Lindsey Buckingham & Rick Vito: Comparing Styles

[madformac]

Originally Posted by David

Why did Rick dress like the Cowboy in Wonderland? When I saw him up there in his sequins & pink & black card suits, the Elton John song "Roy Rogers Is Riding Tonight" went through my head.

Rick's stage outfits did nothin' for me in terms of style. Then again who did look cool on that tour? All 80's styles and Seinfeld puffy shirts..

But what of Lindsey's farmer boy look in '82? Everytime I see the bug alien in Men In Black I think of Lindsey on that tour.

Originally Posted by David

How, praytell, would throwing Christine songs on the album have improved the other tracks? By osmosis?

If you take "Say You Will" & add Christine songs, what you get is "Say You Will" + Christine songs.

It's just basic mathematics.

That is true. But, to be crude for a second, I thought Christine's album beat the **** out of SYW in terms of melody , feel and emotion. Man is she missed.

[HomerMcvie]

Originally Posted by madformac

That is true. But, to be crude for a second, I thought Christine's album beat the **** out of SYW in terms of melody , feel and emotion. Man is she missed.

Amen, brother! Preach it!
The heart and soul is gone. The balance. The only one who can still sing!
She was the secret ingredient all these years. I've known that for a long time.

[Gazza]

Okay, Rick plays the blues, like a lot of people do, and he does it reasonably well. Lindsey plays, well, like only he does. Therefore he's better.

[chiliD]

Originally Posted by Gazza

Okay, Rick plays the blues, like a lot of people do, and he does it reasonably well. Lindsey plays, well, like only he does. Therefore he's better.

Rick plays the blues BETTER than MOST people do. Lindsey plays like he does and ONLY like he does. Rick's better. Live with it.

[jbrownsjr]

Originally Posted by David

We should discuss that because appearance is always relevant. As John Simon has noted, what happens on stage or screen is a gesamptkunstwerk, a complete aesthetic experience (part of the reason I can't stomach Fleetwood Mac any more--they all look gristly & spent).

Why did Rick dress like the Cowboy in Wonderland? When I saw him up there in his sequins & pink & black card suits, the Elton John song "Roy Rogers Is Riding Tonight" went through my head.

Most bizarre, & most disturbing, to channel a Gene Autry Ringling Bros. clown at a Fleetwood Mac concert. It's almost as bad as when Christine channeled Camille Paglia on the 1997 reunion tour.

[jbrownsjr]

Originally Posted by David

We should discuss that because appearance is always relevant. As John Simon has noted, what happens on stage or screen is a gesamptkunstwerk, a complete aesthetic experience (part of the reason I can't stomach Fleetwood Mac any more--they all look gristly & spent).

Why did Rick dress like the Cowboy in Wonderland? When I saw him up there in his sequins & pink & black card suits, the Elton John song "Roy Rogers Is Riding Tonight" went through my head.

Most bizarre, & most disturbing, to channel a Gene Autry Ringling Bros. clown at a Fleetwood Mac concert. It's almost as bad as when Christine channeled Camille Paglia on the 1997 reunion tour.

Stage presence too, I just sort of got sick of billy smiling at rick and rick smiling at mick and christine smiling at billy... it was like I was at Magic Moutain watching them perform along the walkway to the roller coasters... where at least LB made you scared to look at him... and christine on the Mirage tour was pretty scary too look at as well.... but then again when i met Greg allman i was scared too!!

[SteveMacD]

Originally Posted by madformac

Then again who did look cool on that tour?

I thought John looked pretty cool on that tour.

[chiliD]

Originally Posted by madformac

Then again who did look cool on that tour?

I did. I was stylin' in my 25th row seat.

[jbrownsjr]

I dont think Christine's songs fit into SYW. SYW is just a mess, and Christine's album is really really simple. I think if Christine was on SYW she may have written differently and more frantically than having 2 conservative years in England's country side. Add Dashut and Buckingham to the production and I think CM's songs on SYW would have been superb, cos the lady can still sing.

For fact, I just listened to Gilmour's new album and he had a bundle of time to make it (on his houseboat on the Thames), and it too sounds extremely conservative. It's solid but not very adventurous... (even with orchestral arrangements)...

[jbrownsjr]

Originally Posted by chiliD

I did. I was stylin' in my 25th row seat.

did you have your Ace of hearts Tshirt on!!

[SteveMacD]

Originally Posted by Gazza

Lindsey plays, well, like only he does.

Originally Posted by chiliD

Lindsey plays like he does and ONLY like he does.

Lindsey wishes he were that unique. Finger-style guitar playing in pop-rock music, while not common, existed LONG before Lindsey Buckingham came along. Hell, Lindsey's not even the BEST finger-style guitarist rock ever produced. Roger McGuinn is considerably better, considerably more significant, and considerably more inventive, than Lindsey Buckingham could ever pray to be. (And, McGuinn wasn't even the best guitarist from the Byrds! That was Clarence White.)

What Lindsey does is really good, but nothing too special. Any half-way decent classical, folk, or bluegrass guitarist would find Lindsey's style just a few steps above elementary. And, Lindsey Buckingham himself would be the first to admit this.

Neither Buckingham nor Nicks were great because of their technique. They were great personalities, which is really more important than being a great technician in terms of being a rock star. There's a reason why the Beatles are in the Rock And Roll Hall Of Fame and Yes isn't. But there's no way in hell anybody would consider for a second that John, Paul, George, and Ringo were better or more original than Jon, Steve, Chris, Alan, and Rick. The Beatles were good, not great, from a technical perspective, but they had the personality factor.

[SteveMacD]

Originally Posted by chiliD

I did. I was stylin' in my 25th row seat.

{Insert mullet joke here}

[David]

Originally Posted by jbrownsjr

Stage presence too, I just sort of got sick of billy smiling at rick and rick smiling at mick and christine smiling at billy... it was like I was at Magic Moutain watching them perform along the walkway to the roller coasters.

They all had their geeky "let's rock" faces on the whole time. It was patent & see-through, the sort of thing that drives hip rock critics like me & Greil Marcus to belly right up to the bar. It was shocking. The band was adult contemporary all of a sudden. It was at that point that I decided I may as well listen to Emanuel Feuermann. Fleetwood Mac was done flaying the skin off the Booboisie.

And then it began to occur to me: Fleetwood Mac is so silly & stupid, like Pop Rocks at a kid's birthday party at Farrell's, with the volcano surprise ice cream sundae being lit up & served to a worried youngster, who can't drive himself home because he's only 7, & his mom & dad are trying to punish him for being a year older than he was last year, so they hide the cards & checks he gets from his Aunts Sharon & Lois & finally give those to the poor, disillusioned kid three days after his birthday, after the pain has passed & has been replaced by a dull, thudding no-nonsense approach to life & the arts, whether it be a torn-up old Mary Poppins LP that's been through the ringer, yellowing with antiquity, & smelling of pasteboard & starched milk on the upper lips of pals at grade school, or of the latest hep-scat DVD from Criterion with so much crap in the way of commentary & extras on it that you can't even remember why you bought the damn thing in the first place.

Anyway, that's what Fleetwood Mac became to me.

[SteveMacD]

Originally Posted by David

And then it began to occur to me: Fleetwood Mac is so silly & stupid, like Pop Rocks at a kid's birthday party at Farrell's, with the volcano surprise ice cream sundae being lit up & served to a worried youngster, who can't drive himself home because he's only 7, & his mom & dad are trying to punish him for being a year older than he was last year, so they hide the cards & checks he gets from his Aunts Sharon & Lois & finally give those to the poor, disillusioned kid three days after his birthday, after the pain has passed & has been replaced by a dull, thudding no-nonsense approach to life & the arts, whether it be a torn-up old Mary Poppins LP that's been through the ringer, yellowing with antiquity, & smelling of pasteboard & starched milk on the upper lips of pals at grade school, or of the latest hep-scat DVD from Criterion with so much crap in the way of commentary & extras on it that you can't even remember why you bought the damn thing in the first place.

Well isn't that special...

[David]

Originally Posted by SteveMacD

What Lindsey does is really good, but nothing too special. Any half-way decent classical, folk, or bluegrass guitarist would find Lindsey's style just a few steps above elementary. And, Lindsey Buckingham himself would be the first to admit this.

Neither Buckingham nor Nicks were great because of their technique. They were great personalities, which is really more important than being a great technician in terms of being a rock star. There's a reason why the Beatles are in the Rock And Roll Hall Of Fame and Yes isn't. But there's no way in hell anybody would consider for a second that John, Paul, George, and Ringo were better or more original than Jon, Steve, Chris, Alan, and Rick. The Beatles were good, not great, from a technical perspective, but they had the personality factor.

You are so far off the mark that you're probably wondering right about now just where dinner is.

That's what happens when a sociologist trips around in the deeper, richer, darker territory that is aesthetics. He gets lashed about in the thicket of art like a kitten with a tigress by the tail.