Glasgow 7th Dec - hot off the presses

[fleetfootmike]

You know, for a while I didn't think I was going to get to this gig

Huge thanks to KJ, who came up trumps despite the Mac's (unwitting) best efforts to leave me with a train ticket, a hotel room, and no ticket, and found Shawn and myself a pair of seats in row *J*, in front of Lindsey

And a big wave to cosmicegg and family! Yay! I finally got to meet a Ledgie/Firefly. Hope you guys enjoyed it as much as we did!

The way to our seats was right past the stage, and I spotted a couple of the crew offstage on Stevie's side, who had a couple of synths set up. Got talking to one of them, and asked what they were for - turns out he plays a number of extra parts from there, including the low strings part on "Dreams", that odd little treated vocal sample at the end of the chorus on "Peacekeeper", and some the brass on "Tusk" (which is sampled a note at a time off the ORIGINAL USC Marching Band tracks on the Tusk master tapes!!! Brett's playing a brass part as well, as is the OTHER guy down in that offstage area.) Nice guy (if anyone gets to say hi at Earl's Court, he's the older guy with the baseball cap and American accent ).

So - onto the gig. Same set, same stage... No real surprises. The audience weren't quite as madly up for it as they were at the NEC, but the band rocked: I was paying attention to all manner of odd things, rather than necessarily Stevie/Lindsey - things like which songs John uses a pick on, etc. (Mostly because the rest of Fleetfoot Mike would probably kill me if I got to see the Mac without them and didn't do some Useful Research )

Linsey seemed to be having major problems with his guitar in "I'm So Afraid" - a couple of people I spoke to wondered if he broke a string during it - he kept tilting it up to look at it, and several notes in the main 'tune' part of the instrumental sounded odd... I'm not sure he did break a string - seems more as though he managed to pull the top E out of the bridge slot or something. He soldiered on, and (if you didn't know, you'd never have realised he was having trouble) produced a snorter of a solo before the inevitable toss (with perhaps a little more venom than he has been known to) of the Turner across the floor. The roadie (I assume it's still Ray?) handed him a change of guitar for "Tusk". NOT a Turner! For the benefit of guitar geeks like me, it was a white, rosewood neck, large headstock Fender Strat with a vibrato bridge (but no vibrato arm).

A few comments: "What's The World Coming To" is growing on me a LOT. Stevie was HOT HOT HOT on "Gold Dust Woman", "Big Love" was probably the best I've heard Lindsey do it this tour.

And now I'm sat on my bed in my room (a whole 5 minutes walk from the concert), watching the AIDS concert on TV with my laptop on my knees while I type this. I may never see Fleetwood Mac again in concert, but... damn, it's been worth every penny. And we'll always have Birmingham. And London. And Glasgow.