Chris should play Get like you used to be!

[PenguinHead]

Originally Posted by WatchChain

Amen to that!!, attending Fleetwood Mac shows is starting to feel like a routine. Where's the spontaneity?

I LOVE to see Bruce Springsteen play live because YOU NEVER KNOW what he is going to pull out for the set list? It's often a DIFFERENT set list every night with arrangements that you'd never imagine.

Bruce and his band are the kind of band that can play anything they want, and his audience goes with them. No one complains that this or that song wasn't performed. There is no mentality of "I paid a lot of money and I expect to hear expect to hear all the hits!"

To be fair, Fleetwood Mac can't be as nimble as someone like Bruce because they don't have one front man -- they have three! So the dynamics of a set list become more of a balancing act.

As the music industry became increasingly more corporatized, with higher touring costs and ticket prices, artistic expression was sacrificed in the name of commercialism. Bands lucky enough to have a string of hits and well known songs bowed to the pressure to restrict their sets to those songs --the ones the market demanded.

Any set list that strayed too far from the familiar was deemed too radical, alienating the general public --an offensive disappointment to audience members who are subjected to songs they don't recognize!

Fleetwood Mac aren't too adventurous, but at least they have surprised us with a few unexpected songs here and there. What's surprising is the "me' factor" of demanding expectation: "They have to play this song." "They have to open with The Chain." They have to close with "Songbird." "If they don't play this song I'm going to be so disappointed." It sucks they didn't do this."

Of course, just like everyone else, I'll have opinions and find something to bitch about that doesn't fit my ideal. But ultimately, I'm grateful Fleetwood Mac is still alive and doing whatever it is that they do.