Fantasy Tango
 

What made it onto Tango in The Night and what was left off, or used as only a B side, has always baffled me- There was a lot of innovative pop music recorded during those sessions, and I feel what made the final cut doesn't do the band justice. So I decided to make a playlist, my own version of Tango. I've had a hard time listening to the album ,as it stands, all the way through, and found listening to this fantasy Tango really enjoyable, and overall a better representation of the mac in general, and from this era.. I replaced 1 song from each member with another one of their respective B sides or outtakes and added 2 more.
Tracklist:

Book of Miracles
Big Love
Seven Wonders
Everywhere
Caroline
Tango In The Night
Mystified
Joan of Arc
Little Lies
Down Endless Street
Ricky
You and I Part I
Welcome to the Room...Sara
You and I Part II

I realize some might think I'm crazy for leaving off Isn't It Midnight- its just never worked for me, I just don't find the song or the arrangement interesting. Family Man doesn't even feel like the mac to me, and I think a lot can agree that When I See... is just too bland.
Having Welcome to the Room in between the You and I's was just an experiment that sounded good the first time through, but who knows...

Again, I really enjoyed listening to this running order, and think the songs I added were songs crucial to representing the band's creativity in arranging and production during this time period.
Try it and tell me what you think,
or maybe you've done the same thing and have an even better version! :)

i haaaaaaaaaaate Family Man

but [and i'm in the vast vast minority here] i LOVE Welcome to the Room :shocked: i know. i would never omit that. or Isn't it Midnight. I love that too

im very disappointed Joan of Arc never made it on there
and i love the Juliet outtake :p

Joan of Arc is an amazing song...touching, desperate...but I think it didn't fit into the general style of TITN. Nevertheless, Stevie should have used it for TOSOTM.
Sometimes I feel like an alien! everybody hates Family Man, but me and my friend, who are the greatest FM fans in my town, do love it. When I first told him about the song I said: you'll probably won't like it. most people from the ledge hate it.
But God bless his heart, he is in love with that song too. I think it is a great great song. There's a demo version that's even better, which has an extra verse. and the solo of guitar at the end...is sooo beautiful.
On the other hand, I agree with most of you who prefer you and I part I from part II. Book of miracles and down endless street are great tracks too.
there's a little song called "special kind of love" with never made it and never was recorded properly, which I adore. anyway, I love the album and all the b-sides, it's my favourite FM album, it's magic, has something magic. when you play it you can feel the colours from the cover.

I agree with your premise. I've always loved the B sides. But I lost Down Endless Street and have never been able to replace it.
Do you know where I can find it on the net?
I'm not very computer savy so it would have to be easy to download.
Thanks.,

I, personally, hope that Joan of Arc will be resurrected for the next Mac album. I think it's a song that will really relate to things that seem to interest Stevie in the post-9/11, Iraq-War era.

I think it would have fit into SYW perfectly, but I suspect that its inclusion would have tipped the album into way out there territory. I also think "Space Needle" could have been re-rendered by Lindsey and would have fit as well. But then again, SYW would have been overflowing with these dark, minor-key, 6-minute opuses (opi?)...

I would have ditched "You and I Part II" and "Mystified," and included "Family Man" and WISYA instead. I have always found "Mystified" to be just too full of sugary-sweet goopiness; I practically need an insulin injection after I hear it. And "You and I Part II" always makes me reach for the skip button. It just sounds so much like a cheesy cruise ship commercial jingle; even Kathy Lee Gifford would have called it tacky. Why that made the final cut over "Part I," I will never know... :shrug:. I like the inclusion of "Ricky," but I think Christine should come up with some different lyrics and a stronger melody on the verses. Kudos for not including "Special Kind of Love," which is even goopier than "Mystified." I think it would be neat to "bookend" the album with "Juliet" as the opener and "Book of Miracles" as the closer. I really, really like the FM version of "Juliet." It rocks hard!

You might add me to the reputed minority of fans who love Family Man. I think it a solid song, and I enjoy singing along to it.

-Matt

I always thought You and I part I should have opened the album. I think parts I and II were perfect bookends for the album. I've been inspired by this thread to make a Tango Double Album playlist in my iPod. Yay!

http://www.mediafire.com/?vo9hnuh5byg

Instrumentally, it's excellent. Great guitars, lead & rhythm. Great drum track, great bass, &c. Musically, it's back & forth between a major 7th & a 6th, a pop sound I've always liked -- always puts me in a traveling mood & a reflective bent.

As for "Joan of Arc," has it ever been confirmed that this is the Mac? I've never heard anyone except fans & bootleggers call it Fleetwood Mac. It never sounded like Fleetwood Mac to me, although I know it could be.

Thank you very much, I'm listening to it now. I haven't heard this in a long time.

I totally agree.

I haven't even listened to Tango once. I stopped at Family man, because I couldn't take it anymore. I suppose I'll have to dig it out...

Hmm.. Now that it was mentioned, You and I Part I would probably be a great album opener:thumbsup:

I've never actually heard the Mac version of Juliet.. could anyone post? thanks:nod:

"Book Of Miracles" is, when it comes down to it, just an instrumental version of "Juliet".

"You & I, Part 1" segueing directly into "Big Love" would've been the killer way to open the album.

I LOVE "Family Man".

HATE "Ricky"

LOVE "Down Endless Street" (just wish it would've been finished...there's zippo of the "typical" Lindsey guitarwork that graces the rest of the Tango album)

Don't know what people find listenable about Stevie's demos...I can't take 'em...any of 'em...and I can relate to the possible difficulties Lindsey had in finding anything useable about them to help mold them into finished songs. "Joan Of Arc" in particular. No wonder I find Stevie's tunes on Tango so abhorrant.

"Isn't It Midnight" is the song that has always drawn me back to this album...so by its exclusion on your list, I would find the album unlistenable....well, not "unlistenable" per se, but I wouldn't have anything to keep pulling me into listening to it.

I first became a pretty intense Mac/SN fan in 1986. I freakin' loved TITN when it first came out in '87, and still do. I am embarassed to say that I have never heard You & I Part I or Ricky. Could somebody please post these?
I would love to listen to Tango in this fantasy order.

Cheers All :)

:thumbsup: ME EITHER i never listen to it all the way thru
but then, i never listen to albums in sequential order
i have my ipod on perma!shuffle
but i pretty much always skip over Mystified, Family Man, You & I

i dont know why but i REALLY like Caroline...better than Oh Diane on Mirage :lol:

hear that people... it rocks hard
why wouldnt they have included it on the album
it sooooooo would have fit
prob better than Joan.

listen to Juliet here:
http://www.4shared.com/file/77075512...ngoJuliet.html

see, Joan would have worked way better on SYW than Tango imo
SYW is pretty dark in spots
and i think back to back with red rover or RTTG :eek:
i think i gotta go make a fantasy SYW cd :p
i really like Space Needle too
lots of people don't seem to like it

who made the comment that JoA was not the Mac?
do u mean it's a diff band or it's just Stevie-solo and not a Mac track?

here you go:

Ricky
http://www.4shared.com/file/95408581...4_-_Ricky.html

You & I pt1
http://www.4shared.com/file/95407064...__I_Part1.html

A lot of the b-sides seem to me to be just that- B-sides, but I'm really at a loss for why some of the outtakes of the tracks that were on the final album weren't used for the final album.

Family Man is a great example- the demo has that extra verse as someone else mentioned, which makes it darker, and it flows a lot better, less chopped-up.

Seven Wonders is similar, I think there's a demo which is also more flowing and less choppy than the final cut.

There's some very interesting versions of Everywhere, Mystified and others which have different backing vocals (sometimes none).

I'll have to post a tracklist of what I'd hear, but first I have to make it :P

- Spike

"Mystified" is an essential part of the album for me because it -- along with "You & I Part One," "Little Lies," "Make Me a Mask" -- represents a point in Lindsey's development that is oddly influenced by the pentatonic, or five-tone, scale. Certainly other pop songs had used the pentatonic (like the Genesis song "That's All" back in 1983), but Lindsey deliberately interweaves the five-tone scale into the fabric of much of the "Tango" album, not merely for formalistic reasons but for emotional reasons, as well. (The emotional atmosphere of a pop song structured upon the five-tone is unquestionable.)

Of course, there's no telling just how much this "Juliet" might have been altered or even reimagined if the band had kept working on it (working it over?) for official release. All the rough energy we love may have been subdued. It's hard to say.

I did. I've thought that for years. I'm not sure what we have of it is Fleetwood Mac "Tango" work-in-progress. It's somewhat experimental in its looped keyboard & percussion motif, but the sound of that loop along with the moaning guitar just doesn't sound like a Buckingham experiment. He tends not to paint such lengthy & droning ostinato-based canvases. I think "Joan of Arc" has more in common sonically with "Mirror Mirror" than anything Mac was doing that decade.

Or --- it might be Fleetwood Mac ... as the bootleggers said it was. It's just that it's never been confirmed, as far as I know.

Was Make Me A Mask intended for Tango?

I'm a little fuzzy on these sessions- maybe someone could make a complete list of what was, as far as we know, recorded for but never made Tango.

I don't know if it was or not but it should have been on there instead of Family Man..... sorry!! I'm joining the group of haters for that song!! But I LOVE Make Me a Mask..... :thumbsup:

Well, I'm going to stand up for Family Man- Lindsey can sing and play. :cool:

I don't like Joan of Arc however. I really enjoyed the beginning of the song, but it gets repetitive and doesn't go anywhere. As people have said, it's probably a work-in-progress, but I don't feel that it's a good work or one that meshes particularly well with the rest of the Tango material, which definitely feels like a Lindsey/Christine project with additions from Stevie.

I second this :thumbsup: I'd love to know what was Tango and what was just jam sessions or random recordings floating around on the Web/bootlegs.

- Spike

Sigh..... This is where Fleetwood Mac went irrevocably wrong. After Rumours -- the perfect two-sided pop album -- Lindsey Buckingham actually found the "formula" that could have sustained the group's high bar: the double album. Mirage and Tango and Say You Will all should have been double albums.

Mirage shouldn't have been made at all :mad: There's so many awful songs on that album it's a wonder it fared better than Tusk, a heck of a better album.

Tango restored the Mac to its' best- rock, proper angst, emotion, not the nonsense of 'Oh Diane' and 'Book of Love' and 'Love in Store' etc. There was really nothing in those songs. (Why did Buckingham ever let Dashut write songs for him?)

People complain about 'Family Man' and 'Mystified'- for me, Mirage was an album full of those sorts of songs. Although Gypsy, Eyes of the World and Hold Me are classics.


I agree, Tango should have been 2 discs, though. There was way too much good stuff left off the final album. But really, in the 80's, the record companies seemed to go for the short 1 CD/record albums.

Mac Quote of the Day: My wife is going to the Unleashed concert with me, and I was playing around with Tango tracks last night- she heard "Little Lies" and said "That's Fleetwood Mac? No way! What other stuff did they do in the 80's?". She thought Christine McVie was a man :P


- Spike

Hello All-- Here is my initial reaction to the three songs: "You and I pt 1": Interesting lyrics & above average melody. Should have been included on "Tango". "Ricky": good lyric, average melody. Borderline inclusion. "Juliet": Good lyric, poor melody. Correct decision to leave it off the CD. For the record, I like "Isn't it Midnight", "Family Man", and "You and I pt 2". I can't imagine the CD without these songs. Just my two cents worth, of course. Best always, Madelow.

For all those who aren't sold on "Family Man"- check out Tango Session track labeled "Family Man- Ext Guitar". It features some beats, extended guitar (duh), but most importantly, some vocals by Stevie including a short verse near the end. She rocks it out much better than Lindsey's, well, odd singing. It rounds out the song a lot better than the album version (which seems to be the least good version of the track I've come across yet!).

- Spike

I think Mirage was the last FM record and tour that sounded like a cohesive unit. After that and to paraphrase a TITN review, it was like the three singers are not that happy to be together again instead call out to each other from separate towers (or something like that). That remains to this day IMO - save maybe for BTM. To me and although I really like it, TITN was too glossy for me when compared to the three earlier records.

Plus, Hold Me, Gypsy, and Wish You Were here - are just fab. to me.

I still like a lot of the Mirage songs, but they're really 'pop songs' with no emotion- totally unlike White Album, Rumours, Tusk, TITN.

TITN lacks a little cohesion because of Lindsey controlling, and Stevie being in rehab for most of it and not really having an influence.

But I think the music is at a completely different level than Mirage. The main problem is the lyrics, in Tango. So many songs are excellent musically but poor lyrically- that's where I feel tracks like Family Man and Mystified fall down- they sound neat but have no substance.

Whereas I felt Mirage was very boring musically but talented lyrically.

I think Tusk was the last album (IMHO) that had the lyrics+music winning FM cohesion.

Also, something I feel that works on TITN is the 'stars get to shine'- Lindsey with Big Love, Stevie with Seven Wonders,Christine wth a bunch of trax- they get to stand out instead of silly FM harmonies like that was found on Mirage. I like being able to hear the individual artists' voices. Although I like backing vocals being sung by the other members ala Mystified and the outtake of Family Man.


I think TITN would be rated much better if they'd used some more 'out there' outtakes and not used a lot of the final cuts (or mixed the final cuts that way, either way). But I guess we'll never know :)

- Spike

Assuming you're referring to the Extended Guitar Mix that I have, yes, it raises the song about a million times. I mean. It becomes epically amazingly great.

true.
it's like stevie's demos
most of them i prefer better because they are rough and aren't touched up
im sure if the Mac retouched Juliet, it might have sounded worse than the Mirror version :rolleyes:

i have no idea
im not an expert on this stuff
it was just always labelled a "tango" outtake and that's what most people have probably assumed it to be
I think it sounds more Mac than anything Stevie's done
but that's just me
i'm sure there's a bunch of Stevie songs that are/were Mac songs and vice versa. like lindsey working on 24 Karat gold confused me