Buckingham woos and wows at The Pabst

[MacMan]

Buckingham woos and wows at The Pabst
By Bill Zaferos

http://onmilwaukee.com/music/article...abst.html?9987

Published Oct. 18, 2006 at 5:16 a.m.

From the time Lindsey Buckingham walked on The Pabst Theater stage and finger-picked the arpeggio opening to "Not Too Late" from his new album "Under the Skin," his audience was hooked.

By the time he finished the last of his Fleetwood Mac blasts from the past during a roughly 100-minute set, they were delirious.

Buckingham, playing before another crowded house at The Pabst Tuesday night, alternately wowed with his guitar prowess and wooed with delicate melodies from "Under the Skin," his other solo works and, of course, his days with Fleetwood Mac.

Wooing as he did with numbers like his hits "Trouble" and "Go Insane," Buckingham turned upbeat pop songs into dreamy, laconic lullabies, stripping them of their perkiness and giving them new meaning by turning them into lush ballads. "Go Insane" actually sounded less like a pop song and more of a plea of desperate longing.

But when he was rocking, as he did on "Tusk" and "Go Your Own Way," he risked starting a riot. On "Tusk," his band made just about as much rhythmic racket than the entire USC Trojan Marching band did on the original.

Buckingham alternated between soloing and playing with a four-piece band, and it was when he and the band were cutting loose that things got wild. On "I'm So Afraid" Buckingham literally pounded and clawed at his guitar while the band roared behind him. He did the same on "Tusk" and on a joyous "Go Your Own Way," where his blinding solos and crowd teasing -- he dipped at the edge of the stage into the crowd -- had the assemblage in a complete frenzy.

While he was largely stationary for his softer acoustic numbers, he became a rambling mass of contortions when he and the band were tearing it up.

That's not to say the mid-tempo stuff went ignored. Buckingham played a delightful versions of "Never Going Back Again," "Second Hand News" and "World Turning," on which his normal whisper-to-tenor voice turned to a low growl when he sang, "maybe I'm wrong but who's to say you're right."

If there was a flaw in the show, it certainly wasn't Buckingham's fault. But a bit of the crowd was unruly, and the wolf whistles and banshee howls often marred some of Buckingham's more intricate guitar work. It was a shame, because Buckingham was making some real magic when he wasn't interrupted by someone yelling "way to go Lindsey" or shouting a request for the next song. One drunk actually yelled for "Hypnotized," a Bob Welch-era song recorded before Buckingham was part of Fleetwood Mac.

Buckingham remained in command throughout, however, eventually taking a request during the encore "from the pretty lady in the back" who had been shouting all night for "Down on Rodeo" from the new album. Buckingham admitted that the song had been more or less unrehearsed, but no one would have known from his plaintive performance.

Although he was much of the instrumental creative force behind the pop-era Fleetwood Mac, Buckingham has always lived more or less in the band's shadow. Tuesday night, he proved he and his sidemen could carry off their own sound while capturing the Mac ethos all by themselves.