give them a chance now with Lindsey gone and Neil and Mike on board.

YouTube and Spotify are terrific ways to allow one to give a new band a chance. I've been watching some of the live videos on YouTube. Sometimes I like what I see and other times I can't believe how zorch it is. I'm getting as strong a sense of Neil and Mike being swallowed up in the glamour of the Rumours catalog the way that I felt Rick and Billy were, and feel strongly that they're going to need to record something new with Fleetwood to put themselves across distinctly. (But they're still light years ahead of where Dave Mason was onstage in 1994.)

So bring on the new music, kids, and let's hear what ya got! My Spotify is ready.