40 Years
 

It occurred to me this evening that it's been 40 years since the beginning of the string of live recordings that stretch from the San Francisco Fillmore West shows on 2 and 4 January 1970 through the New Orleans Warehouse shows at the end of that month, the Boston Tea Party shows in February, the European tour shows in March, the live BBC set from early April, to the Chalk Farm Roundhouse show on 24 April. I think the recordings we have from those few months, variable sound quality and all, are many of the band's finest. And all in all, the live recordings show much more of what this band was capable of than the studio tracks.

Do others here feel that this was the peak period for the Peter Green-era Fleetwood Mac? Or do you prefer an earlier period to this one?

I do feel that the last time with Peter Green is the BEST ever.....they were in sterling form, think about the BBC Radio One In Concert April 9th 1970... they didn't get any better than that.....
And this just proves that the Munich trip didn't put Peter in the care and attention category.....he was at his pinnacle even after that happened.....

I agree wholeheartedly - those live tapes of the final months are very valuable and represent the band and Peter at their peak IMHO. Some may feel that the band was to "jammy" at this point, bring it on I say!

i completely agree. while the very early mac are superb i do get bored by the endless elmores and slow blues. it's the jammy stuff for me ! when i hear fm shows from late 69 to Peter leaving i have to say they must have been the best band in the world at that point. PG is the finest uk guitarist and if he does noodle it sounds beautiful and inspired unlike clapton whose "cult" i've never really understood. personally i'm always ready to hear another 25 minutes of rattlesnake shake. Danny was the perfect foil and when all 3 are slamming tiger and stranger blues i'm overwhelmed. it's such a desperate shame what happened to Peter and Danny. and the general public have lost out coz they dont get to hear the concert tapes that are around ...then play on is a bit of a mess (with some incredible highlights) so there isnt too much released evidence of this amazing bands abilities.
wouldn't it be great if Mick or someone official could stream or torrent all existing shows from a website or give a full release to the bbc in concert show. i wonder what else is lurking in Dinky Dawsons /wolfgangs vault archives.

I also agree. And I, too, get bored with the Elmore stuff. I generally just skip Elmore and the 50's rock numbers. No question that PG was at the top of his game when he left FM. Sometimes the jammy stuff gets a bit much, but I'll take that over the other stuff

Well, if you think about that, it was why Peter wanted a third guitar player, to develope.....

Mario.;)

I very much enjoy the late '68 and early '69 (Caroussel Ballroom, Shrine, Den Haag) and the very beginning. I also feel Peter is/was at his bluesbest on the yet to be published live tapes with John Mayall. From 1970 on there was much more jamming. Peter really developed himself, as did Danny, as a musician. However I get the shivers on my spine when they play the blues.
Happy new year everybody :wavey:

:lol: This is exactly how I feel, ash1. This is how you diagnose true addiction....

And it would be great if all those great '70 spring concerts could be shared with all music-lovers. 9th of April '70 BBC Concert off course. I had forgotten how great that is...

Just the same I agree with Wouiter - the late '68 and early '69 live stuff is great too. Also the unreleased live Mayall tapes. Pure clear superior british blues. (I wonder what happens to these tapes on John The Revelators homepage, anyway).

Ms Moose

I agree with you all, the Peter Green 1970 concerts were Fleetwood Mac finally finding an identity, with a great live setlist. The Roundhouse show setlist in April (Wolfgang's Vault) could've been the beginning of a great U.S. tour that summer. I've said it before, if Green remained in the band another six months, they would be talking about him in the states as much as they talk about Eric Clapton today.

Live at the BBC.....This had me thinking.....
 

I have a double Live at the BBC album which is a compilation of tracks released in 1995. (this is not the Live BBC from the Paris Cinema, April 9th 1970 ). See the following comments from:-

http://discog.fleetwoodmac.net/discog.php?pid=192

Quote:-

"Contains live material recorded for the British Broadcasting Company between 1967 & 1970

On the whole, less improvisational than some may hope but still colorful and varied nonetheless. According to "The complete recording sessions" book, there's at least another 70 odd recordings still in the BBC vaultsof the Mac up until 1971, one can only hope these see the light of day soon too."

My question is:-

Does anyone know on what albums (if any) the 70 odd tracks surfaced over the last 15 years?

The whole Radio One In Concert April 9th 1970 is available on "Show-Biz Blues" the follow up to the "Vaudeville Years".....;)
That boxset has plenty of BBC recordings, stated as "Promotional sessions"......
Mario.

Mario, thanks for the info.

I have both Show-Biz Blues and The Vaudeville Years, Show-Biz has a total of 29 tracks, 3 of which are from Peter B's, not Fleetwood Mac, and Vaudeville has 31 tracks. This means that 13 odd tracks are still un-accounted for....
Does anyone know what happened to these?


Hppy New Year to one and all..

Norton, it's actually a lot more complicated than that. A lot of the tracks from Show-Biz Blues and Vaudeville Years are not from BBC sessions, but are instead recording session out-takes or alternate takes of released tracks, i.e. "The Madge Sessions", "Do You Give A Damn For Me", "World In Harmony", and many others. So only a portion of the total tracks on those discs are actually from BBC sessions.

Where are the rest of them? Very good question...many have appeared on any number of bootlegs over the years, and as you'd expect from boots, the sound quality ranges from ok to poor. And many of these were originally taped straight from the radio broadcasts since you can hear the announcer talking over the beginning and/or end of some of these tracks. But even with these bootlegged tracks, there are still a lot of BBC session tracks that have never seen the light of day, and it's a good question as to whether we'll ever be able to hear many of those. Who knows whether they all even still exist and if so, what shape they're in...and then it would take someone with enough money to track them down, pay for licensing, compile them (and presumably clean up the sound as needed), and release them, and then have a reasonable expectation of at least recovering their expenses from sales.

Although most of us here would love to hear another BBC session collection, I don't know what the market for such a disc would be - anyone know how many copies of Live At the BBC were sold?

Actually Sanctuary Records planned a 3 cds boxset some years ago, with unreleased numbers, Martin wrote the sleeve notes for that, but nothing happened due to copyright reasons, BBC wasn't so keen to licence (hope in my English here) the tracks, I'm afraid!
Mario.

I remember that planned box set, Mario. I wondered why it was never released, now I know - thanks for the info! Hope it might still be released sometime in the future.