Monday, August 23, 2010

TWO FLEETWOOD MAC DOCUMENTARIES AIR THIS WKND IN THE UK

If you missed its first string of broadcast dates back when it first aired in the UK and Ireland last November, 2009 - nows your chance to watch record it.  Or you can watch the documentary here (7 parts)

Date: August 27, 2010
Time: 23:30 (11:30pm)
Duration: 60 minutes
ChannelBBC Four

Also in the UK on BIO UK another documentary will air. [description]: Fleetwood Mac were a band born out of the English blues movement pioneered by John Mayall in the mid-Sixties. This is the story of the rise of the successful soft rock group.

Date: August 28, 2010
Time: 22:00 (10pm)
Duration: 60 minutes
Channel: BIO UK

Sunday, August 22, 2010

STEVIE NICKS IS SHOOTING FOR A MARCH RELEASE

Stevie Nicks feels excited about collaboration with Dave Stewart
Syracuse.com
by: Mark Bialczak/The Post Standard

The call rings at precisely the appointed time the evening of Friday the 13th.

“It’s Stevie Nicks,” says the oh-so-recognizable rock voice, full of energy and a fair amount of good cheer.

Wait a sec. Isn’t she a bit hesitant about baring her soul on this day of supreme superstition?
Not a bit.

“I didn’t even know it was Friday the 13th. Anyway, it’s a good day for me, you know,” says the woman who’s long had mystical elements tied to her persona since her whirling, twirling days on stage with Fleetwood Mac and thereafter.

Great grist for the mill.

Headline over an Associated Press story from 1998: “Stevie Nicks Denies Witch Rumor.” In the article, Nicks says, “I can’t believe people are still telling me I’m a witch because I wear black.”

Now, in summer 2010, as Nicks is in the midst of a short tour that includes a Wednesday night stop at the Turning Stone Resort and Casino Event Center in Verona, N.Y., Nicks is in a good mood about a lot of things.

As the 62-year-old singer and songwriter continues, you get the feeling that Nicks’ life is full of a lot of good days.

She’s positively effusive about the aura surrounding her collaboration with Dave Stewart for Nicks’ upcoming solo album, her first since 2001.

“It’s the best time I’ve had since my teens. I was going to say my 20s, but that wasn’t all that much fun. So, since high school,” Nicks says of her work with Stewart. Stewart previously teamed with Annie Lennox in Eurythmics, the British band that landed the song “Sweet Dreams (Are Made of This” at No. 1 on the Billboard Hot 100 chart in 1983.

Nicks teamed with Stewart after he grabbed his guitar, walked into her living room and simply rocked her world.

Before that magical day, Nicks’ co-writing process centered around guitarist Michael Campbell sending her tracks of his lines.

“This is the first time I have ever written in the same room as somebody,” she says.

To prepare for the collaboration, Nicks sent Stewart a collection of 50 poems she’s written. “I didn’t expect him to read it, really, but he did,” she says. “He handed me a poem and said, ‘Let’s start with this one. I love it.’

“He plays guitar and gives me this no-frills English works and says, ‘Go.’ Within 10 minutes we had finished the song,” Nicks says.

“Suddenly a light bulb came on and I found out why great songwriting teams worked between people who could write great songs on their own,” she says. “Lennon and McCartney. Rogers and Hammerstein.”

Their two greatest individual attributes fit together like the last two pieces to a puzzle, Nicks explains.

“He doesn’t write long story poems. I have that to give him,” Nicks says. “I don’t have a million chords. He has that to give me. I thought, I could get at a piano for a thousand years and never write a chord structure like that. The two of us are able to give each other a whole other world.”

The album, produced by Stewart, will contain nine songs they co-wrote and five Nicks wrote alone.

It’s almost done, Nicks says, and they’re shooting for a March release, even though it could be ready months before that.

“We don’t want to be declared a Christmas album with a release around the holidays,” she says. “March is a good time to drop the record and be out on the road.”

She’s not playing any of them in concert now, leaving this tour to her huge hits — solo, such as “Stand Back” and “If Anyone Falls” and with Fleetwood Mac, such as “Rhiannon (Will You Ever Win)” and “Landslide.”

If she played one of the new ones live, she says, a video would be on YouTube minutes later. “I don’t want these songs to be leaked out,” Nicks says. “I want the big reveal to be the record.”

She’ll talk about the songs with enthusiasm, though.

She calls “Italian Summer,” inspired by a trip to Ravello, Italy, “the sweetest love song I’ve ever written. And I didn’t write it about anybody. It’s about being in Italy,” Nicks says.

And she’s proud of “The Soldier’s Angel,” which she’d been promising herself to write since first visiting the soldiers hospital in Bethesda, Md., five years ago.

For that one, she and Stewart stuck with a demo she recorded herself.

“I decided there’s no way to beat the demo I recorded myself at home late at night,” Nicks says. “It’s brutal and honest, for the kids that are injured.”

Nicks and Stewart thoroughly enjoyed their sessions, she says. "We had similar relationships in our pasts,” Nicks says. “Stevie and (Fleetwood Mac guitarist) Lindsey (Buckingham). He and Annie. We have that in common.”

THE DETAILS
What: Stevie Nicks in concert.
When: 8 p.m. Wednesday.
Where: Turning Stone Resort and Casino Event Center, Verona.
Tickets: $80, available at the Event Center
box office, Ticketmaster outlets, www.ticketmaster.com and 877-833-7469.

UK CHART UPDATE: FLEETWOOD MAC MOVIN' ON UP

For the week of August 28, 2010 on the official UK Albums Chart Fleetwood Mac's 2009 double disc release moves up from #93 to #84 in it's 223rd week on the chart (223 weeks combines the 2002 & 2009 release).

STEVIE NICKS RE-ENTERS AUSTRALIAN ALBUM CHART THIS WEEK

AUSTRALIA'S TOP 50 CATALOGUE CHART: WEEK OF AUGUST 23, 2010
"Crystal Visions The Very Best Of Stevie Nicks" re-enters Australia's Top 50 Catalogue Chart this week at #37 after being absent last week.


STEVIE NICKS: "CURRENT PASSION REMAINS NEW CD" EVENTUAL MAC CD AND TOUR ON HORIZON

Fleetwood Mac star Stevie Nicks finds her groove collaborating with Dave Stewart for 7th solo album
Stevie Nicks has gotten her groove back.

by: Phil Roura

Nine years after her last solo CD, the Fleetwood Mac superstar is deep into her seventh album - which for the first time she is writing with a collaborator, one-time Eurythmic Dave Stewart. Rumors of a romantic liaison notwithstanding, Nicks says it's the best time she has ever had putting out a CD.

"I've never before written anything with anybody else," says the smoky-voiced rock icon. "This is a great opportunity to do something new. I now understand why John Lennon and Paul McCartney worked so well together. You feed so much off each other."

As a result, Nicks has not ventured far from her California cocoon where she and Stewart have been working. The only concession: a short series of summer concerts that includes the Trump Taj Mahal on Friday night and Foxwoods' MGM Grand on Saturday.

"My management pushed me," she explains. "They said I had to take a month away from the record, and I'm glad I listened to them. It's been a good change of pace and a lot of fun."

The untitled CD is "a full-blown rock 'n' roll album with some beautiful ballads. And it's been fantastic and funky working at home."

It wasn't something she had planned. "My last performance was Dec. 21 in New Zealand after 83 shows with Fleetwood Mac," she says. "Coming straight home, the farthest thing from my mind was going straight to work."

Then along came Stewart, whom she had known in other circumstances. "I gave him a book of 50 poems I had written over the years," she recalls, "and he really liked them."

The day after the Grammys in February, they went to work. "I sat on a couch across from Dave. He'd play something on the piano. I'd throw out some lyrics."

Somehow, they got to talking about the Sargasso, a sea within a sea off Bermuda, from a movie she had seen. "He became intrigued with it," she adds. "I started developing lyrics off the top of my head - and a crazy, creepy, weird story began to take form. Dave liked it. In 10 minutes we had a song."

Word is that the CD will drop in the spring and that contributors include Mike Campbell of the Heartbreakers, Waddy Wachtel, Steve Ferrone and Mick Fleetwood on a drum solo.

It was on May 26, 1948, that Stephanie Lynn Nicks warbled her first note when she was born in Phoenix to Jess Nicks, a corporate veep, and Barbara Nicks, a housewife. As a toddler, she had trouble pronouncing her name, which came out "tee dee" and eventually "Stevie." It stuck.

Her great initial success was with lover Lindsey Buckingham. In 1974, they joined Fleetwood Mac and by 1977 the "Rumours" album had churned out four top 10 singles - including Nicks' megahit "Dreams," the group's only U.S. No. 1. By 1981, she began a solo career with the album "Bella Donna," but she continued to record and tour with Fleetwood Mac; the band's latest studio album is 2003's "Say You Will," for which Nicks wrote the title track.

Inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame with Fleetwood Mac in 1998, the now 62-year-old rocker worries about the future of the industry she loves.

"The Internet has destroyed rock. Children no longer develop social graces. They don't hang out anymore," she complains. "I'm financially stable. I'm okay. But what about the kids trying to make it in this business? If you're not an established band, if you don't have a hit single, they're gonna drop you. There are a lot of people out there as talented as we were, but they can't sustain being in a rock 'n' roll band for long without success. We were able to, but we're going to die out."

Still, her current passion remains the new CD. "Eventually, there will be another Fleetwood Mac record and another tour," says Nicks. "But this record is my moment. All next year, it's going to be this. This is now my turn." It's her groove.

Friday, August 20, 2010

JANET ROBINS AMAZING ADVENTURE... INCLUDES A STINT WITH LINDSEY BUCKINGHAM

From Randy Rhodes To Precious Metal, from Lindsey Buckingham to her own solo career, the ongoing tale of guitarist / singer / songwriter Janet Robin is a fascinating journey.

It’s the tale of how a young girl barely into grade school fell in love with the guitar as she took lessons from an axe-slinger about to make his own mark upon the rock world. It’s a story where the daughter of a Southern California dentist grows up to join the 1980s all-girl band Precious Metal, plays in Lindsey Buckingham’s first solo group and further evolves into the performer she is today.


Full Article on Pollstar

Here's the section that includes Lindsey Buckingham:

A musician’s life is filled with unexpected breaks and this time opportunity came a knockin’ in the form of Lindsey Buckingham.

“He was putting together his first-ever solo band for a record,” Robin said. “A very special ten-piece band that was going to incorporate five guitar players, two percussionists, a drummer, bass player and keyboards.”

The audition took half the day in a studio where the two guitarists spent most of the time talking, as Buckingham instructed her to play specific guitar parts. Five hours later, the audition concluded, Robin went home to wait. And wait.

“I didn’t hear for two weeks until the agent called and said, ‘You got the gig. You’re going on Leno in a week.’”

As it turned out, Robin wasn’t the only woman in the band and she joined a lineup that also included Liza Carbe. First came rehearsals, then “The Tonight Show With Jay Leno,” followed by a six-week tour. Robin remembers her time with Buckingham as her “most professional gig.”

“It was semi-pro with Precious Metal. We had some tour buses and we played some good venues,” Robin said, comparing the two experiences. “But it stepped up a notch with Lindsey. That was the 1992 ‘Out Of The Cradle’ tour.”

Robin’s gig with Buckingham lasted until 1994 with the band touring as a headliner as well as supporting Tina Turner. Six years later, Robin recalls the experience as one of the most important times in her career, saying Buckingham demanded nothing less than perfection.

To accomplish this, Buckingham would record rehearsals on individual tracks and then meet with each musician and critiquing his or her work. The message was clear: get it right or get out.

“So you got your shit together,” Robin said. “He motivated me to rise to the occasion, whatever it meant. Like going to vocal lessons or deal with the metronome. I did all that and worked with the other guys in the band and we kind of came together.

“I learned what it takes to be close to perfect, what you do in rehearsals, what you expect from a band, how you put a band together and how to put a show together. I cannot thank him enough. He mentored me and he was very respectful to me. We still stay in touch.”

Here's Janet as part of Lindsey's guitar army - just to Lindsey's left.
Don't Look Down Live 1992
(from Out of The Cradle)