If Stevie were to leave

[stefan]

The two albums after TITN to me are totally uninspired and i.m.o. mediocre and both to me don't count as FM albums. Yeah of
course officially they are and I know that a lot of people here on the board disagree with that evaluation. But me and some
friends were fans back in 87 and completely lost interest in the group after that breakup. The sound and the style is a bands
calling card not the name. And as Seteca says- LB made that sound most people (the broader audience) identify the group with. It was their good right to try to go on without LB but it didn`t attract me anymore. The Time thing then... well somebody said sth. about revival bands ;-) Even funny how they tried to replace Stevie with a SN lookalike contest candidate. Hoping not insider and by the way listener and buyer wouldn`t see there's someone new...?

The Stevie leaving thing... That would be the groups end also. No doubt. But I don´t think LB would be part of that 3 man show still naming FM

As rumours were spread the GOS thing would turn into a FM album I was about "oh no don't let it be true". I would rather have had an entire LB CD, some of these songs now get lost...

I certainly also would have been glad to see another FM album as I do now, but in addition not instead of...

As it is now pretty unlikely to get LB music from a solo effort anymore I`m fine with this solution now.

Another thought on Stevies work. I don`t see that her voice is bad or has been bad since 82 like it is often stated here. The sound of her voice makes her uniqueness. That someones voice alters within the years does not mean it gets worse. Singing out of tune is bad, but on the studio versions you really couldn`t say that and I doubt, that this is the case on the recent live shows...? As a huge LB fan I would rather call performances like "here comes the sun" extremely tacky even though he normally is a great live performer.
The only thing about Stevie is... I would appreciate her doing also songs written by somebody else like she did with "Seven wonders". She offers some great material but after 4-5 songs per CD there seems to be a lack of new melodic ideas or writing inspiration. So this would be a good addition.