[This is old, but I don't think it was posted here before]
http://www.examiner.com/x-3086-Houst...Mac-in-Houston
Fleetwood Mac in Houston
May 12, 4:32 PMHouston Music Examiner Rene Cantu
It was a warm, wet day in Houston when Stevie Nicks came to town. Fleetwood Mac, the legends, had graced Space City with their presence and it was worth the wait.
Every night the band goes onstage, Fleetwood Mac faces a concert onus only a handful of other groups need worry about
: Are its songs too iconic? Is the rush of watching Stevie Nicks twirl out "Landslide" or "Rhiannon" live any match for the lifetime (or decades, anyway) of memories, associations and emotions those songs bring forth?
Of course not. It's a trick question anyway.
For one thing, only a fraction of Saturday night's nearly sold-out Toyota Center crowd - twenty- to sixtysomething, white as a glass of milk, at least 60 percent female and not nearly as many Nicks dressalikes as Aftermath expected - actually watched those songs. As in, had their eyes open and trained on either the stage or the two flanking video screens.
To this crowd, the opening notes to those songs hardly even qualify as music anymore. They're more like auditory passwords, and the files they unlock in the audience's memory bank caused their eyes to glaze over or close altogether, their lips to involuntarily mouth the words and their bodies to sway back and forth, whether alone or arm-in-arm with their neighbors.
What images hearing "Dreams" or "Gypsy" may cause them to see on the inside of their eyelids is a mystery, but watching it happen to thousands of people at once is both humbling and unnerving. It's like going to a different church, or a sporting event between two teams you don't particularly root for - you're obviously not having the same sort of spiritual experience as the people around you, but you're not entirely immune, either.
Buckingham is as technically skilled as any front-rank classical or jazz guitarist you can name, such as Paco de Lucia, John McLaughlin or Al di Meola. His blues chops are every bit the equal of Eric Clapton or Jimmy Page, which he proved beyond the shadow of a doubt on the jolting "Oh Well" and trance-like "I'm So Afraid," featuring a solo that was about as close to a musician bringing himself (and the crowd) to orgasm as Aftermath has ever seen. Finally, he is also an excellent folk musician, whether chiming out the minstrel-like melody of "Landslide" or the shardlike strumming of much spookier and more harrowing solo turn "Big Love."
All in all, the Mac was back in a big way, at a time when the pop world needs a lift, there's no voice as lingering, no lyricist as poetic, and no artist as beautiful as Stevie Nicks' to give it that much needed face lift.