Monday, May 20, 2013

Calgary Flames trainer rescues Stevie Nicks

Calgary Flames trainer comes to the rescue of ailing Fleetwood Mac singer Stevie Nicks at Calgary show
BY ERIC FRANCIS
CALGARY SUN

Try as he might Schad Richea wasn’t able to save the Flames season.

However, the Flames assistant athletic therapist was able to make sure the show went on at the Dome Friday night.

In the midst of Fleetwood Mac’s stirring performance at the Saddledome leading lady Stevie Nicks paused between songs to explain a recent fall had left her hobbling to the point she wasn’t sure if she was going to be able to continue on as part of the iconic band’s latest tour.

The Calgary Sun May 20, 2013
“It was, like, really bad,” the 64-year-old Nicks told the sold out crowd of her knee injury.

“It was to the point we were going to have to start cancelling shows.”

She said Richea’s magic touch had helped to the point she wanted to dedicate the next song, Landslide, to Richea, adding, “I feel like a hockey player!”

Richea was given tickets to the show by Nicks and was shocked to hear his latest patient rain praise upon him for his efforts.

“I was flattered — I wasn’t expecting anything like that,” said Richea.

“She’s a very classy lady and I was happy to help spruce her up.”

Richea said he just happened to be at the Dome when a call came from someone asking if he could help the legendary singer.

“What I did was no different than what 140 other athletic therapists in Alberta would have done for her – I just happened,” said Richea, 39, a former Dinos and Toronto Blue Jays athletic therapist who has been with the Flames four years.

“I guess I had a small part in helping her out and she was really grateful and I appreciate that.”

Richea, a huge fan of live music, said the he thought the show was phenomenal.

“Everyone was standing — I haven’t seen anything like that at the Dome since Kipper’s last game,” said Richea, who also took Nicks up on her invitation to see her after the show to meet the rest of the band.

“Just a great show. She’s 64 and she’s the youngest in the group — incredible.”

The aging band is in the middle of a rigorous 48-date North American tour that features shows almost every second night over the course of three months.

To put that into perspective the Flames lineup of 20-and-30-something athletes also played 48 times in a three-month schedule with the help of a massive support staff that includes Richea and colleague Morris Boyer, who recently worked for Team Canada at the World Championships in Sweden.

The NHL team only travels for half its games unlike rock bands, which play all their gigs on the road.

“A lot of bands like Bon Jovi have chiropractors and physiotherapists travelling with them because the schedules and the job are demanding and they’re not athletes,” said Richea.

“One of the things I did say to her is that ‘you may have to find someone to work with you along the way.’”

After a one-month summer break Fleetwood Mac will resume rocking in Europe where they have another 19-city schedule set up.

Sunday, May 19, 2013

Fleetwood Mac "The Soap Legends of Rock"

THE SOAP LEGENDS OF ROCK
By Barry Egan
Sunday Independent - Ireland
(Living section)

IT'S BEEN called rock's greatest real-life soap opera, a gothic romance with echoes of Dallas and The Borgias... Fleetwood Mac in their Seventies heyday were perhaps the most orgiastic, dysfunctional, and at that moment, the biggest-selling band in the world. Stevie Nicks and Lindsey Buckingham had a seven year relationship that had a bitter end: Buckingham calling her “a schizophrenic bitch” and, squeezing her against a car, said “Get that woman out of my life.”

Nicks wrote Dreams — “dreams of loneliness like a heartbeat drives you mad” — about the break-up with Buckingham. He wrote Go Your Own Way — “You can call it another lonely day/You can go your own way” — in response. The two songs, both classics in their own way, are from Fleetwood Mac’s 1977 masterpiece Rumours, which sold 30 million copies and was then the biggest selling album of all time.

A hint of the break-up to come was found on the previous Fleetwood Mac album, with Buckingham singing on Monday Morning: “First you love me, then you say it's wrong. I can't go on believing for long.” Nicks revealed in one interview that she only realised her love affair with Buckingham was truly and finally over when he had his first child with future wife Kristen Messner in 1998.

John McVie and Christine McVie's marriage of eight years fell apart around the time of Rumours; McVie would later have an alcoholinduced seizure. Founder Mick Fleetwood was divorcing too, and would not long after have a cocaine-fuelled affair with Nicks herself. The band that lays together stays together, it turned out.

It was alleged that there was a velvet bag of cocaine kept under the mixing desk with which the band would, when the need arose during recording, “refresh” themselves. Gramme upon gramme of white powder would be snorted then washed down with gallons of brandy and champagne. It was chaos and decadence on an imaginable scale.

In the mid-Eighties Nicks would eventually check herself into the Betty Ford Clinic for cocaine addiction. She almost met an unhappy end later when she developed a nearfatal dependency on Klonopin, a tranquilliser. A heroine to everyone from Courtney Love to PJ Harvey and our own Andrea Corr — who did a sublime cover of Dreams on The Corrs' album Talk on Corners — Nicks was the queen of the stoned age.

“I think the intriguing thing to a lot of people is that there's never been a period in rock as debauched as the period after Rumours,” Courtney Love said in 2003. “Nobody's touched it.”

“Two weeks’ worth of cocaine could have paid our rent for six months,” a long since cleaned-up and sober Nicks told Oprah Winfrey last month.

“It turned people into nutcases. Mick and I never would have had an affair had we not had a party and all been completely drunk, messed up and coked out. We ended up being the last two people at the party. So guess what? It’s not hard to figure out what happened — and what happened wasn’t a good thing. It was doomed. It was a doomed thing, caused a lot of pain for everybody, led to nothing. I’m like, ‘Gee, could you have just laid off the brandy and the coke and the pot for two days?’ I can remember thinking to myself at that point, ‘Wow. Who knew four years ago that I would even be a part of anything that was this stupid?’” (Mick Fleetwood reckoned the band spent roughly $8m on coke all told. That's a lot of stupidity.)

That stupidity lead to certain mythic rumours circulating about Nicks — chief among them that during their Seventies pomp her nose was so gone from white powder abuse that she employed a roadie to give her cocaine rectally.

“You know, I heard that too,” she said in 2001. “But of course that never, ever happened. That is an absurd statement. It's not true. Maybe that nasty rumour came from the fact that people knew I had such a big hole in my nose, which of course didn't stop me from doing cocaine one little bit.” Nicks will remain a rock goddess who has inspired everyone from Florence Welch and…you name it.

Chrissie McVie quit the band in 1998. “We all did everything we could do to try and talk her out of it,” Nicks — the Queen of Sobriety — told the Observer at her home in LA two months ago, “but you look in someone's eyes and you can tell they're finished. It's like when somebody breaks up with you and says: ‘We're done’.”

Or, she helpfully points out: “As Taylor Swift would say: ‘ We are never ever getting back together ever!' That's what Chris was saying… But I'd beg, borrow and scrape together $5m and give it to her in cash if she would come back. That's how much I miss her.” Proof of how much we have missed Nicks et al is surely in the fact that Fleetwood Mac's two shows in Dublin later this year sold out in minutes. Fleetwood Mac play the 02 in Dublin on September 20 and 21

Saturday, May 18, 2013

REVIEW | PHOTOS: Fleetwood Mac Live in Calgary

FLEETWOOD MAC LIVE
May 17, 2013 - Scotiabank Saddledome
Calgary, Alberta Canada

Stevie told the audience in her dedication to Landslide tonight that she's been limping and the reason for that was she fell a couple of weeks ago and injured her right knee pretty bad to the point where she thought they might have to cancel or postpone shows. She had the Calgary Flames Physical Therapist do some work on her knee and said it was much better - she then dedicated Landslide to him.

Get well Stevie!

Ain’t no rumour: Stevie Nicks and Co. are still rock royalty after all these years
BY GERRY KROCHAK
Photo by Mike Drew - Calgary Sun - View More Photos

Given Calgary’s spring and summer major concert schedule, you could be forgiven for wondering what year it is.
With Bob Seger, Bon Jovi and Motley Crue behind us, and Def Leppard (with Cheap Trick, no less), KISS, Rush and The Eagles ahead, it’s really no wonder that vinyl record sales are at a 15-year high — in Calgary and everywhere else.

Which brings us to last night: Back in 1977, Fleetwood Mac released a perfect record, and 36 years later, Rumours remains an undeniable and absolute pop-rock masterpiece. If there remained any question whether they could still pull it off live, the response last night was a resounding “yes.”

That second Lindsey Buckingham-Stevie Nicks effort, which followed Mac’s rich blues history with former leader Peter Green in the late ’60s, was, not surprisingly, the focal point of the evening.

Indeed, Buckingham’s vocals and otherworldly fretwork, and Nicks’ distinctive and still muscular pipes, fuelled the Rumours troika of Second Hand News, The Chain and Dreams to open the evening with a bang, and thunderous applause to match.

The 40- and 50-somethings were expected more than the healthy contingent of teens and 20-somethings, but all seemed in awe, in the presence of greatness even, by the time Nicks addressed the crowd for the first time. “Welcome Calgary,” she greeted the erupting throng. “It was a beautiful day here and thanks for spending tonight … with us.”

On an understated, but classy stage production, bathed in lights of greens, yellows, blues and purples and some video imagery, Nicks still demonstrates a mystical aura with her onstage demeanour.

While it’s true that the vocals and keyboard styling of Christine McVie are missed, musically, the band doesn’t miss much. Although a little more ragged and a little more raspy than in her glory days, the best thing you can say about Nicks in 2013 is that she still sounds like, well, Stevie Nicks.

Besides, two backup singers rounded out the sound (and hit the high notes she couldn’t) on Sad Angel (a new one from Extended Play) and a so-so interpretation of Rhiannon, in which she mumbled her way through the first verse before catching her groove.

Some nifty video images, including iconic footage of the USC Marching Band, accompanied a pair from ’79s Tusk: Buckingham handled lead through Not That Funny and the title cut from the late ’70s experiment which, depending on who you ask, either went very wrong or very right leading up to 1980.

Veteran sticksman Mick Fleetwood and bassist John McVie remained in the pocket, while Buckingham continued to lead the charge and Nicks picked up steam through stirring renditions of Sara, Big Love and, especially, Landslide.

The pace of the show never wavered and it was one of those nights where it felt like it was all unfolding too quickly. Gypsy, Gold Dust Woman, the outstanding Stevie Nicks solo cut, Stand Back, and, of course, main set closer Go Your Own Way were memorable snapshots during an evening many hoped would never end.

The encores were inevitable, but not obvious. World Turning preceded Don’t Stop — the Christine McVie lead that was missed the most — while Silver Springs and Say Goodbye rounded out a night that seemed over in a flash even though two hours had past.

No one ever retires from rock and roll — this much we know. And last night we were richer for it.

TALK ABOUT APPOSING VIEWS BETWEEN REVIEWS
Calgary Herald Review - online + Photo Gallery

Landslide / Never Going Back Again

Photo by Daniel Blais
 
Above Photos by: Stuart Gradon - Calgary Herald
 Above photos by Christopher Parent | Ernest Hon
 Above photos by Hollymariiie | Jody McPherson
 Above photos by snowronin
 Above photo by WBrett Wilson
  Above photo by Calon Cyca
 Above photos by snowronin | stebankag

 Above photo by K_danforth
 Above photos by stebankag | lsmith 
 Above photo by lisaostrickoff | Staceycarmsnz 
Above photo by lastnameleslie

Friday, May 17, 2013

So what's really going on with Fleetwood Mac and former member Christine McVie?

Lindsey Buckingham Discusses Christine McVie's Status with
Christine at the Ivor Novella Awards 5/15/13
Fleetwood Mac

So what's really going on with Fleetwood Mac and former member Christine McVie?

The issue came to light earlier this year when drummer Mick Fleetwood very publicly reached out to McVie, who left the band in 1998 and subsequently moved back to England. Fleetwood's gesture resulted in McVie, formerly married to Fleetwood Mac bassist John McVie, visiting the drummer at his home in Maui and also flying to Los Angeles to join the other band members for a reunion dinner.

Guitarist Lindsey Buckingham tells Gary Graff of WCSX


But Buckingham he doesn't foresee McVie doing much else with the band, and certainly not becoming a full-fledged member again:

5 Questions Mick Has Never Been Asked

Get the answers to these in the audio of Karlson & McKenzie’s interview at the link below.


1. Do you own a sombrero?
2. Have you ever worn a jock strap?
3. Have you ever used a drumstick as a weapon?
4. Have you ever Googled yourself to see what you’ve been up to?
5. What’s the grossest thing you’ve ever pulled out of your beard?

Mick on Fleetwood Mac: “We Actually Love Each Other”
Tim Staskiewicz / 100.7 WZLX

Thursday, May 16, 2013

PHOTO: Christine McVie Red Carpet Arrivals 2013 Ivor Novello Awards - London

Never mind "The Year of Fleetwood Mac" it's more like "The year of Christine McVie popping up all over the place"... She kicked off the year holidaying with Mick and John on Maui in February, joining Mick at a live gig up on stage playing keyboards... then met up with the rest of Fleetwood Mac in L.A., rehearsed with the band no less... now she's out and about in London presenting at The Novello Awards.  She presented Best Song Musically and Lyrically... and the winner was "Next To Me" by Emeli.

Randy Newman won the final award of the night and in his acceptance speach said it was amazing 
to be in the same room as Ray Davies and Fleetwood Mac's Christine McVie.

She looks amazing!

Christine McVie at the 2013 Ivor Novello awards held at the
Grosvenor House Hotel, London May 16, 2013.

STEVIE NICKS, DAVE STEWART Documentary IN YOUR DREAMS to play Oklahoma's DeadCENTER Film Fest


Stevie Nicks, Dave Stewart | Documentary Feature
Stevie Nick: In Your Dreams
Grand Lawn at the Myriad Gardens, 9:30 PM Sunday, June 9, 2013
300 West Sheridan Avenue, Oklahoma City, OK
** Note: This is a free screening.

DeadCenter Film Festival

Want to own the film?
STEVIE NICKS: IN YOUR DREAMS DOCUMENTARY
Available now on iTunes

The film documents the making of her In Your Dreams album, which she did with Dave Stewart, and Stevie says she hopes the film will

 "make you want to listen to the real album because a lot of people didn't even know I had a record out. You know, that's how the music business is today."
Album Available on iTunes

The Documentary plays tonight in Calgary, Alberta Canada at Globe Cinema at 7pm and 9pm.  Stevie and Fleetwood Mac are now making their way through Canada with a show in Calgary on Friday and Vancouver on Sunday.





VIDEO: "Rhiannon" | "Dreams" Fleetwood Mac Live Edmonton

Fleetwood Mac Live
May 15, 2013 - Rexall Place
Edmonton, Alberta

Photograph by: Greg Southam, Edmonton Journal
View Photo Gallery

GYPSY (She wants to twirl at the end... But she just can't... It's her right leg that's bothering her. She does reach out and shake the hand of an audience member in the front... she did the same in Winnipeg.
RHIANNON
Noticeably missing... the black shawl Stevie's been wearing on this tour during this song.

DREAMS
Check out the Reviews - view more photos from Edmonton

Back on the Road: grandMA2 Joins Fleetwood Mac



(16/05/2013) Fleetwood Mac is back on the road and a grandMA2 console has joined the iconic band on the Fleetwood Mac Live 2013 World Tour. The new tour, which began in Columbus will wrap in Australia in December, marks the first for the band since 2009’s sold-out “Unleashed” tour. This year is also the 35th anniversary of their “Rumours” album, one of the most successful in recording history. It remained on top of the pop charts for more than 31 weeks and produced four Top Ten singles.


Lighting designer Paul “Arlo” Guthrie of Minneapolis-based Toss Film + Design is Fleetwood Mac’s long-time lighting designer. “I have to cater to four different personalities (Mick Fleetwood, John McVie, Lindsey Buckingham and Stevie Nicks) and bring them together as one team,” he explains. “For this show we have four big soft box panels and 32 Clay Paky Sharpy Washes on curved lighting pipes, some of them on the floor, some on the rigs and some in pods that come out. They hang on weird angles and move during the show – some are on 45, 90 and 120º angles. They’re well featured – the main workhorse washlight of the rig.”

The lighting designer brought his own grandMA2 full-size on tour to run “the whole show” and reports that “it’s working as good as it always has. It’s super comfortable; it’s like hanging out with an old friend each day. My grandMA2 is more than capable of running everything, including the video.”

MA Lighting International, based in Paderborn, Germany, is the dedicated sales, support and service entity for the renowned control systems, digital dimming systems, networking tools and media servers of MA Lighting Technology, based near Wuerzburg, Germany. The product range offers cutting-edge solutions for control and dimming, including the award-winning grandMA2 consoles, the MA onPC command wing and MA onPC fader wing and reliable digital dimmer racks and packs. With its innovative MA VPU (Video Processing Unit) MA bridges the lighting and video worlds.

Today, MA Lighting is respected for its technical knowledge and has achieved a unique international reputation for its operational philosophy. The company offers more than 30 years experience and strictly follows a professional user-centric approach, getting as close as possible to the market via its own international offices and support centres in the UK, North America, Latin America, the Middle East/India, Asia Pacific and Scandinavia/Eastern Europe/Russia – supported by a world-wide distribution and service network.


Previous Paul Guthrie Fleetwood Mac / Lindsey Buckingham / Stevie Nicks productions:
Fleetwood Mac 2003 & 2009
 Below Lindsey Buckingham | Stevie Nicks


REVIEW | PHOTOS: Fleetwood Mac Live in Edmonton


Fleetwood Mac ageless wonders
By Mike Ross
Edmonton Sun
Photos by Amber Bracken
May 15, 2013

Some people are griping that Fleetwood Mac touring without a major new album – or Christine McVie – is just a “cash grab.”

So what of it? Gotta make a living somehow, to maintain the lifestyle to which they’ve become accustomed. All those scarves can’t be cheap. No one makes money selling records anymore, do they? But the one thing you can’t download is a live concert (never mind the canned horns in Tusk).

The plus side of the cash grab for Mac fans is that the remaining fantastic four Mick Fleetwood, John McVie, Lindsey Buckingham and Stevie Nicks are solid. They should be. Since the band broke up for the first time, they’ve been touring on and off as long as they ever did back in the day, except maybe the epic Rumours tour. They’re more stable now, too, by the sounds of it. They’re all great musicians, and so the band has become nice and tight. Sure, Wednesday night at Rexall Place was just another gig in a long string not likely to end soon, but it was still special for that reason – because they’re working it, just like all the other classic rock bands out there.

Turns out Mac did release a new EP recently, very quietly, without any fuss. They pulled a new one tune at the show amongst the classics some 15,000 fans turned up to hear: Sad Angel, a brisk rocking groove, and somewhat downbeat message that may or may not be about the end of the world: “Hello, hello, sad angel, have you come to fight the war?” goes the line. Might have to let that one grow on you.

But admit it: Seems fans would rather have Christine McVie back than hear new Fleetwood Mac tunes. Most the thrills were reserved for the aforementioned classics: Like a double shot of Second Hand News and The Chain to open the show, showing the vocal talents of Buckingham and Nicks, respectively, their voices still blending wonderfully. Dreams – probably the band’s biggest commercial hit - was knocked off early, one of several favourites that showed the pair in fine form. The exes still seem to have a spark between them, some chemistry. During The Chain, Buckingham turned to his longtime musical and one-time sexual partner and put a little extra oomph into the line, “If you don’t love me now, you never will again!” That actually doesn’t make any sense when you think about it.

There are quibbles. At times it came off like the Lindsey Buckingham Show. Wasn’t it always, though? The guy remains a serious scary monster on the guitar, showing off great guns on a solo version of Looking Out for Love – singing while playing an impossibly fast riff at the same time. Nicks made it an acoustic duo next with the lovely Landslide, giving of her own extra oomph to the line, “I’m getting older, too.”

It was cool to see the band playing with the arrangements of songs they must’ve played 10,000 times. Save Me, coming late in the show, was elongated into a psychedelic blues jam and showcased one of Nicks’ best performances. Tusk, one of Mac’s weirdest and most wonderful songs, started with a laid-back, almost ambient vibe before breaking into the jungle groove we all know, and did I mention the canned horns? Maybe it was a really, really good synth patch. There were a number of backing musicians and singers toiling in the shadows to fill in the spaces. The best moments were the most stripped down, however. Back in the spotlight not for the first or last time, Buckingham spindled and mutilated the melody to Never Going Back Again, making for a simple yet passionate performance that had a lot more soul than if it had been faithful to the studio version. He cranked out more blistering guitar solos later on, proving he’s really the guy driving this band – no offence to the competent and sturdy drumming of Mick Fleetwood, a heavy hitter if there ever was one.

The notion that the parts are greater than the sum in this case were put to rest when the band kicked it up a few notches for the home stretch to end two hours of living, breathing classic rock nostalgia.  Go Your Own Way was magic. It’s nice to see the old-timers up there working so hard.

4 SUNS out of 5



Review: Fleetwood Mac brings landslide of hits to Rexall
Edmonton Journal
By Sandra Sperounes

EDMONTON - Tell me lies, tell me sweet little lies about Fleetwood Mac’s sold-out show at Edmonton’s soon-to-be-secondary hockey arena.

The Edmonton Sun May 16, 2013
OK ... how ’bout the foursome’s rendition of Little Lies felt like the sonic equivalent of hugging a pack of angels?

It didn’t, of course, because Lindsey Buckingham, Stevie Nicks, Mick Fleetwood and John McVie didn’t play the tune during Wednesday night’s concert. (Christine McVie sings lead on the 1987 hit — and she no longer
tours with the band, preferring to hang out at home in England.)

Truth be told, Little Lies aren’t necessary — in their set list or about Fleetwood Mac’s show. The rockers, fronted by ex-lovers and hand-holders Buckingham and Nicks, took fans on an enchanting stroll through the ’70s and ’80s — filled with chimes, visuals of suns, stars and exploding glitter, and songs about love, poets, and gypsies.

The foursome, with at least four backup musicians, started their 2-1/2-hour set with a triple whammy of tunes from one of the biggest albums of the ’70s, Rumours — Second Hand News, The Chain and Dreams. These were soon followed by four songs from Fleetwood Mac’s difficult followup album, Tusk, which Buckingham described as their attempt to subvert the axiom of “If it works, run it into ground and move on” — using more words than he usually does in one of Saturday Night Live’s ongoing gags.

The Edmonton Journal May 16, 2013
Not That Funny felt like a reworked Sex Pistols tune backed by a piano. The title track lurched like a drunk and giddy parade of elephants, complete with invisible horns. (You couldn’t see them, but they sounded real — so perhaps their players were hidden behind a wall of speakers, much like the band’s second drummer.) Then came two of Nicks’s bewitching numbers, Sisters of the Moon and Sara, which she sang as she gently swayed, playing with the layers of her black skirt or the ribbons dangling from her microphone stand.

Buckingham and his bandmates managed to squeeze in two new songs, Sad Angel and Without You, from Fleetwood Mac’s four-song EP, Extended Play, released with little fanfare on iTunes at the end of April. (And, most likely, the precursor to more material, according to the tanned frontman.)

Sad Angel was one of the night’s fastest and most straightforward rock tunes, while Without You, a lost song from the ’70s, featured Nicks and Buckingham singing about their first experiences in Los Angeles. Neither are examples of their best work as tunesmiths, but at least they didn’t sound out of place in the set list.

While Nicks can’t quite hit the high and sighing notes, her remaining range still sounds powerful, deftly cutting through the cacophony of her bandmates. If she sounded a wee bit dodgy on Dreams, she more than made up for it on Landslide, as Buckingham stood at her side, playing acoustic guitar. Cue the flood of tears, goosebumps, Bic lighters and a spontaneous choir of baby-boomers, their not-so-young children and a few grandkids.

Buckingham was the real star of the night. His voice is still supple — whooping on Tusk, spitting with punk rage on Not That Funny, screeching on Big Love — and he plays guitar like no one else. His fingers rippled like a waterfall over the strings of his acoustic guitar as he played a more delicate version of Big Love, Landslide and Never Going Back Again. So effortless, so understated, so humble.

May Fleetwood Mac come back ... again and again. Next time, they’ll need to bring a unicorn (or winged horse) — and Christine.

FAN PHOTOS