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

Wednesday, May 16, 2012

Win tickets to see...LINDSEY BUCKINGHAM (OF FLEETWOOD MAC) - Ithaca, NY June 8th


LINDSEY BUCKINGHAM LIVE
The State Theatre of Ithaca Friday, June 8th

Lindsey Buckingham, the iconic guitarist and male singer of Fleetwood Mac, Grammy winner, producer, and Rock and Roll Hall of Famer will visit Ithaca at the beautiful State Theatre in a solo engagement.  We want to get you rockin' with Lindsey, so we've got your chance to win tickets!

Listen to I100 Classic Rocks Classic Mornings with Kat Walters all week long (6:00am - 10:00am) for your chance to win!
Contest Rules
Buy Ticket to the show

Tuesday, May 15, 2012

Photos/Review: Lindsey Buckingham Belly Up | Thousand Oaks | Santa Cruz | San Francisco

Lindsey Buckingham - May 3, 2012
The Belly Up Tavern
Solana Beach, CA
Photos by Pixelperfectimages


Lindsey Buckingham - May 6, 2012
Thousand Oaks Civic Arts Plaza
Thousand Oaks, CA
Review and Photos by Scott Dworkin

"There may be no better setting in which to witness the truly solo Buckingham than the Civic Arts Plaza. The cozy confines of the venue gave one and all the chance to appreciate the true talents Buckingham possesses."

Full Review at Jam Magazine Online



Solo, Lindsey Buckingham Hits Highest Notes Possible In Voice, Guitar Concert 
By Kitty Dill
Stagehappenings

World-class musician Lindsey Buckingham is fond of referring to the group which he is most likely linked, Fleetwood Mac, as the Big Machine, and a subsequent group as The Small Machine.

Start thinking now of this legendary performer as The Machine. And that’s frankly an understatement because this extraordinary one-man act is infused with such intimacy, intensity and soul that even these descriptions seem inadequate.

After launching a highly-anticipated tour, the guitarist, singer, songwriter, producer, Grammy Award-winner and Rock and Roll Hall of Famer was in the spotlight at the Thousand Oaks Civic Arts Plaza (TOCAP).

Among those waiting for the Kavli Theatre doors to open were Santa Clarita residents Cary Brown, who saw LB about 1979 as part of Fleetwood Mac, and his wife Kay, who was hoping for a pleasant experience.

“Driven by this place many times. Never been inside. Lovely,” said Buckingham, 63, also indicating later his two young daughters were present, dedicated a song to them, acknowledged the instant ovations by indicting he’d play longer but with Monday morn looming, “it’s a school night.”



Lindsey Buckingham - May 11, 2012
The Rio Theatre
Santa Cruz, CA
Photos by Don Spencer



Lindsey Buckingham - May 14, 2012
The Fillmore
San Francisco, CA
Check out the photos by Rockmonthly.com

Trouble



Also.... Bleed To Love Her | Go Your Own Way

Photos: Lindsey Buckingham - Sacramento May 13th + San Francisco May 14th

Lindsey Buckingham Live at the Crest Theatre 
Sacramento, CA May 13, 2012
Photos by: Elle




Go Your Own Way


Lindsey Buckingham Live at The Fillmore 
San Francisco - May 14th.  
Photos by: Tony Wasserman
Lindsey Buckingham Concentrating at the FillmoreLindsey Buckingham and One of his Guitars - San Francisco

Leather both nights for those counting... 

Next stop -Redding, CA - Cascade Theatre - May 15th


Pre-Order Lindsey Buckingham Seeds We Sow [Limited Edition, Import] 2LP Red Vinyl

 REISSUE OF LINDSAY BUCKINGHAM'S 2011 ALBUM SEEDS WE SOW - 180 GRAM RED VINYL

Initial pressing only will be on RED vinyl
1000 ONLY LIMITED EDITION

SIDE A
01Seeds We Sow
02In Our Own Time
03Illumination

SIDE B
01That´s the Way Love Goes
02Stars Are Crazy

SIDE C
01When She Comes Down
02Rock Away Blind
03One Take

SIDE D
01Gone Too Far
02End of Time
03She Smiled Sweetly

Pre-Orders available... Release dates for some of the Euro countries and prices on-line seem to be all over the place, so shop around.

Amazon US 
Seeds We Sow [Limited Edition, Import]
USA: $42.54 released on June 5, 2012

Amazon Canada
Seeds We Sow (2LP-180 gram) [Limited Edition]
Canada: $39.89 released on May 29, 2012

Amazon UK
Seeds We Sow [VINYL] [Limited Edition]
UK: No price set - Released on June 5, 2012

Barnes and Noble Price: $33.38


Monday, May 14, 2012

Reviews: Lindsey Buckingham Los Angeles & Carmel


Lindsey Buckingham: Alone and Kicking
Sunset Center, Carmel, CA, May 10, 2012
by Jason Warburg

Alone on a bare stage decorated only with an area rug and a sizable amp rig, two songs into a taut 90-minute set that epitomized words like “intensity” and “masterful,” Lindsey Buckingham paused to contemplate the long, twisting trail that has led the Palo Alto native to the top of the rock world, around the globe and back to Carmel's 800-seat Sunset Center as a still-vital solo act.

The “big machine”—the musical juggernaut Fleetwood Mac, of which Buckingham has been a part for 27 of the last 37 years—and the small machine—solo recording and touring—nourish and feed off of one another. After a long struggle to achieve balance between the two, Buckingham has concluded that both are necessary and each has a vital role to play in fueling his growth as an artist.

Check out the complete well written review at Dailyvault.com



Win Tickets to See Stevie Nicks This Summer!
Listen all week to 105.7 HAWK (New Jersey) to win tickets to see Stevie Nicks on June 30th at PNC Bank Arts Center! 

Review / Photos / Setlist - Lindsey Buckingham Sacramento - May 13th

Lindsey Buckingham Live in Sacramento, CA - May 13th

(setlist photo by Jason DeBord)

Back to leather for this show...

"Lindsey Buckingham rocked the sold out, historic Crest Theatre in downtown Sacramento tonight.  Alone on the stage, with an endless arsenal of guitars, Mr. Buckingham put on an amazing performance, and more than anyone, he has such a deep emotional connection with his music that his passion truly drives his live show unlike any artist.  He is simply an amazing musician."

Check out the full review and rundown of the show by Jason DeBord including some really great photos at Rocksubculture.
Go Your Own Way


More Videos: Never Going Back Again | Big Love

Below Photo by: @amt6249
Mom's night at the beautiful old Crest theater in Sacram... on Twitpic

Sunday, May 13, 2012

(videos) Honoring U S Military - Stevie Nicks - Soldier's Angel + Landslide

SOLDIERS ANGEL & LANDSLIDE - FILMED AUGUST, 2011 IN STURGIS, SD
"Stevie Nicks & Band with special guest Waddy Wachtel performing Soldier's Angel at the Buffalo Chip in Sturgis, SD. Stevie Nicks is an American Patriot who genuinely cares about our Troops. Forward to all that you know so they know how much she cares."

Stevie Nicks performed along with Jeff Bridges and John Fogerty celebrating a night of appreciation for the US military hosted by The Bob Woodruff Foundation.  The concert aired earlier this spring on HDNet Concerts.



Stevie Nicks & Waddy Wachtel - Landslide

Saturday, May 12, 2012

Chart Updates: Fleetwood Mac US Album Sales + Irelands Top 100 Re-entry

THE BILLBOARD CHARTS + IRELAND TOP 100 ALBUMS


Fleetwood Mac's Rumours and Greatest Hits are the only two entries found this week on the Billboard or Soundscan sales charts.

On the Top 200 Catalogue Albums Chart for the week ending May 6th and for Billboard Chart date May 19th Rumours moves up 1% in sales to 1,847 units sold vs 1,824 last week moving from #117 last week to #116 this week.  Greatest Hits drops 4% in sales to 1,433 vs 1,489 last week moving down the chart to #173 from #165 last week.  Total sales for Rumours in the USA since November 1991 are 2,953,999.  Total sales for Greatest Hits = 4,544,927.  In Ireland, Rumours re-enters the Top 100 albums chart at #76.  Fleetwood Mac's 2009 "Don't Stop" Documentary re-aired on a bunch of BBC stations beginning May 4th all over the UK and Ireland... Album sales likely spiked in the UK over the last week and we'll likely see the results on tomorrows published UK charts.

TOP 200 CATALOGUE ALBUMS
# 116 (117) Fleetwood Mac - Rumours
# 173 (165) Fleetwood Mac - Greatest Hits

TOP 200 DIGITAL ALBUMS
# 27 (21) Fleetwood Mac - Rumours
# 99 (104) Fleetwood Mac - Greatest Hits

IRELAND TOP 100 ALBUMS CHART - Week ending 10th May 2012
# 76 (Re-entry) Fleetwood Mac - Rumours
# 83 (94) Fleetwood Mac - The Very Best Of