St. Paul 4/28 - Lindsey Buckingham, not Nicks, carries Fleetwood Mac at Xcel Center

[elle]

Originally Posted by HejiraNYC

playing along to a pre-recorded backing track and giving the same canned speeches night after night. I think I'd much prefer a live experience that was, in fact, LIVE. Not some kind of hybrid version of "live." You get what you pay for.

Originally Posted by shackin'up

Hey, you've got a point here. I hate those prerecorded tracks and speeches as much as you do, honestly. As much as I hate the fact that they play with a shadowdrummer. But, apart from that, it is not the oomph that I mean. He brings something else, and you know what I mean.

we all hate pre-set speeches, and he probably knows since he's been mixing them up lately and going off the cuff during some of them. especially during solo tours where he reacts to audience and changes around if some audience members are particularly persistent.

re backing tracks, let's be fair - he had backing tracks during only 4 songs, and 9-10 he was doing solo just him and his guitar.

(and his prices were anywhere between $25 and $200, depending on the venue so not sure which price are we talking about? plus we all know you don't get what you pay for with many many performers and you pretty much always get way more with LB )

you all may not be into that, but i'd rather he does rocking songs with the backing track, than no rocking songs at all. and most everybody who did see him at his One Man Show was sold on his approach once they experienced the show and its intensity live. (but we've been through this discussion over and over.)

i guess you all want Tusk dropped from FM set too considering there is no Trojans anywhere in the arena other than background video? or maybe backing tracks would be ok during LB solo shows if he'd have a video of himself playing them as a backdrop?

[redtulip]

Originally Posted by BrownEyedGirl26

I only said "MAYBE"!! Okay, you were there but you don't know how she was feeling so you really can't comment about her emotions unless she confided in you. Just saying!

So why are you doing it then? Even if you say maybe, you're still making an assumption based off of nothing. I'm not even sure what her emotions last night have to do with anything. I didn't notice anything about her demeanor that was off last night, neither did anyone else as far as I can tell.

[BrownEyedGirl26]

Originally Posted by elle

the following 2 posts immediately dispute your 98% accuracy right there:

I think what John meant was that he can predict which posters will reply negatively as soon as they get the chance. For example, someone with a name beginning with E!!

[elle]

Originally Posted by BrownEyedGirl26

I think what John meant was that he can predict which posters will reply negatively as soon as they get the chance.

yup that's what he meant. and my post documents how wrong he was.

[HejiraNYC]

Originally Posted by elle

i guess you all want Tusk dropped from FM set too considering there is no Trojans anywhere in the arena other than background video? or maybe backing tracks would be ok during LB solo shows if he'd have a video of himself playing them as a backdrop?

Actually I would not mind if they did drop "Tusk" the way it is performed today, which is still "live" in the sense that it is played/triggered by a keyboard containing horn samples. I much preferred Christine on the accordian!

[ShangriLaTroubl]

Originally Posted by HejiraNYC

To Lindsey's credit, he sounds 100% better than he did ten years ago on the SYW tour. I was listening to SYW tour audio the other day, and Lindsey was off-key, growling, bellowing, etc. He must be doing something right!

Agreed..I think they both do actually. He and Stevie did not sound good on that tour to me.

[elle]

Originally Posted by HejiraNYC

Actually I would not mind if they did drop "Tusk" the way it is performed today, which is still "live" in the sense that it is played/triggered by a keyboard containing horn samples. I much preferred Christine on the accordian!

you know, i really hated what Tusk has become live in 2000s. but SWS tour version was enjoyable again to me; and especially this 2013 version nestled between NTF and SOTM i think works nicely.

that said, how cool would it be if Christine would want to replace or add to the marching band recording with her accordion again at those London shows?? i did enjoy watching those old Mirage-era live versions and although they don't sound too spectacular in videos i've seen, the band, especially Lindsey and Christine, seemed to have had tons of fun playing it.

[redtulip]

I'm So Afraid

[KarmaContestant]

Originally Posted by redtulip

I was at the show and she didn't seem emotional at all. Where did that come from? I don't think the review said that either. She seemed to be in perfectly good spirits as far as I could tell.

This reminds me of someone I used to drink with at a dive bar here in Denver. He always liked to tell me about all the emotional drama in Stevie's songs, and how she was just SO EMOTIONAL that songs had to be dropped from the setlist because she just couldn't bear to sing them anymore.

Because it hurts too much.

He was talking about Destiny Rules and Running Through The Garden.

He was one of those fans who sees far more mystery, witchery and secret love in Stevie's songs than is actually there.

[shackin'up]

Eyes Of the World and Not That Funny have prerecorded voicetracks too. Very annoying.

[michelej1]

Lindsey's speeches really don't take up enough time in the setlist for me to care about them either way. It's not like they're Sardonic World. I think they're amusing and I don't mind needling him about them and finishing a sentence or two for him, but as long as he brings new energy to his performances every concert, I find it hard to get up in arms over the fact that we get a few minutes of cycles. Isn't that weird?

Michele

[michelej1]

Here are some pictures from the Daily Planet:

http://www.tcdailyplanet.net/news/20...c-excel-center

[michelej1]

Twin Cities
http://www.twincities.com/music/ci_2...starting-sound

Fleetwood Mac review: Wait, this is starting to sound familiar
By Ross Raihala

rraihala@pioneerpress.comtwincities.com
Posted: 04/28/2013 12:01:00 AM CDT

Something felt rather familiar about Fleetwood Mac's Xcel Energy Center show Sunday, April 28, and it wasn't just the band's songs, which remain some of the biggest-selling, most widely known of the rock era.

Instead, it was the set list -- the very order in which the group played those songs -- that was secondhand news. Four-fifths of Fleetwood Mac's most famous lineup last headlined the downtown St. Paul hockey arena in March 2009, and Sunday they performed a whopping 17 of the same songs. Of course, with a band like this, there are hits they're always going to play ("Don't Stop," "Go Your Own Way," "Landslide"). But this wasn't just hearing the same old numbers four years later, but hearing them largely in the same sequence.

Just like in '09, "The Chain" led into "Dreams" early in the show and then "Big Love," "Landslide" and "Never Going Back" occupied the same three-song stretch at the midway point. And once again, the sequence of "I'm So Afraid," "Stand Back" and "Go Your Own Way" wrapped things up and opened the door for virtually the same encore, with "Say Goodbye" added to "World Turning," "Don't Stop" and "Silver Springs."

So what was different this time around? Well, most notably, Stevie Nicks was much more present and didn't let her energetic frenemy Lindsey Buckingham steal the spotlight quite as much (even though the crowd cheered at nearly everything he did). At 64, her voice has lost much of its power, but she still looks terrific and she seemed to be enjoying herself much more Sunday night than four years back.

Buckingham reportedly wanted to record a fresh disc for 2013, but Nicks couldn't get her act together in time. They did manage to work in one brand-new track, the upbeat and poppy "Sad Angel," and one number they dug out from the vaults, "Without You" (an unreleased snoozer from the pair's pre-Mac band Buckingham Nicks).

They also upped the total number of songs drawn from 1979's "Tusk" -- the expensive, Buckingham-led flop that derailed the band's career -- from three to four. In addition to Nicks' ballad "Sara" and Buckingham's monstrous "Tusk," they worked in "Not That Funny" and "Sisters of the Moon," with Buckingham taking the opportunity to once again harangue the crowd about the album's initial failure. (Dude, it's been 34 years. Let it go already!)

Beyond that, the band kept to the oldies, with the vast majority of the songs originally written and recorded in the mid-to-late '70s. It was a nice surprise to hear "Eyes of the World," a deep cut from 1982's under-appreciated "Mirage" album, although almost any one of the other album cuts from that era would've been a better choice. As always, Christine McVie was missed. She retired in 1998 and while she was always a distant third behind Buckingham and Nicks, her softer, more romantic songs lent the band a certain humanity they've been lacking in the years since.

[vivfox]

As soon as I saw this newspaper headline in my e mail, I thought of elle and how she would gleefully post it here and then run with it.

[elle]

Originally Posted by vivfox

As soon as I saw this newspaper headline in my e mail, I thought of elle and how she would gleefully post it here and then run with it.

Ross Raihala's? he had some funny tweets all evening. his review Michele posted above was not much different from his tweets, just not nearly as amusing.