MIRAGE DELUXE Release date 7/29/16 and more...

[HomerMcvie]

Originally Posted by aleuzzi

I actually dig LAW AND ORDER more than LB’s songs on TUSK, like way more. Love it, love it, love it.

I never tire of it. Bwana, September Song, Love From Here...I love it all.

god, I was at the height of my fandom then. My kingdom for a time machine. For them! And me.

[Macfan4life]

Originally Posted by HomerMcvie

Law and Order is SO CLOSELY related to Tusk. So f*cking quirky. I worship every note. People look at me like I'm crazy when I'm jamming out to it.

When I was hosting FM pool weekend parties a decade ago, I turned all the Chiffonheads to it, and especially Johnny Stew. They'd never heard it! I had them grunting in unison!

Even though I hate her now, Bella Donna is a work of art. It's right up there with Rumours and Hotel California, in my book. She apparently owes Jimmy Iovine HER SOUL(if she still has one, which is doubtful).

Yes Bella Donna is a masterpiece and almost as good as Rumours. It was made like a piece of art. Fantastic songs with fantastic musicians making music without regard of looking for pop radio success. Jimmy knew it was good but lacking any commercial songs which made him bring SDMHA which is a good song. But that point just shows how deep the album is in almost claiming the album is so good that it lacks commercial pop songs. All epic albums were made this way. From Led Zepplin albums to Hotel California. Everyone told the Eagles Hotel California is not a single because no radio station will have the patience to listen to such a long intro. They told the Eagles New Kid In Town is way too long for commercial success. I am sure Edge of 17 was seen as too unconventional and long for a lead single. Clearly it could have led off the album and even charted higher if it was the lead single.

Sadly Jimmy moved The Wild Heart much more towards the pop realm in caring how pop radio would hear and play it (chasing success). Some good songs but many of them watered down. Then, RAL, good grief what happened there
Bella Donna was a moment. A quick album before the Mac regrouped. It came at the perfect time when her voice was at her peak and before the drugs completely took over. I love that the Buckingham/Nicks bassist Tom Moncrieff plays on the album's SDMHA. I wonder why Tom's bassist (Ron Blair) did not play on the song. He boycotted the recording LOL? The stories of how Jimmy had to keep his working with Stevie a secret (from Tom) are funny.

[jbrownsjr]

Originally Posted by aleuzzi

I actually dig LAW AND ORDER more than LB’s songs on TUSK, like way more. Love it, love it, love it.

I agree. There's something really genuine about Law and Order compared to Tusk. Tusk to me is a little more forced. It just turns out that his forcing made for a very interesting album.

[aleuzzi]

Originally Posted by jbrownsjr

I agree. There's something really genuine about Law and Order compared to Tusk. Tusk to me is a little more forced. It just turns out that his forcing made for a very interesting album.

Yes—his Tusk tunes are willful experiments. Intriguing ones, but very much engineered to produce a certain outcome or response: to shock, appall, and alienate the complacent.

LAW AND ORDER sounds like genuine creative play. The songs are goofy and warm and crazy—but this time not in quotation marks.

T

[DownOnRodeo]

I'm with latter-day Lindsey on Law and Order, who only put one of its tracks on his Solo Anthology and has dismissed it in some interviews. I just don't like the 1950s vibe. Other than Trouble, his solo legacy track that still gets airplay today, Shadow of the West is pretty and September is solid but a cover.

I love this review quoted on the album's Wikipedia page:

Robin Smith of Record Mirror panned the "miserable" album in a 1/5 star review, saying that it "sounds like the out takes of Mac's worst studio sessions delivered around Buckingham's reedy little voice."

[Macfan4life]

Originally Posted by DownOnRodeo

I'm with latter-day Lindsey on Law and Order, who only put one of its tracks on his Solo Anthology and has dismissed it in some interviews. I just don't like the 1950s vibe. Other than Trouble, his solo legacy track that still gets airplay today, Shadow of the West is pretty and September is solid but a cover.

I love this review quoted on the album's Wikipedia page:

Funny you say 50's vibe because many of his Mirage songs like Book of Love, and Oh Diane, and Cant Go Back have a 50s vibe IMHO. Maybe its just me but I always got that vibe.
Law And Order is a fairly good album but lots of experimentation. Trouble sticks out like a sore thumb. I like Johnny Stew. I love Lindsey songs where he jams his guitar. His playing does not offend me so I love songs like Come, I'm So Afraid Live 1980, Oh Well, Loving Cup, etc.

[HomerMcvie]

Originally Posted by DownOnRodeo

I'm with latter-day Lindsey on Law and Order, who only put one of its tracks on his Solo Anthology and has dismissed it in some interviews. I just don't like the 1950s vibe. Other than Trouble, his solo legacy track that still gets airplay today, Shadow of the West is pretty and September is solid but a cover.

I love this review quoted on the album's Wikipedia page:

Well, it's just plain WEIRD. And that's why I love it. I was smack dab in the middle of my fandom when it was released, and I LEARNED to love every note on it.

I forced it on my "Fleetwood Mac girls" a few years ago(FM pool party weekend), and they fell in love with it. Johnny Stew especially. We'd all crank it up, and STFU through all the grunting in the middle, so we could really get into it.

We may also have been drunk, but I digress...

[DownOnRodeo]

Originally Posted by Macfan4life

Funny you say 50's vibe because many of his Mirage songs like Book of Love, and Oh Diane, and Cant Go Back have a 50s vibe IMHO. Maybe its just me but I always got that vibe.

Yes, totally agree. Even the album cover of Mirage, so retro. But Mirage finesses and evolves the sound. Or something.

No doubt L&O becomes more agreeable at bacchanals.
But there aren't enough libations and goodwill to make me fall in love with It Was I.

[Villavic]

Originally Posted by DownOnRodeo

Yes, totally agree. Even the album cover of Mirage, so retro. But Mirage finesses and evolves the sound. Or something.

I agree about the sound, but the cover... retro? In 1982? I don't see it. Can you explain it?

[David]

Originally Posted by Villavic

I agree about the sound, but the cover... retro? In 1982? I don't see it. Can you explain it?

It’s a George Hurrell photo. Hurrell was a Hollywood glamour photographer in the big studio years between the wars.

I think Hurrell also shot the Law and Order cover, and a bunch of his Mirage outtakes are included in the album songbook.

[David]

Originally Posted by DownOnRodeo

I just don't like the 1950s vibe.

You haven’t been watching enough of those Fifties concert reunions during PBS pledge break, Joe.

Lindsey was definitely in his doo-wop years, and the phase, which was as big a deal to him as folk, lasted into the early Nineties, with “Surrender the Rain,” “Say We’ll Meet Again,” and “This Nearly Was Mine.” The styles in American pop before it officially became “Early Rock and Roll” must be a childhood nostalgia thing for him, immersed in the vocal stylists and doo-wop groups of the mid and late Fifties—because those styles, personalized, are all over his catalogue. I think it must remind him of days with his dad and brothers, several of whom he lost young. Innocence regained, perhaps (the theme of his first solo album)? But even more than the personal connection is the musical connection: he is fascinated with the many styles of popular music through swing and big band to the small jazz combo sound (“Love from Here, Love from There”) to doo-wop and beyond. What he’s done with all these styles may not be everyone’s cup of tea, but I get a kick out of it — even when he’s deliberately singing like Frankie Lymon or the Jive Bombers.

[DownOnRodeo]

That in addition to the somewhat retro looking album photo (thanks for the trivia, David!), the font on the Mirage cover is in the art deco mode, which is also the style of architecture of the Empire State Building.



And that the pattern of Christine's blouse on the cover consists of musical notes.

[DownOnRodeo]

Originally Posted by Villavic

I agree about the sound, but the cover... retro? In 1982? I don't see it. Can you explain it? [/IMG]

I don't have the proper knowledge or words, but the image itself looks sort of glowy and softened to me, like a hand-coloured daguerrotype or something. Also somewhat retro hairstyles and clothes to some extent. Some elements of the composition as well (the dancing pose, like an old-school debutante ball; and Stevie's pose evokes a classical painting to me, perhaps augmented by the black background).

[bombaysaffires]

Originally Posted by Macfan4life

Yes Bella Donna is a masterpiece and almost as good as Rumours. It was made like a piece of art. Fantastic songs with fantastic musicians making music without regard of looking for pop radio success. Jimmy knew it was good but lacking any commercial songs which made him bring SDMHA which is a good song. But that point just shows how deep the album is in almost claiming the album is so good that it lacks commercial pop songs. All epic albums were made this way. From Led Zepplin albums to Hotel California. Everyone told the Eagles Hotel California is not a single because no radio station will have the patience to listen to such a long intro. They told the Eagles New Kid In Town is way too long for commercial success. I am sure Edge of 17 was seen as too unconventional and long for a lead single. Clearly it could have led off the album and even charted higher if it was the lead single.

Sadly Jimmy moved The Wild Heart much more towards the pop realm in caring how pop radio would hear and play it (chasing success). Some good songs but many of them watered down. Then, RAL, good grief what happened there
Bella Donna was a moment. A quick album before the Mac regrouped. It came at the perfect time when her voice was at her peak and before the drugs completely took over. I love that the Buckingham/Nicks bassist Tom Moncrieff plays on the album's SDMHA. I wonder why Tom's bassist (Ron Blair) did not play on the song. He boycotted the recording LOL? The stories of how Jimmy had to keep his working with Stevie a secret (from Tom) are funny.

You can actually blame Stevie and her own wild heart for the changes on The Wild Heart. She started really pushing back on Jimmy during that album, and wasn't as nervous about 'what if I'm not successful on my own' during the making of WH like she was during making of BD. She was far, far more humble and willing to take others' ideas during BD. Once her ego got all that solo success.....watch out. And her coke intake went up as well. She started leveraging her solo success within FM to get what she wanted and also in her solo career.

[bombaysaffires]

Originally Posted by David

It’s a George Hurrell photo. Hurrell was a Hollywood glamour photographer in the big studio years between the wars.

I think Hurrell also shot the Law and Order cover, and a bunch of his Mirage outtakes are included in the album songbook.

That Law and Order cover photo is one of the best ever taken of Lindsey, in his most gorgeous years.