View Single Post
  #3  
Old 06-10-2019, 11:56 PM
elle's Avatar
elle elle is offline
Addicted Ledgie
 
Join Date: Oct 2010
Location: DC
Posts: 12,150
Default Werchter - the tale of 2 opposite reviews part 2

and then, the completely opposite review of the exact same show, that ends with " This Fleetwood Mac sounded like a tribute band of its own at the least good moments." (again, google translate, so you have to kinda discern what the original text must have said.)


https://www.humo.be/festivalitis/402...box=1560067767

© Koen Keppens

Fleetwood Mac at Werchter Boutique: 'A sweet little lie '

Sunday June 9, 2019 - 10:05, by ( serge simonart )

52 (!) Years after Mick and Peter Green founded the group, Fleetwood Mac , version 6.0, joined Werchter Boutique. For those who know their hits from radio Nostalgia, it was a great concert. Anyone who saw Fleetwood Mac in the Sportpaleis in the seventies, eighties, nineties up to and including 2015, had mixed feelings, because what you could see and hear here under that name is a sweet little lie .

"This is the 58th performance of this tour," Stevie Nicks began a very short speech for her. Once she brought a binding text of - and no, I am not exaggerating - full eleven (11!) Minutes in the Sportpaleis. That is not unimportant, because the brilliant Lindsey Buckingham is no longer part of Fleetwood Mac , the quenched and wandering English blues band that he breathed new life into, is mainly due to the fact that he made Stevie ridiculous behind her back during an award ceremony because she also gave a lengthy speech there.

Mike Campbell (guitarist of Tom Petty's Heartbreakers ) and Neil 'Crowded House' Finn had to make Lindsey Buckingham forget, and I didn't think it worked. Because Buckingham wrote not only the greatest hits of Fleetwood Mac between 1973 and 1995, he also had a unique voice, was the ideal sounding board for his muse Stevie Nicks in and out of bed, and is a brilliant and unique guitarist - the only star who played solo without plectrum. The guitar reef of 'Go your own way', the riff of 'Everywhere', the beat of 'Big Love', the riff of 'Rhiannon' ... All courtesy of Lindsey Buckingham. And Mick Fleetwood, who praised all mercenaries of his company four times (that it was an honor to be able to duel with his percussionist; that the songs of Neil Finn had saved his life; that pianist Ricky Peterson was so brilliant, etc), did not even mention Lindsey Buckingham. While Fleetwood Mac would still have been a rattling blues band without Buckingham, one without world hits.

No, it is not beautiful. That after all these years Stevie Nicks demanded that her ex be put at the door - "he goes or I go" - is in fact a bitter divorce in which Stevie enforced custody of the group.

Lindsey Buckingham was kicked out of the group earlier in 1987, and then two guitarists replaced him, Rick Vito and Billy Burnette - that says something. Even now, he was replaced by Mike Campbell and Neil Finn, who, if someone had predicted to him ten years ago that he would be Fleetwood Mac's frontman, would have reacted extremely unbelievingly. And Christine McVie also left the group between 1998 and 2014.

In the audience a woman held up a sign that said 'Guess why my name is Sara'. But Stevie Nicks didn't sing that beautiful song tonight. She added text to a long drawn-out 'Gold Dust Woman', so that it looked as though she was addressing her ex Lindsey Buckingham through the audience: 'Baby you don't feel me now ... you should see me now ... you can't change me now ... you can't blame me now '. Buckingham, who, by the way, has difficulty recovering at this very moment from a heavy open-heart operation in which his vocal cords were damaged, as if fate just re-imitated after his resignation from Fleetwood Mac.

Mick Fleetwood had taken advantage of the absence of Lindsey Buckingham to smuggle a couple of old songs into the set, classics dating back to before the Buckingham / Nicks duo of the then fading blues group made a super group. And though I have no doubt that a handful of older young people were happy with 'Oh Well' and 'World turning', but they sounded oh so sixties, while Buckingham's songs continue to sound timeless. And Buckingham's solo songs were kept out of the never-ending set list as much as possible - not 'Big Love', though they couldn't ignore 'Go your own way'.

The setlist was a jukebox full of hits from 'The Chain', 'Dreams',' Second hand news', 'Little lies',' Gypsy ',' Landslide ',' Monday Morning ',' You make loving fun 'and' Black Magic Woman 'to the closing track' Don't Stop '(with the last sentence' Don't you look back ', even though they had done that for two and a half hours). The endless drum solo by Mick Fleetwood, who almost pathologically wanted to prove that he could still physically cope, took you there.

Those who paid careful attention heard all group members drop stitches, miss notes, screw up guitar licks, and sing false. The percussionist played too much in at least five songs. And two background singers sang as discreetly as possible the lion's share of the high notes that Stevie Nicks and Christine McVie no longer made.

But if you were willing to forget that there was an amputee super group with five mercenaries here, it was a good concert, and rain-free. And I stood an estimated seven meters from Stevie Nicks, naked under her clothes - around 1976 I, and a whole generation of teenage boys in love with me, would have found that a very exciting thought. But time waits for no one also apply to Stevie .

The good old sympathetic Neil Finn did his best. But the disadvantage of classics that have passed over and over a million times on the radio is that you associate them with exactly that tuning, exactly that timbre, exactly that guitar attack ... Neil sometimes seemed to be the leader of a creditable cover band, and that can be at a cost of 150 euros for a Golden Circle ticket are not the intention.

The winner is the brand name, which lives on in the interest of the heirs long after the last founding member of the group is incinerated. Those who are satisfied that the early seventies are increasingly hiding behind smokescreens, musical stools and mercenaries, can undoubtedly look at Fleetwood Mac again within five years. This was the last time for me, because I can't stand watered down versions of what I once saw at its best. There should be limits to financial opportunism and group names that no longer cover the load.

INXS will soon be touring again with the fifth replacement of Michael Hutchence . The Eagles entered with the son of Glenn Frey who replaced his dead father. Sting 's son plays in a Bowie tribute. Keeping the brand name profitable at all costs makes tribute bands sound more authentic than the original. This Fleetwood Mac sounded like a tribute band of its own at the least good moments. What's the next step? The Rolling Stones with roughly Bryan Adams replacing Mick Jagger ? Thanks, but no thanks.
__________________

"kind of weird: a tribute to the dearly departed from a band that can treat its living like trash"
Reply With Quote