TITN videos
 

Were these filmed before or after LB's decision to leave? They seem pretty damned cheerful, even acting silly with eachother, in the Seven Wonders video. In Big Love & Little Lies they did not look so happy, but I don't know if that's because everyone was really ready to kill eachother or if they were trying to act really serious in the vids.

Anyone know? :shrug:

Before he quit.

Yes, Big Love, 7 Wonders & Little Lies were done before he quit (or was fired), but Everywhere may have been done after he was gone.

^I figured Everywhere was later, considering none of the band members are in it. I tend not to even count that as a video, it's useless.

that's the worst video ever

I agree. You can barely see Mick, John & Chris. They're in silouette.

Forget the music videos. What's with the inserted close ups of Stevie during the Tango concert video? That video has hardly any decent live concert footage to speak of. Why all the close ups of Stevie barking into the camera instead of shots of her belting it out to the audience? Why no shots of her singing to one or both of the Lindsey twins? :laugh:

:shrug:

I agree that that whole thing was most unfortunate. It wasn't the world's liveliest tour to begin with, but to intercut so much slow-motion & stop-motion, cheap & banal soundstage footage, & insistently self-conscious camera work (swooping, panning, gliding, zooming in, zooming out) into an already staid performance (at that time, the band was "mature" in the worst way) was to render it all the more boring & tiresome. The minds of the filmmakers were filled with pompously elaborate ideas but an inability to execute them with any real creativity or taste. The total effect is sodden & kitschy. Think about all your friends & fellow fans: who among them has ever expressed any excitement or genuine love for this video? It's an impure commodity: it has absolutely nothing for anyone. It's the epitome of shlock art.

I think Stevie's equally stupid closeup work on her Red Rocks video the year before is what gave her the idea to work the same shtick into the Fleetwood Mac San Francisco film.

Art? You're too kind. :D



You're not alone. :wavey:

I think the close ups were idea of the director and producer and they are sooooo 80's :laugh: Having said that, I do not mind them as much as others - but to each their own.

I must say I LOVE Seven Wonders from this video and I think Everywhere is done in a pretty cool manner.

Other than that, I think they all sound not that great - but and again, to each their own.

I don't understand. I thought the whole first part of the set was lively- Isn't it Midnight, Rhiannon, Oh Well, Seven Wonders......

True, though there are reasons TO own it. For me, THE biggest reason to own this video is Rick Vito's amazing take on "I Loved Another Woman." "Isn't It Midnight" is also pretty good. I just wish they would have included "Rattlesnake Shake," "Brown Eyes," and "Go Your Own Way."

I quite like the 'Tango' video. But then, I am a dork.

It's filmed exactly the way concert videos, both shortform and longform, were filmed in 1987.
With the advent of MTV, it was no longer good enough to release a concert video with half-length shots and no "effects."

Ah well, to each their own, as they say.

(For the record, I could have done without the slo-mo backstage footage.)

I really can't stand it, Stew. I think it's one of the worst things the band has ever put out.
I wish I could accept that as an excuse for this blemish on the band's output. I guess people will just watch it & get through it because they like seeing Stevie or hearing all the nice hits. They used to say that well over half the the work done in all the professions was garbage. One of the kicks about Fleetwood Mac was that they used to land way out ahead of the pack; you didn't expect Fleetwood Mac to put out the same crap that the majority of bands put out because they had so often proved themselves capable of so much more.
That slam-bang, disorienting style of editing infected everything: movies, music videos, commercials, even radio (in aural terms). But there was still marvelous work being done in the '80s: Phil Joanou's "Rattle & Hum" in 1989, the live material in Springsteen's video anthology, Michael Apted's "Bring on the Night" in 1985, Petty & Dylan in Gillian Armstrong's "Hard to Handle" in '86, Laurie Anderson's "Home of the Brave" (one of Lindsey's influences), Peter Gabriel's "PoV," Ry Cooder's "Let's Have a Ball" -- & don't laugh, but Madonna's "Ciao Italia" -- & going back a few years before the "Tango" concert are the David Mallet film of Bowie's Serious Moonlight tour & of course the legendary "Stop Making Sense" by Jonathan Demme. All of these films, at the very least, show a respect for the performers, for the songs & for the film audience in a way that the tacky "Tango" in San Francisco doesn't get anywhere near. The sound is better in most of these films, too. You get a real feel for the performers' craft & personalities because the director lets them build a performance the way an actor on stage builds a performance: with natural tempos & energy that arcs in recognizable patterns instead of camera work just carelessly & randomly jumping between the same four or five "techniques" in equivalently timed cuts throughout the entire 90 minutes, until you're disoriented & disconnected from whatever's happening onstage. Watch "The Dance" & then put this "Tango" concert in the VHS -- watch them back to back. That should clarify just what we mean by "good" & bad." In "Tango," the camera even purposely destroys the psychic space between stage & crowd -- it's all just for no good reason. The tricks aren't rotten just because they're being used; it's because they're used for no expressive purpose. You with your powerful identification with emotion & genuineness in art, Johnny, I'm surprised that you respond at all to this noisy claptrap.

I think it represents the real nadir of the band's concert footage, & a definite low point even among the rest of the stuff we saw in the '80s.

Don't misunderstand me, David... I'm not saying it's my favorite of FM's too few concert videos. Most definitely not.
And I certainly don't prefer it to 'The Dance,' 'In Concert: 1982,' or 'Live In Boston.'

I just happen to like it. :shrug: Sure, it's not timeless or "artistic," but it's a little curio of a certain period of time when MTV was king to my generation, and I was still a young (15 years old at the time), excitable fan of this really cool band.

Time may reveal the flaws in the things I liked as I grew up... but that doesn't stop me from liking them or finding value in them.
That's why I said I'm a dork. :)

"Stop Making Sense" is quite possibly the best concert film of all time, but it's a bit much to think the Mac could pull off anything as spectacular as that one in terms of a live video. The Mac were not Talking Heads, the Mac has always been about gloss and always will be. "Stop Making Sense" had almost no audience shots, everything was painted one color to avoid anything standing out, had no colored lighting, and no after-the-fact close-up shots. Stevie would be aghast if she was told they weren't going to give her the best lighting money could buy (and the most post-production on her vocals that money could buy). The non-use of audience shots in "Stop Making Sense" was practically brilliant in it's own right. It allows the viewer to judge the performance in their own mind, without seeing shots of the crowd jumping up and down or swaying themselves back and forth. You see Weymouth playing her bass and staring down Byrne without any intrusions from the people that were there. You get to see Byrne peter out onto the stage with his tape player and form your own opinion as to what is going on without seeing the reactions of the people who are there. In Mac videos, the use of audience shots seems cheap, as if they want to reinforce to the viewer that they kick ass and, dammit, there are no two ways about it.

I've always wondered exactly how much input the band had when it came to that atrocious "live" video, because even in those days, the entire affair was pretty darn cheesy. It seems to me that the video was approached as a commercial; they wanted everything perfect to the point where it came across as artificial and when you attempt that, you're not going to establish the personalities of the performers very well, nor are you going to show much respect for the art of live performance because it ends up robbing it of all resemblances to a rock concert. It takes away the rush you feel when you're at one and replaces it with an impersonal, phoney studio product.

I like the tango vid too. I love Chain, ISnt It Midnight, World Turning, and Gold Dust Woman. All great versions! :)

You put the words into my mouth!

I agree that usn't a classic but just to hear some songs that have either never been done again or rarely done since then makes up for the cheez factor.

I will say the annoying backstage antics are so stupid including the dumb things Mick says backstage. Especially dull is when he says that crap about being a man of human incompitence or something like that.