Posts Tagged ‘Fleetwood Mac’

Mix Six: “Apple’s Genius Mix”

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I think David Medsker can relate to this… Back in my salad days of college, I made extra money with two turntables and a microphone.  More often than not, some guy at a wedding reception I was working at would amble up to my DJ rig with a toothpick in his mouth, trying in vain to dig out a small bit of rubber chicken or steak, and stand there looking at my setup.  I’d get the once over twice, and then it started.

“So, you do this a lot?” Queried semi-drunk reception attendee.

“Yeah,” I would answer (knowing full well what was coming next).

“Seems like a pretty easy job.  I mean, all you do is get paid to play records.  Hell, any trained monkey can do that!  How hard can it be? You just play some songs, get paid, and go home.  Seems like a dream job to me.”

“Well,” I would patiently try and explain, “It’s not as easy as you think.  You have to read the crowd, pick songs that you think they will like, watch the tempo of the mix, and know when to play a heavy hitter that’s going to be a crowd pleaser. It’s not science, but there’s a skill at doing this right.”

“Like I said,” Mr. Bibulous Blowhard would intone,”any trained monkey can do this. In fact, I’ll bet you one day there’ll be a computer that can do what you’re doing.”

Flash forward twentysomething years later, and the fucker’s right. There is a computer that can do what I used to do. In fact, if you work in the radio industry, a computer has by and large replaced what DJs used to do. Yep, most DJs who work in the radio industry just play whatever the music director has scheduled into the computer.  They rarely have any control over the music content, so it stands to reason that it would only be a matter of time when “shuffle” mode on your favorite music player would morph into DJ mode. And so it is with Apple’s “Genius Mixes” — which comes with the latest version of iTunes. (more…)

CHART ATTACK!: 8/28/82

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Howdy, everybody! Hope you’re all enjoying the last of your summer days, while I sit indoors and listen to ten artists who are likely never be found on the Top 10 — hell, probably the Top 40 — ever again. Let’s take a look back at the week ending August 28, 1982!

10. Take It Away — Paul McCartney Amazon iTunes
9. Wasted On the Way — Crosby, Stills & Nash Amazon iTunes
8. Vacation — Go-Go’s Amazon iTunes
7. Keep the Fire Burnin’ — REO Speedwagon Amazon iTunes
6. Even the Nights Are Better — Air Supply Amazon iTunes
5. Hard to Say I’m Sorry — Chicago Amazon iTunes
4. Hold Me — Fleetwood Mac Amazon iTunes
3. Abracadabra — Steve Miller Band Amazon iTunes
2. Hurts So Good — John Cougar Amazon iTunes
1. Eye of the Tiger — Survivor Amazon iTunes

10. Take It Away — Paul McCartney

I consider myself relatively well-versed in Paul McCartney’s post-Beatles career (though I do not know a single song from Press to Play), and yet I think I need someone who knows his stuff a little better to explain what the difference is between this song — a Macca solo song from Tug of War — and a Wings song. Production-wise, this doesn’t sound much different from “Listen to What the Man Said.” But what do I know. “Take It Away” features Ringo on drums, who also appears in the video with Tug of War producer George Martin on piano. I didn’t like this song the first time I heard it, but like so many of his songs, I just can’t get it out of my head now.

9. Wasted On the Way — Crosby, Stills & Nash

In 1982, Crosby, Stills & Nash peaked here at #9 (their second highest charting single behind 1977’s “Just a Song Before I Go”), and also had a #18 hit with “Southern Cross.” Do you think they were thinking, “Hello, ’80s!”? Because that certainly didn’t happen. Not that it matters, but “Wasted On the Way” was their final Top 40 appearance.

Interesting story behind Daylight Again, the album containing the single: it was intended to be a Stills & Nash project, mainly due to Crosby’s never-ending drug problems. They went straight to the B-list for possible replacements, including Art Garfunkel and the Cryptkeeper Timothy B. Schmit, but the folks at Atlantic Records pretty much told ‘em they had to get Crosby or the album wasn’t happening. Crosby and Nash tried to hold their ground, even paying for the recording sessions out-of-pocket, but eventually relented and asked Crosby to join the project. Personally, my imagery goes straight to Crosby in a Hawaiian shirt, being dragged on his back by his ponytail into the studio while eating a slice of pizza, never quite realizing what’s happening, and the scary thing is that it might not be far from the truth.

For all that I love harmony and acoustic music, I’ve never been much of a CSN fan. One of the guitarists in my band is always asking me why I don’t care for CSN, so I was excited to tell him that I actually like this one. You know what he said? “Oh, that one’s so wimpy.” I said, “…As opposed to what?” Either way, I do think this is a nice song. I think the instrumentation on the studio version is pretty much unnecessary; I like this live version from 1982 instead. You really do get the sense that Crosby has no idea where the hell he is. Check out the part where he makes the “shhh” motion, either to an already-quiet audience or the goblins doing a rain dance in his head. It doesn’t matter, though; they sound fantastic.

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Bootleg City: Lindsey Buckingham, 12/10/92

I was beginning to think I’d never find a tough lawman to clean up Bootleg City, especially after my faux pas-filled interview with Marshall Crenshaw. (I won’t bore you with the details of my preliminary talks with the Police. They work well as a team, but who needs all that drama?) But last weekend, as I was digging through CDs at the one place left in town to shop for music — the local Christian thrift store, Heaven Is One Coffee-Stained Couch Donation Away — I ran across a copy of Law and Order by Lindsey Buckingham.

Of course! Who better to scare the crap out of criminals than the man who followed up Law and Order with Go Insane? Here in America we can’t get enough of “maverick cops” who have trouble “playing by the rules” and are willing to risk “life and limb” to nab the bad guys, possibly because they’re “mentally unstable” or just plain “suicidal,” and years down the road may end up making “anti-Semitic comments” to arresting officers while “hammered out of their gourds on Cazadores tequila” behind the wheel of an automobile. In order to catch the bad guys, you have to think like the bad guys, but sometimes that means you end up talking and even acting like the bad guys. But isn’t it worth all the apologetic “Whoopsy!” meetings with rabbis and the stints in rehab and the worldwide public condemnation if it eventually translates to some face time with Diane Sawyer?

Let’s not forget that Lindsey simulated sex with himself on Fleetwood Mac’s 1987 hit “Big Love.” That’s Rick James-level freaky. Plus he likes to talk about his “gift of screws,” he’s got a somewhat androgynous name, he wore makeup in the ’80s, and he used to do his hair up like Eraserhead and Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner.

It’s no wonder Mayor P.R. Nelson of Erotic City was upset when he found out I’d hired Lindsey — no one had told him that Stevie Nicks’s ex was available as a gun for hire in the first place. His brisk e-mail said it all: “How come U don’t call me anymore?” His second e-mail was even more to the point: “I hate U.”

Don’t worry, he’ll get over it. If there’s one thing I’ve learned about freaky people, it’s that they keep on comin’.

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Bootleg City: Fleetwood Mac, “Rumours”

For all those Sheryl Crow fans who were disappointed when they found out she wouldn’t be filling in for Christine McVie on Fleetwood Mac’s current reunion tour, I’ve replaced McVie’s vocals with Crow’s in the Rumours (1977) outtakes below. I couldn’t afford Crow herself, though, so I hired an impersonator. But she turned out to be a Cher impersonator, not to mention a he, so I ended up recording the vocals myself, even though I too am a he, despite what the nearsighted doctor first told my mom on September 25, 1975. But de facto Fleetwood Mac leader Lindsey Buckingham was the source of the studio-altered “female” vocals on the Mac’s 1987 hit “Big Love,” so it’s not like I’m operating without precedent here. Please enjoy my Sheryl Crow impression, and if it still sounds like Christine McVie, then there must be something wrong with your subwoofer.

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Mix Six: “Hey, That Sounds Like …”

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One morning, Joe Satriani woke up to 40 text messages on his cell phone.  After scrolling through 40 variations of “holy schet u got ripped off,” Joe texted back his good friend (whose Internet name is Fuzzyslippers621) the following reply: “wot d feck R U talkin bout?”  This went back and forth for about 15 minutes until Joe realized his cell phone was actually a phone.  So he called Fuzzyslippers621 and asked in regular English, “What the fuck are you talking about?”  To which his friend replied, “Haven’t you heard the new Coldplay song?”  He had not, but after launching his Limewire program, he downloaded an illegal copy, waited for his iTunes player to play it, and lathered up his head for his morning shave.

The opening strains of the song were interesting, but he had no idea what all this “ripping off” business was, until …

He was stunned. There it was.  An unabashedly plagiarized portion of a song he wrote years before.  “How could this be?” He wondered as he carefully glided the Gillete “Fusion” razor over his grizzled pate.  The more his listened to “Viva La Vida,” the angrier he got.  Beads of shaving cream-infused sweat started rolling off his head. Furiously, he texted his lawyer the following message:  “I wnt 2 sue.”

And so began the story of one artist’s quest to right the wrongs that had, uh, wronged … him. Right.

Joe Satriani’s claim may have merit, but if he does win in court, lawyers for artists whose work has been the inspiration for other songs that sound uncannily like the original are going to have work after listening to this mix.

My Popdose colleague Matthew Bolin started a back and forth about Satriani’s lawsuit against Coldplay, and me being the opportunist I am, decided to float a Mix Six idea I had been thinking about for a few weeks. Jeff Giles, Scott Malchus and Michael Fortes all contributed suggestions to this mix, so with that, let’s get started! (more…)

Bottom Feeders: The Ass End of the ’80s, Part 32

I know I said I’d be quitting the intros for a while, but I had to put this all into perspective. I hadn’t thought about the scope of this series since I first agreed to do it, but the other night it kind of hit me and put me into shock.

This is post #32. Usually I get about 20 songs in each post. Which means over the course of this series so far I’ve posted somewhere around 640 songs. 640! That’s a good 50-disc box set there.

Then it hit me that we’re only on the letter F. Take out letters like X and Z and we’re still only about a quarter of the way through the entire series at this point. Again, this is the 32nd week; at this pace we’re looking at 120-plus weeks, total. So by the end we’re talking two years and a few months and probably around 2,500 songs. But the good news is that I still enjoy putting each week’s post together even after eight months of them. Whew.

Well, here’s another disc and a half’s worth of the eventual ultimate Bottom Feeders box set, as we continue looking at songs that charted from 41 to 100 on the Billboard Hot 100 in the 1980s.

Fleetwood Mac
“Sisters of the Moon” — 1980, #86 (download)
“Fireflies” — 1981, #60 (download)
“Family Man” — 1988, #90 (download)
“As Long as You Follow” — 1988, #43 (download)

“Sisters of the Moon” was the last of the four singles released in the U.S. off of Tusk (1979). Someone needs to introduce Kanye West to this one. The beat seems right up his alley for a sample.

“Fireflies” is from Fleetwood Mac Live (1980), written by Stevie Nicks and one of the three tracks recorded in Santa Monica for friends of the band.

“As Long as You Follow” is the only one of the four tracks here that’s still heard on the radio today. It was one of the two new songs on their Greatest Hits album (1988), which is widely thought to be the last album released on eight-track.

I know Lindsey Buckingham is a Popdose favorite, so I’ll let you guys talk about the Buckingham-penned “Family Man,” from 1987’s Tango in the Night, in the comments section.

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Listening Booth: Lindsey Buckingham, “Gift of Screws”

Work or play. Family or friends. Protein or carbohydrates. Life is about seeking balance. Lindsey Buckingham has been seeking balance too. In his case, the challenge is to balance his intriguing, but sometimes erratic experimental music impulses, and his undisputed mastery of the pop song form. This battle informed his flawed Fleetwood Mac masterpiece Tusk, an album Buckingham has described as “in some ways my first solo album.” Since then, he has produced two more studio albums with Fleetwood Mac, and five solo albums. Gift of Screws (Reprise) is in some ways his best album since Tusk.

The balance has been attained by blending more meditative tracks, like “Bel Air Rain” and “Time Precious Time,” with more readily accessible pop songs such as “Did You Miss Me.” “Love Runs Deeper” was co-written by Buckingham’s wife Kristen. It is one of the best tracks of the year, and brings to mind one of my favorite Fleetwood Mac songs, Buckingham’s “Go Your Own Way,” with which “Love Runs Deeper” shares a musical spirit, according to Buckingham. Like the earlier song, it has “a steaming guitar solo and choruses that open up into a kind of lift, a sense of joy for sure,” he says.

To bring it all into focus, there are tracks on which Buckingham manages to combine the two. A good example is the album’s opener, “Great Day,” on which his son Will receives a writing credit. “There’s acoustic picking in that song, lead guitar playing, a non-traditional approach to the rhythm section, harmonies, counterpoint,” Buckingham says. “It’s all kind of convoluted together in this strange mix.” I’m sure all that’s true, but check out that fingerpicking. I’m sure I’ll get some argument here, but I don’t think I’ve ever heard a guitar player with more skill in that area. Buckingham’s acoustic guitar playing is absolutely dazzling. Then check out the smoking electric guitar solo that ends the song. I don’t know of too many guitar players who can bring it like that on acoustic and electric. (more…)

Lost MP3 of the Week: Fleetwood Mac, “Silver Springs”

When I was in middle school, I had a lot of ideas for music videos. Generally, these ideas were boring and tame — mostly because at the time, I was listening to a lot of really sappy, sad music (I changed from a private school to a public school between seventh and eighth grade and had a bit of a hard time with it). Most of these ideas consisted of one boring act, definitely not enough to sustain an entire video — a woman packing, for example. And instead of ever developing these ideas or incorporating others, I would just do it myself, without even filming. If my idea was a woman running through grass, I’d put the song on, then run out on our lawn. If the song made me think of a woman cuddling by the fire with her cat, I’d turn the song on repeat, then do just that. It’s no mystery why I never tried to make it into the business. I’d be hard-pressed to remember any ideas that coordinate with songs now, except for one: Fleetwood Mac’s “Silver Springs.”

Fleetwood Mac, “Silver Springs” (download)

I had a huge crush on a guy in sixth and seventh grade, and of course felt that I was mature enough to understand love and loss, being as we were so prematurely and painfully separated by my going to public school (our private school only went through 8th). Nothing had ever happened between us and likely the extra year wouldn’t have made a difference (our school was pretty uptight!), but I was convinced that this was a great tragedy in my life.

Around this time, the late ’90s Fleetwood Mac live album, The Dance, came out, featuring “Silver Springs,” which I hadn’t known was a rather rarely performed or even heard song at the time. (more…)

Lo-Fi Mojo: Fleetwood Mac (1.0), “Oh Well”

Some no-compromise music fans — especially those with ears tuned to the blues-centric, distortion-fueled sound that comprises the DNA of all quality rock, ever — would say that Lindsey Buckingham and Stevie Nicks are not only are responsible for making pop music the Superfund cesspool that it is today, but they also poisoned what was one of the greatest blues-rock bands of all time. Other people might have a slightly dissimilar telling of the events we’ll call The Christine McVie-As-Yoko Theory.Still others might say that Fleetwood Mac founder Peter Green did it himself, squandering away his genius with drugs and letting his sometimes-fragile mental health go to seed. In this reality, his bandmates, left to their own devices, did what they had to do to stay in business, make a living, and dominate the world’s airwaves.

Whatever your take on the events that shaped Fleetwood Mac’s history — if you want to win a bar bet, ask “I bet you don’t know who wrote and originally recorded “Black Magic Woman”; that, my friend, would be Peter Green and Fleetwood Mac — it’s hard to dispute the contention that Peter Green played some aggressive, wonderfully grungy blues noise. You can bet Jon Spencer heard Green’s records more than a couple times before erecting his Blues Explosion — which sounds a lot like a tribute to “1.0″ Fleetwood Mac. (more…)

One Day in Your Life: February 20, 1980

February 20, 1980, is a Wednesday. At 12:01AM Eastern time, a deadline passes for the Soviets to withdraw from Afghanistan, which they had invaded the previous December. They do not. Thus, the United States will boycott the upcoming Summer Olympics in Moscow. In hockey at the Winter Olympics in Lake Placid, NY, Team USA defeats West Germany 4-2 to advance to the medal round. On Friday, the Americans will face the Soviet Union; nobody gives them a chance to win. The European Community places a tariff on certain types of synthetic carpet yarn shipped into the UK. Alice Roosevelt Longworth, daughter of Theodore Roosevelt, dies at 96; the Washington socialite is said to have once remarked, “if you haven’t got anything nice to say about anybody, come sit next to me.” At the White House, President and Mrs. Carter host a state dinner for the president of Kenya, Daniel Arap Moy. An experimental onion field at Oregon State University is fertilized. With the New Hampshire primary just five days away, a CBS/New York Times poll notes that many supporters of Republican candidate George Bush don’t know what he stands for.

TV shows on the air tonight include Charlie’s Angels, Diff’rent Strokes, and Hello Larry. Steve Martin sits in for Johnny on The Tonight Show; his guest is Andy Kaufman. Iggy Pop plays Armadillo World Headquarters in Austin. In the UK, Peter Gabriel plays Exeter University and Joy Division plays High Wycombe. The Joy Division show will be released in 2007 as part of the two-disc reissue of Still. In the early-morning hours, after a night of partying, a friend puts Bon Scott of AC/DC into his car to sleep it off. Returning later in the day, the friend finds Scott lifeless. At a hospital, Scott is pronounced DOA.

On the Cash Box magazine record chart for the week, the disco tide continues to recede. Several significant bands rock the Top 40, including Queen, Fleetwood Mac, Tom Petty and the Heartbreakers, the Eagles, Styx, and Led Zeppelin. A couple of pop acts who haven’t scored major hits since 1971 are back on the radio as well: the no-longer-Nitty-Gritty Dirt Band’s “An American Dream” is at Number 14, and “Three Times in Love” by Tommy James is at Number 41. At a small college town in Wisconsin, a future Popdose contributor and longtime Tommy James fan is glad about that.

“Sara,” Fleetwood Mac (download)
“An American Dream,” Dirt Band (download)
“Three Times in Love,” Tommy James (download)