Is Fleetwood Mac as Good as I Think They Are?

For my birthday, my family bought me tickets to see Fleetwood Mac.  They know how much I love the album “Rumors” judging by the number of times I have played it during their lifetime.  My husband is on board and a huge Fleetwood Mac fan, but I am intrigued as to what my daughter’s reactions will be. No doubt they are impressed with the 70’s rock ‘n roll concert era – they grew up watching us watching concert DVD’s of every rock band imaginable. Concert DVD’s do a great job of capturing the concert arena experience, which is massive throngs of fans, beach balls bouncing around, and girls on top of their boyfriends shoulders.  As an attendee of numerous concerts as a “youngster” (back when I didn’t know any better), I recall security being at a minimum, joints were easy to bring and cigarette smoking was acceptable. – I mean after all, it was so much work to just get there, we had to be rewarded for standing in line for hours just to get tickets.  We were just a bunch of crazed fans out to have a really good time – any way we could get it.

Aside from the experience and the iconic symbolism of attending a no holds barred rock concert  – is the music better from the 70’s compared to now or just different? Is it the experience of music that makes the music? We had Rock ‘n Roll in the 1970’s – a genre of music that has fallen by the wayside in this new millennium.  We would not be comparing apples to apples by looking at rock now – I mean, how do you compare Led Zepplen, Iron Maiden, Deep Purple, Pink Floyd, AC/DC, Aerosmith, Queen, The Who, Black Sabbath, Lynyrd Skynyrd, and Van Halen, with what is out there now?

Bands back in the day were almost like a family – cohesive, emotionally close and yet to a fan, somewhat elusive.  There was no social media, no E channel, no twitter to post pictures of their every move, their every sound recording.  We had to wait months in anticipation for the next album – there were no “teaser” tracks being played.  This elusiveness made them special and exciting.

I think the difference that makes older music seem better was that you had to work at being a serious music fan. In the 70’s and earlier, the only place to actually hear any new music was on the radio, so the chance of discovering something new and exciting was limited. Unless you were turned onto college radio or low-powered community stations, you ended up buying what the major rock stations sold you  – and back then, you were sold not only the superbands, but their personalities as well. And those personalities were the key to hooking you into their music.

And because we have the means to listen to so many different genres of music today, We don’t make rock superstars anymore. The superstars of today, the ones who are sold as personalities, are in pop or country music. This sense of detachment makes older music seem more appealing, more alluring and therefore, well, better.

The future is now and this future does not favor longevity.  Because we tend to buy singles rather albums, perhaps we don’t become attached to bands the way it happened in Zeppelin’s day.

Says Timothy Rosenberg, Course Director of Critical Listening for Music Professionals at Full Sail University in Orlando…

“The vast majority of the public has become detached from artists because they no longer buy albums and instead buy single tracks. If the public won’t be fans for twelve tracks in a row, it’s not surprising that they won’t coalesce around a band, such as Led Zeppelin.”

Beginning in the 1980s, remixes and longer versions of songs allowed for people to become attached to singular songs rather than albums, right up through today, where technology dictates how we find music, so we have moved past the days when a radio station was the only means of discovering new bands. In this day and age, with the myriad of sources in front of us, we no longer just listen to music, we consume it.

The jury is still out on the Fleetwood Mac concert.  I have no doubt the music will be awesome, but the experience won’t quite rival the first time I saw them in 1978.  There is something about Stevie Nicks’ voice that attracted my oldest daughter to the band – that and the concert played on Paladia awhile back.

Says James Lachno of the Telegraph…”right now the hippest bands around all want to sound like Fleetwood Mac. What started in the late-2000s with US folk-rock revivalists such as Fleet Foxes and Bon Iver has built up a head of steam. Last year saw the release of fine albums from trendy US acts such as Best Coast and Sharon Von Etten that bore the unmistakable influence of Fleetwood Mac’s classic Seventies period, as did work from blockbuster pop artists Mumford and Sons and Taylor Swift.

If I could plan my Fleetwood Mac dream play list, it would run just like this:

1. Go Your Own Way
2. Hypnotized
3. Rhiannon
4. Dreams
5. World Turning
6. Tusk
7. Songbird
8. You Make Loving Fun
9. Landslide
10. The Chain
11. Over My Head
12. Gypsy

One can only hope…..I will keep you posted.