http://www.musicmurmur.com/blog/2012...uckingham.html
When older bands or artists tour, sometimes it’s easy to think they’re doing it for the money and in some cases they very well may be. Watching how much passion and emotion Lindsey Buckingham exuded at the Sunset Center in Carmel proved that without a doubt he’s still at it for his love of music, not to make a quick buck. One of the sure advantages of still touring at his age is that he’d never run out of music to choose from, especially for someone like him who not only has decades of his solo career to choose from, but Fleetwood Mac too, with even a little bit of Buckingham Nicks, all of which he included in his fourteen-song set. I’d of course heard Fleetwood Mac songs over the years but wasn’t familiar with anything past their biggest hits and knew even less of Buckingham’s solo work, and though the lack of familiarity can sometimes hinder how much I enjoy an artist’s performance, it had no negative bearing on what I took from his. The understated way in which he performed had something to do with it, and it wouldn’t have been too much to expect a larger and louder stage show from a member of the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame, but all Buckingham needed was a variety of guitars that he and his tech would trade each other between songs.
One of the most impressive things to me was that despite nearly forty-five years of doing it, his singing voice wasn’t worse for wear and in fact was more powerful on a few of the live versions of songs compared to their recorded ones. “Go Insane” was the shining example of this, him growling and screaming the chorus as opposed to its quieter studio version. It was amazing to see that regardless of how old some of the songs were and that they were written when he was at different stages in his life, he played them with just as much, if not more fervor and there was nothing artificial about it. A unique moment that proved he wasn’t phoning it all in was when he encountered some sound troubles and threw the guitar he was currently using down, smashing it in the process and joking during the net song he intended to use that guitar but obviously couldn’t anymore. The aforementioned sound problems were the sole downside, the acoustics bouncing off the wall of the balcony in such a way that the music sounded distorted and was painfully loud to my ears sometimes, but this was likely a problem of the venue and not Buckingham’s. If you get the chance to see him, no matter whether you’re a big fan or know a few songs at most, I highly recommend catching a show of his!