Here’s one for the iPod, Fireflies, a slightly less well known Fleetwood Mac song, one never captured in the studio. This version was recorded during a tour sound check and thrown into the mix on the long-forgotten Live (1980) album, a collection which, by the standards of the time and of live albums, was fairly good.
iTunes may never have the Buckingham Nicks album, but at least they have this timepiece from a seemingly innocent, yet all the while coked out, world just on the cusp of discovering Off the Wall, Closer, Purple Rain and Thriller, not in that order.
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Bernard StreetCred just provided me with the lovely piece of Fleetwood Mac Americana below. It’s outtake footage from outdoor (Dodgers Stadium) sessions where USC’s marching band were recording their parts of Tusk (1979). Musical fashions of the time, clothes, hair, the manner of speaking, all captured here, reflect an era, unknown to the participants, about to end. The 70s mishegas of cocaine ascending would give way to the interminable pee-testing, peekaboo rehab culture still with us today, and the California-born caucasian pop which Fleetwood Mac and the Eagles dominated would give way to the slightly more diverse belle epoque of Michael Jackson and Prince.
Note well the scene which begins 49 seconds in where, incredulous, Stevie Nicks ponders aloud, “Who are we to deserve the USC band to play for us?” Ever the cynical Englishwoman, Christine McVie, cradling a fishbowl-sized glass of the era’s best chardonnay, chides her, “Stevie, don’t be so humble.” (“In 2006, Paste Magazine [unironically] named McVie the 83rd greatest living songwriter,” says Wikipedia.)
As the maudlin but truth-filled Shakespeare wrote, “Golden lads and girls all must, as chimney-sweepers, come to dust.“
Enjoy:
