It seems like every year I try to listen to every CD I own. It really doesn't take as long as you might think, especially since I work at my computer for several hours a day.
Ever put on a CD you haven't heard for awhile (or completely forgot you owned), listen to a couple of tracks and say to yourself, "What was I thinking?" Well, since I'm only about a dozen discs into the project, that hasn't happened yet. I'm sure it will.
But I did find a nice surprise today. Fleetwood Mac's Tusk. Now let me qualify this by saying I believe Fleetwood Mac is probably THE most over-rated band of all time. Christine McVie's songs are often nice, but mostly fluff. Lindsey Buckingham never dazzled me with his guitar work. And sorry, Rumours is listenable, but it's no masterpiece. Come on, REALLY listen to "Dreams" "You Make Lovin' Fun" "The Chain" etc. and tell me that's greatness.
But Tusk is different. Some people call it Fleetwood Mac's White Album, which is probably accurate. The album is very experimental, nothing like anything the group did before. (You should also understand that the early incarnation of Fleetwood Mac [pre-1975] is nothing like the band from their self-titled 1975 album on. Sort of like the difference between Jefferson Airplane and Jefferson Starship.)
The album came right on the heels of the ridiculously successful Rumours. I wonder if the band members thought, "Man, we'll never top that; let's just go nuts and have fun." They went nuts.
But the results work, at least for me. (Even the bloated USC Marching Band can't ruin the title track. Well, not much.) Tusk is unpredictable, humorous, angry, sloppy and ragged in places, and downright confusing in others. But at least they took a few chances. (If you check it out, get the two-disc version. The one-disc version chops up one of the band's best songs, "Sara.")
2 comments:
Am I the only person who just doesn't like Fleetwood Mac? At all?
Since I, too, sit at the computer all day, you have inspired me to likewise revisit the whole of my CD collection. Today is the first day, and so far we've had John Coltrane, Rachmaninoff, Gregorian chant (don't ask) and Art Blakey. It actually seems to make the day go by faster.
Maybe I like "Tusk" only because it seems to be the band's way of saying "Screw you, Warner Brothers!"
Man, John, that's quite a variety of music...I don't think I could listen to Art Blakey and Gregorian chant in the same month, much less the same day. But it sounds like you've got some good stuff there.
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