Sunday, May 20, 2012

Review: Lindsey Buckingham Is Gracious and Youthful at the Neptune Theatre on Saturday Night

Lindsey Buckingham appeared on stage at the Neptune on Saturday night in a black leather jacket, ankle boots, and skinny jeans.

Seattle Weekly
By Erin Thompson

Buckingham does everything with flair. He shakes his head as he sings, like he's willing the notes out. He paws at his guitar strings like a dog, picks at them like a pianist. He pumps his guitar up in the air and soaks in the applause. After playing a few midtempo songs--2006's "Cast Away Dreams"; Fleetwood Mac's "Bleed To Love Her"--someone in the audience shouted, "kick it up a notch!", which was rude, but as if on cue Buckingham switched to electric for "Come" and heated up the room bawling out the chorus ("Think of me sweet darling every time you don't come/Can you feel the fever?"). 

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Live Review: Lindsey Buckingham at the Neptune Theatre
Fleetwood Mac's Main Man Pares Down to the Essentials for an Awed Seattle Crowd

by Levi Fuller
ssgmusic.com

If the name Lindsey Buckingham means nothing to you, and yet you are a human possessed of the ability to hear, I can just about guarantee that his unique voice and brilliant pop songcraft are in fact quite familiar to you. As a key songwriter and singer in Fleetwood Mac from 1975 on, Buckingham penned and sang some of the most recognizable and enduring tunes to grace the FM rock radio airwaves, including “Go Your Own Way,” “Second Hand News,” and “Never Going Back Again” (and that’s just from side 1 of Rumours).

Buckingham has had a relatively prolific solo career for decades – during Saturday’s concert he referred to it as the “small machine” to Fleetwood Mac’s “big machine” – probably the most recognizable product of which for the casual listener would be “Holiday Road,” the theme from the 1983 movie “National Lampoon’s Vacation.” That little pop gem aside, Buckingham’s solo career has generally been about experimenting as an artist and letting himself be creative without worrying about hits. He spoke on Saturday about the importance of having these two elements in his life, and it was plain that his work with the “small machine” brought him much joy. By all appearances the audience at the Neptune was here not to witness a slice of the big Fleetwood Mac machine, but to revel in the brilliance of the small machine on a small stage. And revel we did.

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Shows I’ll Never Forget: Lindsey Buckingham, May 19, 2012
by Glen Boyd
Something Else Reviews

At Neptune Theatre, Seattle, Washington: “The small machine appears to have just gotten a little smaller,” was how singer-songwriter, and Fleetwood Mac guitarist Lindsey Buckingham described it during the Seattle stop of his current solo tour this past Saturday night at the Neptune Theatre.

Buckingham returned to this topic again and again during the show. Comparing what he does with the “big machine” of Fleetwood Mac, to the more left-of-center music he plays as a solo artist — both with smaller groups, and now, as a virtual one man band — Buckingham talked about how the two seeming extremes are a necessary compliment to one another. Performing songs from a setlist which drew equally from his solo work (from “Trouble” to the recent “Seeds We Sow”), his platinum smashes with Fleetwood Mac (“Go Your Own Way,” “I’m So Afraid”), and even the relatively obscure, pre-Fleetwood Mac Buckingham-Nicks album (“Stephanie”), Buckingham made a very convincing case for how these individual pieces form a more complete artistic whole.

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CHART UPDATE: Fleetwood Mac - UK, IRELAND, AUSTRALIA, USA

IRELAND, UK, AUSTRALIA & US ALBUM CHARTS



IRELAND - MAY 17, 2012
After re-entering the chart last week at #76 Rumours drops to last place #100.  It'll likely disappear from the chart next week.

TOP 100 ALBUMS CHART
#100 (76) Fleetwood Mac - Rumours

AUSTRALIA - MAY 21 2012
TOP 100 ALBUMS CHART
# 80 (R/E) FLEETWOOD MAC – The Very Best Of

TOP 50 CATALOGUE ALBUMS CHART
#15 (26) Fleetwood Mac - The Very Best Of

UK - May 26, 2012
TOP 100 ALBUMS CHART
#62 (49) Fleetwood Mac - Rumours

USA - MAY 26, 2012
For the week ending May 13th and Billboard chart date May 26, 2012, Rumours is down 6% in sales in the US this past week to 1,736 units vs 1,847 last week placing the title at #138 down from #116 last week.  Total US sales for Rumours = 2,955,735.  On the Top Catalogue Digital Chart the album dropped 15% in downloads to 1,012 units vs 1,191 the previous week.

Greatest Hits is up 10% in sales in the US to 1,582 units vs 1,433 units last week placing the title at #170 up from #172 last week.  Total US sales for Greatest Hits = 4,546,509.  On the top Catalogue Digital Chart the album increased in downloads by 19% to 820 units vs 690 the previous week.

The Very Best Of re-enters the Top 200 Physical Catalogue Chart this week at #139 on an increase in sales of 28% or 1,233 units sold for the week vs 964 the previous week.  Total US sales for The Very Best Of = 1,475,530, which given it's a double cd release, it needs just under 25k to qualify for triple platinum status in the US (each 2cd package sold is counted twice towards certification).

TOP 200 CATALOGUE ALBUMS CHART
# 138 (116) Fleetwood Mac - Rumours
# 170 (172) Fleetwood Mac - Greatest Hits

TOP 200 CATALOGUE PHYSICAL ALBUMS CHART
# 139 (R/E) Fleetwood Mac - The Very Best Of

TOP 200 CATALOGUE DIGITAL CHART
# 53 (27) Fleetwood Mac - Rumours
# 71 (98) Fleetwood Mac - Greatest Hits

Book Review "Making Rumours" by Bob Lefsetz

Making Rumours
by Bob Lefsetz
The Lefsetz Letter

What if I told you this book was full of tech talk, read like a manual and was filled with arcane details…would you read it anyway?

I DID!

Ken Caillat was smart enough to get a cowriter, unlike Carole King. And he’s not afraid to sling shit, some of the stories about Lindsey Buckingham will horrify you, like how he punched his girlfriend in the face. But what keeps you reading are the memories… Of when music was the most powerful medium on the planet, when it drove the culture and the highest personal achievement was international rock star, not banker.

I’m not saying if Fleetwood Mac started today they wouldn’t make a deal with Pepsi, wouldn’t go on "Idol", but it was a completely different era, that stuff was anathema, it was all about the MUSIC!

Ken Caillat remixes a single another engineer flubs and suddenly he’s driving his Audi up the coast to the Sausalito Record Plant, to record a follow-up to an album that’s not yet a hit. Sure, what Ken references as the "white album" had impact, but it wasn’t until after they started recording during the NoCal winter that it went nuclear, and the band’s manager/attorney Mickey Shapiro called and said if they could record just one more hit album, they’d be set for life!

Talk about pressure.

But Mickey was right.

John McVie drinks so much he has to leave early, but determined to get his bass parts right he shows up before everybody else, to rerecord them.

Everybody looks down on Stevie Nicks because she doesn’t play an instrument, not knowing she’d eventually become the biggest of the bunch.

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Want something interesting to read every couple days on the music industry from Bob Lefsetz perspective?  Subscribe to his newsletter The Lefsetz Letter

Video: Lindsey Buckingham Live in Seattle at The Neptune

Photo by SeattleB

Lindsey Buckingham Live in Seattle, 
The Neptune Theatre May 19, 2012

BIG LOVE - THE NEPTUNE


More Video:  Seeds We Sow | Go Your Own Way | Trouble 

AND even more video - different angle:
Never Going Back Again | Trouble | Big Love | Seeds We Sow | Go Your Own Way | Go Insane

Saturday, May 19, 2012

Stevie Nicks Sighting... Maui Burger Joint!

Stevie Nicks was spotted on Maui yesterday at Cheesburger in Paradise in Lahaina, just down the street from where Mick Fleetwood's new restaurant will be situated.  That would be Karen to Stevie's left in white.

Mac members in the oddest places... First Lindsey's sitting on a woman's porch in Bend, Oregon... and now Stevie in pigtails in a burger joint in Hawaii...

Photo by: Ashley Mc. Glass @ashleymcglass on Twitter.

Friday, May 18, 2012

Fleetwood Mac guitarist brings solo act to Portland


Buckingham still going his own way
Fleetwood Mac guitarist brings solo act to Portland
By Alan Sculley for The Columbian
Friday, May 18, 2012

Two and a half years ago, as Fleetwood Mac was getting ready to launch its “Unleashed” world tour, the band members were talking up the possibility that the tour might be a prelude to a new CD from the group.

The game plan at the time was to do the tour and then maybe get into the studio, and if a CD came together, another round of touring was possible.

The only thing that happened was the “Unleashed” tour. But Fleetwood Mac fans got a pair of welcome consolation prizes instead. First came singer Stevie Nicks’ latest solo CD, “In Your Dreams,” and then, last fall, singer/guitarist Lindsey Buckingham released his sixth solo CD, “Seeds We Sow.”

At least in Buckingham’s case, his solo CD is a direct result of Fleetwood Mac not doing a new CD. It opened a window of time he hadn’t expected to have, and so he did what came naturally. He started writing songs.

“I had no preconceptions going in on this one,” Buckingham said in a recent phone interview. “I didn’t even really have completed songs or anything that was fleshed out in terms of material.”

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Flavorpill | Lindsey Buckingham Ticket Giveaway - New York City #NYC June 4-5th

B.B. KING BLUES CLUB
Facebook ticket giveaway for Lindsey Buckingham fans! Check out this link at Flavorpill and "Like" the page for your chance to win tickets to his B.B. King Blues Club shows in New York City - June 4-5!

Facebook - Flavorpill

LINDSEY BUCKINGHAM LIVE IN BEND, OR 
Photos by: @LittleEgypt on Twitter. Some how Lindsey ended up on her front porch... I guess he was just strolling by according to @LittleEgypt. So far the funniest & most random photos yet on this tour. There's a another shot of them on the porch and a few more photos she took at the show on her Facebook page

Stevie Nicks Live in New Orleans - Sept. 22nd - New Orleans Arena

Stevie Nicks Live
New Orleans Arena 
New Orleans, LA
Saturday September 22, 2012


AARP Presents 
Stevie Nicks, Gladys Night and Melissa Etheridge
An Evening with Three Spectacular Voices

Melissa Etheridge will be opening the show and will play for approximately 60 minutes.

Tickets Onsale to General Public
Start: Mon, 05/21/12 10:00 AM CDT

Ticket Prices:
US $47.00 - US $127.00
US $47.00 Ticket + US $10.45 Fees = US $57.45
US $127.00 Ticket + US $17.30 Fees = US $144.30

Ticketmaster



Thursday, May 17, 2012

Review: Lindsey Buckingham Solo at the Rio - Santa Cruz May 11th

Mac’s Lindsey Buckingham Goes Solo at the Rio
Santa Cruz, CA - May 11th
by Eric Berg
KUSP 88.9

Anybody who went to see Lindsey Buckingham’s packed Friday night’s May 11th “Smallest Machine” performance (as he calls it) at the Rio in Santa Cruz, expecting to hear Fleetwood Mac’s greatest hits, must have been blown away by the wealth of under the radar material he’s penned over seven solo ablums in 20 something years. I forgot to take my notebook pen and my iPhone, but Buckingham did perform two of the Big Machine’s hits. After a very tidy 90 minute set, the guitarist left no doubt that the Stevie Nicks-Buckingham edition of Fleetwood Mac was really “Lindsey Mac” eighty percent of the time. Track down a copy of Buckingham-Nicks from 1974 on the Polydor label and give it a listen. You’ll see how those two saved a run out of gas Mac from going to the junkyard permanently, the minute they joined the band.

Standing alone in front of a small bank of amps with a covey of his custom made guitars to one side, Buckingham successfully walked “the kiss of death – one guy with the electric guitar plank”.  Although Buckingham is exceptional at playing rhythm and lead simultaneously, he did flesh out a band sound with some very ultra subtle sample and hold loops and beat tracks manipulated by his guitar tech who also swapped out a different custom axe on every song.  Buckingham is a very precise guitarist with few wasted notes and a total perfectionist in the studio and so it goes on stage. His tenor voice still hits those wonderful high notes that are at times buried by his tendency to attack his guitar strings at a much higher volume than called for.

Buckingham culled a mix of songs from all seven solo albums on acoustic and electric guitar. I was a bit disappointed he did not do a few more from his brilliant Under the Skin or any of the Rolling Stones covers he does so well. Buckingham ended the evening with the title song from his latest, the highly recommended Seeds We Sew. A thoroughly enjoyable show from one of the most innovative guitarists and songwriters in rock.

Click through for a podcast on Lindsey
"Not Too Late"

Review: Lindsey Buckingham The Fillmore San Francisco May 14th


Lindsey Buckingham's live show comes down to one
by:  Sean McCourt
SFBG.com

With an arsenal of a dozen guitars and several amplifiers lined up behind him, Lindsey Buckingham wasted no time delving into his extensive catalog of songs Monday night at the Fillmore.

Striding up to a lone microphone stand wearing his signature blue jeans, v-neck t-shirt, and black leather jacket, the singer and guitarist launched into an hour and 15 minute set that spanned a broad spectrum of his career, covering a wide swath of solo material in addition to some of the mega hits he... 

Lindsey Buckingham beat the odds and is still making music. by: Steve Labate


Survival of the Fittest
Lindsey Buckingham beat the odds and is still making music.
by: Steve Labate
The Pacific Northwest - Inlander

From the beginning, Lindsey Buckingham seemed destined to ascend the throne of rock stardom. In the late 1960s, the already talented guitarist’s first band Fritz — for whom he’d recruited a gorgeous young singer named Stevie Nicks — was opening for the likes of Jimi Hendrix, Janis Joplin and Creedence Clearwater Revival at all the hippest Northern California music halls. When Fritz broke up, Buckingham and Nicks got together, both musically and romantically, sticking it out through some lean times and eventually signing with Polydor Records for a self-titled 1973 LP. The record flopped and the pair were subsequently dropped from the label, but it wasn’t all for naught.

Full article at The Inlander

Lindsey Buckingham Live Monday, May 21st - 8pm
Bing Crosby Theater 
Spokane, WA
Tickets: $55-65
Ticketswest.com
Phone: (800) 325-SEAT

BBC Radio 4 Doc on Follow-up Albums - Fleetwood Mac (May 24th)

Follow-Up Albums - Fleetwood Mac - Tusk
Next On: Thursday, 24, May - 11:30am BBC Radio 4
Music critic Pete Paphides tells the story behind three 'follow-up' albums - from Dexys Midnight Runners, Fleetwood Mac and Suede - with tales of musical pressure, creative differences, personal politics and mixed results.
How many bands have found themselves with a massive and often unexpected hit album, only to struggle with the creation of their next opus? Sometimes the follow-up exceeds the first album, but often nerves kick in and bands are removed from the very stimulus that created their magic in the first place, finding themselves in a world of creative confusion, sycophants and accountants.
Pete Paphides talks to musicians, producers, and critics to explore the stories of follow-up albums with the same expert knowledge he brought to Lost Albums.
Programme 2: Fleetwood Mac - Tusk
How do you follow a record that sells 21 million copies worldwide and spends over 30 weeks at number one in the US album chart?
The answer is Tusk - the album Fleetwood Mac recorded in the wake of 1976's Rumours.
Despite joining the band just three years previously, this was the record that saw Lindsey Buckingham impose his will on Fleetwood Mac using the studio as a crucible in which he shovelled intra-band infidelities and his new-found love of punk.
In 1979 it was deemed a failure, nicknamed "Lindsey's folly" from industry insiders. After 35 years, it has been reappraised as their boldest, most forward-looking release, "a peerless piece of pop art", influencing Radiohead and REM.
Produced by Laura Parfitt A White Pebble Media Production for BBC Radio 4.


The joy of difficult second (or third, or twelfth) albums
A new Radio 4 series explains how Dexys Midnight Runners, Fleetwood Mac and Suede fractured under the pressure of fame
It's called Difficult Second Album Syndrome: the intense pressure to follow up a huge commercial success. Expectations, internal and external, can make superstars crack.
Yet that tricky follow-up album – the one after the one everyone's got in their collection; the one that sold poorly, destroyed the band or was ridiculed by critics – often turns out to be more rewarding. And the stories of how such records were made tend to be packed with extraordinary drama. 
This is the phenomenon Radio 4's three-part documentary Follow Up Albums explores. The series starts with Dexys Midnight Runners and their career suicide Don't Stand Me Down, moving on to Tusk – Fleetwood Mac's loony-tunes follow-up to Rumours – and Dog Man Star, the recording of which shattered Suede's original line-up.
Music nuts are always looking for secret clubs to join: the band who will be huge in six months' time, or the genius singer/songwriter who died without selling any records. Supposedly lesser, disappointing follow-up albums have that snob cachet, but their appeal runs deeper: they're albums by bands who had proven themselves to be rare talents, but then pushed their art to extremes. There, magic happens.
"You have to dig a bit harder with these albums," says Pete Paphides, music journalist and presenter of the Radio 4 series. "It's almost as if these records are a test of whether you're just passing through or are prepared to put in the time and effort. A record you spend more time with will repay you more handsomely in the long run."
Knowing the crazy story behind the records certainly helps. "With the bands you obsess about, when you decide you're emotionally invested you stop wanting their next album to be the best you've ever heard," Paphides argues. "It has to be good – but what you want is a sense of how things have progressed for them, what's been happening in their life. The bands we love push the story along. The period between having your breakthrough album that sells millions and recording the follow-up makes you a more interesting band than you were."

In 1979, Fleetwood Mac were perhaps the biggest band in the world, having shifted more than 10 million copies of Rumours. The next album, their 12th, was Tusk, a wildly oscillating double LP that sounded like the work of separate solo artists, was packaged in what was surely a deliberately awful sleeve, and contained no obvious singles. To this day, non-aficionados only know Sara – it and the title track were modest hits at the time.

While the sound of Rumours was pristine and built for radio, Tusk was all over the show. Rumours had famously, fearlessly catalogued the bitter end of Lindsey Buckingham's relationship with Stevie Nicks, and Christine McVie's with John McVie, as well as several awkward dalliances that followed. On Tusk, Christine McVie and Stevie Nicks sounded all talked out, happy to submit tender, regretful fragments like Honey Hi and Beautiful Child. But they're punctuated by the songs of Lindsey Buckingham, which are best described as furious polkas, and dominate the record.

"Lindsey was a volatile, domineering personality and the rest just went with it," says Paphides. "People were worried about him. He turned up at the studio on day three and had cut all his hair off, standing in front of the mirror with a pair of scissors."

But while Buckingham stuffed his songs with multi-directional rage, and with the influence of punk and new wave, he had also become a skilled producer who could bring out the best in his bandmates' radically different compositions – even those of his ex, Stevie Nicks.

"There's still a lot of love between Stevie and Lindsey and she's happy for him that Tusk has become feted as a classic," says Paphides. "He never tried to inflict his scratchy, lo-fi, I'm-going-crazy production on her. The Stevie songs have lovely, luxuriant waves of elegant melancholy enveloping you. He knows exactly what she wants to achieve. It's the same with Christine McVie: Over and Over sounds just beautiful. As long as Lindsey could have his own way with his songs he'd do a good job for you."

Paphides spent four months tracking down Buckingham and scoring an interview – even longer than it took to convince the always-wary Kevin Rowland to talk on tape. "Now Lindsey's very LA, very Zen, very 'I've been to therapy'. He's also very aware and proud of Tusk's reputation."

But in '79? "He was angry. If you have a Lindsey Buckingham character, there's a part of you that wants to destroy all you're best known for.

Full article at Radiotimes