Ft. Lauderdale show

[LB Freakazoid]

Hi y'all.... this being my 30th some-odd time seeing FM or SN or LB since the Tusk tour, the show last night was pretty good... the house looked packed...
during Landslide, Stevie and Lindsey seemed to have a few "giggly" moments - she also sang the last part with a little bit of a different melody - or that's what it sounded like to me.... they also seemed to be having a good time with GYOW.....
She dedicated Landslide to Ari (?) - the man who is here in So. Fla. that's going to make her "new comfortable boots"....
Lindsey looked tanned - probably from the day at the pool....
Overall, a great concert - not too much new from other posts.... which makes me wonder if it's such a good thing to read stuff on line about their previous shows - kinda ruins the planned impromptu moments they've conjured up - though I have to say that the video switcher guy putting the hand holding of S&L on the screens a little much...

[wheart]

Originally Posted by LB Freakazoid

Hi y'all.... this being my 30th some-odd time seeing FM or SN or LB since the Tusk tour, the show last night was pretty good... the house looked packed...
during Landslide, Stevie and Lindsey seemed to have a few "giggly" moments - she also sang the last part with a little bit of a different melody - or that's what it sounded like to me.... they also seemed to be having a good time with GYOW.....
She dedicated Landslide to Ari (?) - the man who is here in So. Fla. that's going to make her "new comfortable boots"....
Lindsey looked tanned - probably from the day at the pool....
Overall, a great concert - not too much new from other posts.... which makes me wonder if it's such a good thing to read stuff on line about their previous shows - kinda ruins the planned impromptu moments they've conjured up - though I have to say that the video switcher guy putting the hand holding of S&L on the screens a little much...

Glad you had a good time! Did you actually see them during the Tusk tour? I agree with not reading too much about the show before you see it. This tour I didn't watch any youtube clips so I was somewhat surprised with the songs. On Stevie's last solo tour I read nothing about the setlist so it was really special when I saw her. Glad to hear Stevie found a new bootmaker! Funny, she finds someone to make her new boots in hot as hell South Florida!

[Musicman408]

Glad to hear you had a great time at the show!!!!

Reading any sort of review just brings me back to my magical night in Columbus!

Awesome that Stevie is finding some new boots. Can't wait to see what they look like!

As for not reading about the shows before you see them- good for you!!! I don't have enough willpower to not do that.

[hartsfelder]

hi guys ! just wanted to say the show last night was more than amazing. the entire front section - 15 rows - were allowed up to the stage from before the lights even went down.

LB was on FIRE ! and Stevie looked incredible. I didn't think after MSG it could get any better - but last night it did. I have never seen her do GDW that way, which I will always think of as the "Patti Labelle" version. LOL

she was very chatty and extended the Gypsy story a bit adding the part about meeting LB and joining his band Fritz and opening for all the big names, etc.

she dedicated Landslide to a local "shoemaker" who is making her a pair of "fabulous boots that are still comfortable"

spun her ass off during Stand Back !

here's a couple of my videos on YT - there's 10 in total but I won't post all here....

Go Insane

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=d5ZsrNwEe68

Sara

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mU1x61skco8

GYOW

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gw4M0MJvazY

Stand Back

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HFnWiuj5l78

Atlantic City here I come.............

[michelej1]

Blurb from the president of Sunrise Sports and Entertainment, Michael Yormak, from the Florida Panthers website, April 23, 2009:

http://panthers.nhl.com/team/app/?se...ticleid=419852

Today was another crazy day. Meetings from early this morning to late afternoon kept me extremely busy. Tonight was the Fleetwood Mac concert and the crowd was pretty good. The band went on stage at 8:15pm and played for approximately two hours.

I had dinner tonight with Neil Jacobson, Florida President of Livenation. Livenation is the promoter for the Fleetwood Mac Tour. Neil is a great guy and really supports our venue. Most of the Livenation acts that come to South Florida play our building, thanks to Neil.

[diamondsnake]

I was impressed with the Stand Back twirls this time too! I saw a Youtube clip of like the first night of this tour, and the Stand Back twirls sucked! They looked like they were in slow motion. I bet the fact that she is wearing more comfortable boots this last week means it is easier for her to twirl and spin around, which is fine by me!

[wheart]

well that Stand Back was pretty good....she seems to be a little more energetic, at least more than she was in Philly. I like the hand/arm gesturing she was doing towards the end. I hate to say this but she does kinda seem tranquilized, in some form or fashion, on this tour.

[BTFLCHLD]

Originally Posted by hartsfelder

hi guys !

A-HA! you are the one that posted the great FM videos! I appreciate you filming and sharing with us here; I have been posting them here and there. Welcome to The Ledge!

[BTFLCHLD]

second hand news


I do like videos shot from this angle.

[michelej1]

Fort Meyers News Press, by David Dorsey April 24, 2009

http://www.news-press.com/article/20.../90424057/1075

Concert review: Fleetwood Mac's underlying drama means great show

The chemistry of former lovers who have reconciled — but realize things never can be the same — and the human drama that goes on with being close-quartered colleagues, or in this case, professional musicians, can be seen by all the world on Fleetwood Mac’s stage.

The band, founded by drummer Mick Fleetwood in the late 1960s, has evolved over the years, and its most prominent lineup, minus keyboardist/singer Christine McVie, played a 23-song set that lasted two hours and 30 minutes Thursday night at the Bank Atlantic Center in Fort Lauderdale.

Singer and “welsh witch” Stevie Nicks, guitarist and vocalist Lindsey Buckingham — the onetime couple — played off one another and at times sang to one another throughout the show.

Even those sitting in the upper reaches of the 20,000-seat — and almost full — arena could see, on the massive screens above each side of the stage, the expressions of remorse and reconciliation on the faces of Nicks and Buckingham as they played the ballad “Sara.”

Nicks’ singing and Buckingham’s melodic guitar playing were supported by the thunderous rhythm section of Fleetwood on drums and John McVie on the bass guitar.

“Every time we get together, we sit in rehearsal and try to make each return a little different,” said Buckingham, who turns 60 on Oct. 3. He did not look or play like his age. “This time, we said, ‘Let’s just go out there and have some fun.’”

And so they did.

Fleetwood, approaching his 62nd birthday on June 24, looks like Santa Claus. Except he stands a few inches taller — he’s 6-foot-6 — and wore black, not red.

Also unlike St. Nick, Fleetwood sports a silver pony tail and has eyes that bug out of his head.

And he sure can play the drums.

Pounding on the drums the entire night, Fleetwood finally had his chance for a solo.

After ending the 20-song set with “Stand Back,” and “Go Your Own Way,” most of the crowd did not go anywhere. They stuck around for the encore.

Toward the end of “World Turning,” the rest of the band, which included five supporting musicians, left the stage, leaving it to Fleetwood.

Following a five-minute drum solo, his bandmates returned for “Don’t Stop.”

And the band didn’t. They did one more song during a second encore, concluding the show with “Silver Springs.”

Fleetwood Mac opened with “Monday Morning” and “The Chain.”

Other highlights included “Gypsy,” “Rhiannon,” “Gold Dust Woman” — during which Nicks’ donned a gold-colored scarf — and this reviewer’s personal favorite, the bluesy “I’m So Afraid.

[michelej1]

Miami Herald, April 24, 2009

http://www.miamiherald.com/living/story/1015989.html

Fleetwood Mac's chemistry still on display in concert
BY HOWARD COHEN
[email protected]
Fleetwood Mac's always done dysfunction well.

Rumours, the group's greatest hit, was a testament to making art out of madness, and Thursday, before about 10,000 fans at Sunrise's BankAtlantic Center, guitarist Lindsey Buckingham, along with ex-lover Stevie Nicks and the terrific core rhythm section namesakes of the band, Mick Fleetwood and John McVie, paid homage to what Buckingham called ``a complex and convoluted emotional history.''

But for this Unleashed Tour, devoted to the band's greatest hits, Fleetwood Mac, for only the second major road trip sans their old ray of light Christine McVie, ''just wanted to go out and have fun,'' Buckingham said.

''Fun'' in Fleetwood Mac lingo, of course, was primarily the domain of Christine McVie's sunny pop tunes (she's the one, after all, who wrote You Make Lovin' Fun). For Buckingham and Nicks, ''fun'' is in the airing of their romantic disappointments in songs that champion all the ways in which lovin' isn't much fun at all.

''If you don't love me now, you will never love me again,'' spit the duo on the set's second song, The Chain, and it was hard not to observe Buckingham's glare at Nicks, who harmonized on the other side of the stage.

''You'll never get away from the sound of the woman who loved you,'' retorted Nicks in the show closer, Silver Springs, more than two hours later.

For 140 minutes and 23 songs, Buckingham and Nicks traded hits -- musical ones, natch -- to entice fans who are still hooked on the strikingly scored soap opera aspect of this band.

For Sara, a 1979 hit rarely performed live, Nicks sauntered over to Buckingham's mike from her side of the stage and the two entangled, heads resting against each other's shoulders. ''There's a heartbeat, and it never really died,'' Nicks whispered in Sara's delicate coda. Needless to say, the crowd delighted. Storms, a 1979 beauty never performed live until Unleashed, was even better as Nicks, 60 and radiant, introduced the album track as a song about ''stormy'' situations and people. Few do justice to the big time world heartbreak of drugs, sex and rock 'n' roll so well.

All of this would be trite melodrama if the band had chosen to coast on its enviable catalog. Buckingham, 59, in particular, had always bristled at taking the easy way out by repeating the success of Rumours, for instance. But for this tour, heavy on favorites from mid- to late-70s classics Fleetwood Mac, Rumours and Tusk -- nothing newer than 1987's Big Love featured and the foursome dug back into its '60s Peter Green blues period for a blistering Oh Well -- Buckingham and his musical partners proved amenable to celebrating the band's legacy. The most pleasant surprise, and a concert highlight, was Buckingham returning his solo single, Go Insane, to its original '80s synth-pop arrangement.

But any concerns that potentially shop-worn songs like Don't Stop, a Rumours hit burnished further into pop culture by a former United States president's fondness for classic rock, or Go Your Own Way or Gypsy might feel perfunctory evaporated as the band's stellar musicianship revitalized the material.

Nicks, introduced by drummer Fleetwood as ''the First Lady of Fleetwood Mac,'' was in strong voice, hitting the intense vamping ending of Gold Dust Woman and her sassy Stand Back with surprising ease and resonance. Buckingham's inventive electric guitar work is peerless as anyone who witnessed previous tours, The Dance (1997) and Say You Will (2003), can attest. But his voice, which hadn't kept pace, was in the best, most pliable shape it has been in since he first left the band in 1987.

Fleetwood Mac still matters because the links that kept this particular chain together -- the interpersonal chemistry, the passionate songwriting that has endured for 42 years, the desire for growth and the joy in the playing -- remains intact.

[michelej1]

^I'm glad that Howard Cohen knows his stuff. At least he knows Lindsey's stuff. It's always good to read a review where the writer seems to have a clue about the band, beyond the 1977 drama. Michele

[michelej1]

Miami New Times, April 24, 2009
http://blogs.miaminewtimes.com/cross..._mac_at_th.php

Last Night: Fleetwood Mac at the BankAtlantic Center
By Michelle F. Solomon in Concert Review

Fleetwood Mac
Thursday, April 23, 2009
Bank Atlantic Center, Sunrise

Better Than: A Big Mac

Having seen Fleetwood Mac at least a dozen times, and Stevie Nicks on her own probably twice as many, suffice to say I have a bit of history to compare Thursday night's stop in SoFla for the Fleetwood Mac "Unleashed: Hits Tour 2009."

For all the Mac fans out there (I am one of you, remember, before you continue reading further), there's no doubt of the talent and greatness of each of these demigods, including Ms. Nicks, Lindsay Buckingham, Mick Fleetwood, and John McVie. But Thursday night's concert left a hollow spot in my gypsy soul.

The multi-Grammy-winning Rock and Roll Hall of Fame inductees haven't released any new material since 2003's "Say You Will." So this latest tour is to dust off the old chestnuts that continue to make this band a draw whether there's something new to pitch or not.

Mick Fleetwood said in a recent interview, "For the very first time, we're going out on the road without an album. All of the energy is really about just getting out there and putting on a show that really resonates emotionally."

Mick, that sounds all well and good, so what happened?

On Thursday night, every one was on autopilot. It was like my old bar band days when we'd be like, "Let's collect the money and get the hell outta here" after singing an evening full of cover tunes. Then, the crowd loved it, so we had done our job. Same thing with Fleetwood Mac, who has now become a cover band of their own tunes. The crowd loved it, so they had done their job.

At least Stevie remembered what Florida city she was playing in. A few years ago, while I was reviewing a show in Philadelphia, Nicks blurted out, "Hello, Pittsburggggh!" This time it was, "Fort Lauderdaaaaaaaaale. It's great to be here!"

I so wholeheartedly wanted to embrace this iconic woman of rock, but I couldn't get beyond the Ghost of Nicks Past. On May 26, the rock chanteuse will be 61. Just for comparison's sake, a few months ago I caught Chrissie Hynde's show. The mascara-laden frontwoman of the Pretenders is 57, but she sure kicks it. And as long as I'm on the subject, freakin' Patti Smith is 62. And the high energy she exhibited at the last show I saw of hers in New York wasn't from a bunch of Red Bull's, but rather from a real passion.

But on Thursday night, it was Nicks, mostly, who had put herself on cruise control, propped up in front of a microphone, chortling out her greatest hits like "Dreams," "Rhiannon," "Sara," and "Gypsy."

Maybe what distracted me the most was my vantage point ― I was sitting with side view from the right, almost backstage (I purchased my ticket late in the game, yet ended up having a surprisingly good seat). Perched at my bird's-eye view, I could see that Nicks had triple the usual number of monitors in front of her, and -- OMG! -- she was using a teleprompter. The last time I saw that was for Mick Jagger during the last Stones tour.

Okay, okay, so Barack Obama relies on a teleprompter, and so does Jagger, so I should give Stevie a break right? Yes, I agree. But then I saw it: stage directions for the aging diva. Before the lyrics to "Gold Dust Woman" scrolled, there it was, one such directive: "GO GET CAPE!" And another one later: "GO TO TENT!"

Even though a teleprompter had to steer her around like an electric wheelchair, there was no denying the magic in the music. If you just closed your eyes and went with the flow, when those opening strains of "The Chain" and "Gold Dust Woman" smacked you in the face, it didn't matter whether Stevie couldn't complete her trademark twirl. Or that Mick Fleetwood was now channeling Santa Claus with his dark beard now shockingly white. Lindsay even was able to convince me that "Big Love" was no longer about "looking out for love," but about the "power of change."

And I liked Stevie's story that she tooled around Fort Lauderdale and happened upon some guy named Yuri the boot-maker who was going to fix her up with some hand-tooled leather boots. Then she dedicated "Landslide" to him.

No matter how much I fought against the force of this current incarnation of Fleetwood Mac (at least it's still all the original members sans the smooth-voiced Christine McVie), there they were in the flesh. Even if that flesh was starting to age. And there's little better in this world than spending two hours seeing one of your favorite bands live, surrounded by their presence, even if they are only there in spirit.


Critic's Notebook

Personal Bias: Why do bands bother with encores? Following along with FM set lists published for other dates on the tour, I knew there were going to be three encore songs. So why not just build them into the show rather than having the audience stroke egos? And what a let-down selecting the elusive "Silver Springs" as the final song.

Random Detail: Nicks told the crowd Thursday that her song "Gypsy" was inspired by San Francisco's "Summer of Love" and the Velvet Underground. In one interview I read, she said, "Gypsy is about, um, going back to the gypsy that I was prior to Fleetwood Mac." In a 1998 interview, she said: "In the song "Gypsy" it says, Going back to the velvet underground/ Back to the floor... which means my bed went back on the floor, with the paper flowers and the, you know, there's a part of that [era] there will never be again ...except that it does live in my house because it was so special." Huh?

By the Way: The band canceled its Sunday, April 26 show in Greensboro, N.C., due to "scheduling conflicts." That usually means lack of ticket sales

[michelej1]

^Ha! I was glad to get more details about Yuri the bootmaker. Although, the tour will be over by the time the boots are actually finished.

Michele

[LikeAWillow]

Originally Posted by michelej1

Fort Meyers News Press, by David Dorsey April 24, 2009

http://www.news-press.com/article/20.../90424057/1075

Concert review: Fleetwood Mac's underlying drama means great show


“Every time we get together, we sit in rehearsal and try to make each return a little different,” said Buckingham, who turns 60 on Oct. 3. He did not look or play like his age. “This time, we said, ‘Let’s just go out there and have some fun.’”

I literally lol'd at this. Did he really mean to say that this tour's defining aspect would be that, unlike all the others, they would really try to have a good time?

I love this band.