^^If I had a dollar every time somebody proclaimed that this is the final Fleetwood Mac album/tour/concert, etc...
Although Fleetwood Mac can be very predictable in some ways, especially in terms of their live shows, this whole
Extended Play project has totally caught me off guard. For me, it's not just a handful of songs that they "just threw out there." It is perhaps the ballsiest thing they have done... ever.
-It's their first EP ever.
-It's their first indie release.
-It's their first digital-only release.
-They performed songs from it before its release (which has only been done a handful of times before).
-It's the first Rumours-era project that was primarily produced by an outside producer.
-It's the first Rumours-era release that didn't include any songs with Stevie singing the lead vocal.
But more than anything else, it proved that Fleetwood Mac is willing to work outside of the boundaries of the big label machine and they are willing to do it on the cheap, i.e., at Lindsey's home studio. They've essentially given up on the pretense that recording must be a grand affair with state of the art equipment, bloated budgets and endless months in the studio. Yes, computers may have decimated the music industry, but they have also enabled artists to render highly polished recordings cheaply using a Mac Airbook. Sure, their music is not going to sell the way it used to on a big label. But when recording costs are minimal and when the gross margin on return is higher (since they don't have label people salaries to pay), it helps to offset the disappointment with selling fewer copies. As one of the few bands of their generation that have not completely dived into the oldies circuit pool (although they are
this close), I think they do feel an obligation of sorts to "preserve the Fleetwood Mac brand" by trying to at least maintain some semblance of being an ongoing, creative concern.