Kansas City articles/reviews, etc.

[michelej1]

[Don't damn them with faint praise]

The Pitch, by Chris Parker

http://www.pitch.com/events/fleetwood-mac-985110/

Fleetwood Mac’s mid-’70s success so dwarfed its prior work that most people are unaware the band had undergone several lineup changes and released 10 albums prior to the addition of Lindsey Buckingham and Stevie Nicks. The group's subsequent music and lifestyle epitomized the era, from rampant drug use and adultery, to ambling, soft-rock balladry. Though Christine McVie scored her own hits (“Don’t Stop,” “Over My Head”), they paled in comparison to Nicks' (“Gypsy,” Landslide,” “Rhiannon”) and her larger-than-life, rhinestone-clad, witchy-woman presence. Ironically, it was the romantic difficulties between the combo’s couples that fueled its finest album, Rumours. Plying a blues-based backbone and swathing it in ringing guitars, shimmering keyboards and soaring, multi-tracked backing vocals, that album melded pretty melodies and rich production to a chassis muscular enough to carry the weight. Nothing in the group's catalog comes close to the Rumours lineup's first three records, as afterward the Mac generally succumbed to its worst (overproduced, undercooked) impulses.