Quote:
Originally posted by joe
I don't want to start bashing but i find it quite disappointing that at times it's hard to pick out who's playing what.
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I have a cool little portable MP3 player (the MuVo X-Trainer, which I recommend) that I can load up with MP3s. So the other day, I loaded "Angel" & "Monday Morning" from the August 1980 Birmingham show, followed by the radio broadcast of the July 2003 show in Anaheim, & headed to the gym. The unfortunate differences are all the more apparent when you listen to the two eras back to back. The 1980 performances had so much beautiful, energetic space in them -- they were so propulsive & wiry & really got you pumped. There was a marvelous throwaway quality about them (the way an experienced actor casually tosses off a line so that it sounds inspired & natural instead of forced). Each instrument -- Lindsey's Turner, John's bass, Mick's drums & Christine's Yamaha -- is allowed to ebb & flow, increase in intensity & volume & then decrease, winding its sinewy way through the performance & gathering in momentum & then finally exploding & once again subsiding. Listening to them play in those days was like listening to a thunderstorm crackle, boom & then slowly grow faint.
Then I listened to the Anaheim show from last year, & was so disheartened to hear a sonic wall of sludge. There literally was not a hole that hadn't been filled by one of the umpteen musicians in the band, not a single space left untouched, not a single respite from the omnipresent noise. I argued with a friend of mine over the differences, a newspaper editor, & he maintained that it's just a matter of taste: my taste vs. someone else's taste. I told him, "No ... good taste vs. bad."
All the Mac members from that era were beautifully idiosyncratic players above all else; Fleetwood drummed like no one else, Buckingham played guitar like no one else, McVie played keyboards like no one else. Each player was heterodox & lacking in technique, but somehow that combined into a potent brew. You want to
hear those idiosyncracies, damnit -- otherwise, why bother? They bury their natural live sound under so much flotsam & jetsam, & poof goes the charm & the weirdness, all those highly individual, sometimes dorky styles of playing that separated them from the pack (*cough* Eagles *cough*).