Josh, this is why I rarely visit here anymore. Too many negatives.

Those were the good ol days!! How my 20 something self misses it, but my late 30 something self doesn't care for all the negativity anymore. I still troll here from time to time, though. Not pointing fingers at anyone, at all, but it is what it is... Their set list has to cater to the masses, and not a smaller group of diehards. I still love their shows. My daughter is 14 now and was finally able to join me tonight and she had an absolute blast! Because.... Their set list caters to the masses! She could sing along!

i feel the same as previous posts. it becomes tiresome to hear the CONSTANT complaints. is this a "fan" forum , or a "b*tch about their song/performance/records" forum. they are doing what they want. personally, i'm impressed with people in their 60's trecking out on a 50+ date tour, and i'm happy they are still at it. do we expect 64 yo Stevie to recapture a coke-addled 34 yo performance?
would promoters book a tour of b-sides, unrelesed tracks, and deep album cuts from a nostalgia act?
i'm certain they have to clear the set with promoters.

Dido! That said, although I was entirely ambivalent about their last tour, and felt no need to go, I am attending a show on this tour. You never know when the group could abruptly come to an end. But it's very disappointing that, at this later stage of their career, they are still playing it so safe and not taking the opportunities they have now to give life-long fans an entirely fresh show. But I understand there are certain constraints and conditions they have to abide by. However, it seems some bands have the freedom and a particular demographic/fan base that allows them to be very fluid with their set lists, where there are no expectations or limits.

I fully understand the sentiment that it is great they are still going in their 60's, they don't owe us anything, they are no more stale than any of their contemporaies, etc. It is all true. But for me, they are teetering on the brink of irrelevancy even though I have been a fan for my adult life and I am now in my 50's.

My problem is likely common to many fans and casual fans:

!. I have all the music they have created in various formats.

2. There is no new music for many years.

3. My attention strays, there is nothing to look forward to.

4. I start not caring.

5. I become cynical about tours like the current one.

you have to remember that most people going to the shows are not hardcore fans - they grew up with fleetwood mac and just mainly want to hear the greatest hits.

thats all most fans of old groups want.

i bet if you went into a arena and asked all of the people in there how many owned 'Say you Will' album from 2004 - it wouldnt be a large number.

also everything is about the $$$ nowadays. We are all capitialists.

as long as they get get people to spend $$$$ on tickets to go see them then maybe they dont have to try as hard, eg, new music, new photoshoots, etc, etc.

i am not saying it right but what can ya do?

you can vote with your feet and not go and see the new tour.

other then than there is not much you can do.

Despite the different thoughts around the negativity, we wouldn't be here if we weren't a hardcore fan, I have better things to do with my time, but the music of this band is a big part of my life so I choose to take part. Believe you me, it took me years to see the band through anything but my rose coloured glasses and music I thought was good in the 80's I now see for the sub-standard mess that it is, no apologies. There is nothing wrong with levelling criticism where it is due, even back in the day the band received some pretty scathing reviews and we still loved them. I think this article sums things up pretty well and reflects my message to the band that there are plenty of options to stay relevant other than these endless, stale, too-Rumours-heavy concert setlists designed to dig deep into our pockets. My view is that if I am to shell out that kind of cash, I want excitement!:

Fleetwood Mac Revamp — Five ways the iconic band could reignite the flame

http://www.suntimes.com/entertainmen...the-flame.html
By THOMAS CONNER [email protected] April 10, 2013 1:54PM, chicago sun times

The classic rock institution that is Fleetwood Mac has embarked on its umpteenth reunion tour this spring. The band isn’t supporting a new album.

Nevertheless, despite saying never many times, they’re going back again — and again and again, with 66 arena concerts scheduled around the world this year.

It’s hard to get excited about this go-round — even for me, a lifelong Mac addict undeterred even by the “Time” album. The biggest news out of the tour so far is that the band plans to perform “Sisters of the Moon,” a 33-year-old “Tusk” track.

Yawn.

The last time Fleetwood Mac toured the tambourines and scarves, in 2009, singer-guitarist Lindsey Buckingham told me that, even after all these years, it felt like “a proving ground.” But this time, even the band doesn’t seem exactly juiced about their jaunt.

“We know we’re going to do certain songs,” namesake drummer Mick Fleetwood said in a recent online interview, “and if we don’t do them, the audience will shoot us.”

“We always have to play ‘Dreams,’ ‘Rhiannon,’ ‘Don’t Stop,’ ‘Tusk,’ ‘Big Love,’ ‘Landslide’ and all our most famous songs,” Lindsey Buckingham told Rolling Stone. “For now, I have no particular vision of what this tour is going to be.”

Actually, guys, you don’t have to.

In fact, I call upon all Fleetwood Mac fans to join me in declaring: Lindsey, Stevie, John, Mick — we release you! Whatever social-setlist contract you think exists between us is officially now and forever nullified, voided, torn asunder. You are pardoned.

Please: Play whatever you want. Forgo the hits, play the misses. Play jazz, play bluegrass. Throw out the setlist altogether. Try improvising. Try failing.

Anything but this put-upon resignation to the slavish “demands” of your fans — because, frankly, it makes us all sound like jerks.

“2013 is going to be the year of Fleetwood Mac,” Nicks told Rolling Stone.

Here are five ways the Fleetwood Mac crew could announce a tour that would actually make a dent in the absurdity of that statement and once again activate my salivary glands:

1. Record a real Fleetwood
Mac album

“Say You Will,” the most recent Mac album, already is a decade old. The last new record the band actually wrote and recorded while generally in the same room with each other was “Mirage” in 1982. Since then, it’s been hijacked Buckingham solo projects (“Tango in the Night,” “Say You Will”), misfired lineups (“Behind the Mask,” “Time”) and greatest hits. The recently announced EP (due any day now) smacks of merch, not creativity.

Y’all need to hole up and jam. Not just the requisite two new songs (such as “Sad Angel” and “Miss Fantasy”), not another dredged-up B-side turned into a new A-side (“Silver Springs”), not a 37th anniversary repackage of “Rumours” — but a full studio set. If the members of this corporate board have the time for 66 unasked-for shows, you can stare at each other over a sound board again.



2. Scale it down

We get it, you’re huge. Every tour is an arena tour. The music has echoed around so much steel and concrete it’s stopped being songs and just devolved into mere momentary memory cues. Why not bring it down, focus the attention — play theaters?

Sure, you’ll boost the ticket price, but you can also loosen things up to make it worthwhile. Setlists could change up. (The play-an-entire-album trope might work here.) Unscripted banter could break out. (Maybe even a long-simmering argument.) Most of your fans could see you in the flesh, rather than on a video screen. (You’re not computer projections yet, are you?)



3. Bribe Christine

Christine McVie packed it in after the band was inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in 1998, and though she’s attended a few Mac concerts since then she hasn’t joined the band on stage. Given the tone of comments from her mates — Nicks said the chances of Christine returning to the band were equal to an asteroid collision — we understand she’s probably a write-off. Retirement from rock should be respected and, in so many cases, encouraged.

But there’s hope. First, an asteroid did nearly plow into the planet a few weeks ago. Second, McVie actually joined Fleetwood and former Mac guitarist Rick Vito (and, for some reason, Aerosmith’s Steven Tyler) on stage in Maui just last February for a sporting run through “Don’t Stop,” playing keys and singing.

She’s this band’s leavening agent. Privately, you guys need her. Musically, so do we. To get just one more ridiculously great song out of her (even a “Temporary One”!), give her the moon to get her back.



4. Reboot Buckingham Nicks

The musical and certainly the personal dynamic between Buckingham and Nicks first clarified on the 1973 pre-Mac album as a duo; the “Buckingham Nicks” LP is now an industry legend, having never been reissued digitally. (Still no straight answer about why that is.) But for at least a decade now, both have been hinting at the desire to record again and tour just as the pair.

“We had already started our second Buckingham Nicks record,” Nicks reiterated in an interview last month at SXSW, describing the project that was dropped when Fleetwood Mac discovered her and then-boyfriend Buckingham and brought them into the band. Buckingham recently and repeatedly has voiced his interest in rebooting that aborted sophomore album — even saying late last year that some sessions had begun with producer Mitchell Froom.

So . . . do it already. Go even more intimate with the resulting tour (clubs!) to highlight your own unique bond. Two people, two guitars, no fuss.



5. An ‘us’ festival

Dave Grohl’s Sound City Players concert in March at SXSW was an enjoyable enough rock and roll revue, spanning generations. Nicks’ performance — dueting with Grohl and backed by the Foo Fighters — was surprisingly great. The Mac songs didn’t sound stale in a modern setting, and Nicks was more than capable of leading the bashing hard rock band with witchy panache.

So go the Ringo all-stars route — but with a larger scope and fewer track suits. Keep Grohl on board, call it Fleetwood Fighters & the Rolling Thunder Always Happens Revue! A half dozen shows across the country, on the Sound City Players model. It could be part reunion (guest turns from Peter Green, Danny Kirwan, Billy Burnette, Rick Vito, Bekka Bramlett, Dave Mason), part intergenerational parade of pals (Tom Petty, Don Henley, Steve Winwood, Eric Clapton, Sheryl Crow, Matthew Sweet), part torch-passing (Buckingham can show off his new song with Delta Rae, Best Coast can roar through their magnificent cover of “Rhiannon”), part vaudeville (I’m seeing Chevy Chase on drums for “Holiday Road”). That’s almost enough all for everyone.

Great post. It certainly confirms that the views of those of us who are frustrated with the band aren't so outlandish after all -- not that we really needed confirmation.

I've already commented about the embarrassingly thin catalog and other problems, so I won't repeat myself. But it strikes me that FM and its fans have a bit of a battered wife syndrome going on. "Sure he beats me, but he is a good provider."

With the band, it goes like this, "Sure they disappoint the fans, take us for granted and blame us for their lack of commercial success, but they are still so great. They have the best 40-song catalog ever and, you know, they've had their own problems."

Some folks seem blown away that 60-plus rockers can still tour. No one's ever done it before apparently -- not the Rolling Stones, B.B. King and a long line of blues players. Not Clapton, Crosby, Stills and Nash and Aerosmith. Not Neil Young, Willie Nelson, Bruce Springsteen or Paul McCartney or ... or. Well, no one really! No one has ever rocked so hard into their 60s, or even 70s, as Fleetwood Mac.

Take the Stones. As old and crusty as they are, when they have toured in recent years, they still leave everything on stage. They change up the setlist, dig up old gems that we haven't heard in years, play covers, and Mick still shakes his ass on stage like there's no tomorrow while Keith, as he stands there doing his trademark drunk man guitar playing, still gets a huge kick out of watching Mick.

Sorry, folks this willingness to accept too little, and this attitude that "they don't owe the fans anything" (Wrong, they owe us EVERYTHING), is why I say the hardcore fans are like a battered wife.

Someone said FM is no longer relevant musically. Agreed. Someone else said maybe they should have packed up and shacked up in 1980 and be done with it. I am starting to agree with that too.

Uh..no, no they don't. They made the music and we bought it. They performed the show and we paid to see it. We paid money and they provided a product. They owe us nothing more.

If it's all about the commercial enterprise, you are correct. But if they want to be regarded as artists, they owe us more than that.

First of all, comparing fans to battered wives is insensitive and crass.

Second of all, they don't 'owe' us anything, and that mentality reads like the fans 'own' the band. It's a little 'Misery' to say the least. Artists of any medium need only to create, and they do that when they want to. We as a public have the right to patronize artists we choose to. I own albums, books, films, artwork that few others do because it's not popular. But it speaks to me. I also own albums, books, films, and artwork that is incredibly popular. It's Mass Entertainment, but it speaks to me as well.

I love Fleetwood Mac's music, and I would love for them to do a new album, and to tour behind it with a totally revamped setlist. However, if they choose not to, I do not feel betrayed by them. I just listen to the music I have and cherish the tours I went to. The only way to tell the band how I feel in a constructive way is to 'Vote With My Dollar.' I chose to sit this tour out because I just couldn't see paying the price they were asking for tickets. It doens't mean I don't like Fleetwood Mac anymore, and I'll be the first in line for the EP, and if they tour again, I may go.

But to say they 'owe' us anything is just plain unhealthy.

I'm usually complaining, too, but it does not matter really after all. When I see them in concert, I'm exited, I love everything they play, find each of them endlessly interesting to watch, love how they interact and basically worship the ground they walk on.

2003 was a bad year for me, but the FM concert, when I saw them again after 13 years made it so much better.

Today was my fathers funeral and I just know that in retrospect they will make the mess that is my 2013 by now better again.

So, if it is the same old setlist - then play on.

I certainly never remember anyone saying "you're a terrible fan" or "if you hate them so much why don't you go away" in any of those discussions. But it *always* comes up in setlist and tour discussions. You might be right about the rose colored glasses though, because, I tend to not actually participate in any sort of drama, once I realize there *is* drama.

Ah yes, Cheetah Girl. That's the one. :nod: Those were fun threads to read.

I'm sorry for your loss.

actually no. you can tell them that in person (if you have $400 and are willing to shell out for Mick seats, of course :p ). and Lindsey communicates with audience at their shows. he has by now at least somewhat of an idea what i think, i can tell you that (although he probably thinks i'll never be satisfied anyway). :shrug: not that they care, they are making their millions, with or without you or me paying for the tickets. there are plenty of people who want to hear legendary Fleetwood Mac. :shrug: