I only really knew the hits of FM (and didnt care for those much), however a thread on here (about reunions we'd like to see) lead me to Bare Trees. That's a great album. Particularly Sunny Side of Heaven and Sentimental Lady. What beautiful stuff! I love the album cover too...

Anyone else into this lovely LP?

Bare Trees on Youtube

Yes - really like that mid-period Fleetwood Mac. My fave tracks on Bare Trees are Child Of Mine and The Ghost.

If you like Bare Trees it's also worth checking out Future Games.

Penguin and Kiln House are also well worth a listen.

Bob Welch was such an underrated songwriter.

Here's a few great ones from the mid-period Fleetwood Mac.

I'm one of those people who followed FM well before the Buckingham/Nicks era and pretty much jumped ship after they became mainstream popular and played endlessly on AOR FM radio. I generally liked those BN era LPs but just got sick of hearing them. To this day I still play Bare Trees and Mystery to Me in my regular rotation. Big fan of the Welch/Westan/Kirwan era not to mention Peter Green before that. Terrific version of For Your Love on MtM worth checking out for those looking for a taste of the Mac sound from the so-called "transition" era between Green and BN. Hang in there for the coda

[www.youtube.com]

HBK

Future Games is in my top 10 favorite albums of all time. Mystery to Me is also great. Heroes are Hard to Find is also superb. Love that pre-Buckingham Nicks era FM.

Me too! I jumped ship when Stevie Nicks and Lindsay Buckingham climbed on board. Loved Christine Perfect's voice, hated Stevie Nicks's.

The LPs mentioned in this thread are some of the best 70s rnr; not knocking Buckingham/Nicks but Future Games, Mystery to me, Bare Trees, Kiln House, all fantastic albums, to say nothing of Then Play On. All of this stuff kicks the shit out of what Mac became famous for.



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 2017-02-08 04:39 by Rokyfan.

Those "middle" Mac albums were all good. I liked Bare Trees, Future Games, and especially Kiln House. The Buckingham/Nicks infusion was positive at first, but became self indulgent ego driven as it evolved imo. I saw the "new Mac" right out of the gate when they played in Phoenix and it was a really great concert.

None of it ever came close to the Green years though in my mind.

Sands of Time is my favorite from that era.

Wow -- that's weird! I was just listening to Bare Trees yesterday, after not hearing it for awhile. Something in the air/zeitgeist that made Bare Trees pop up? How great to be able to talk about it here on IORR.

here's no good recording of the album on YouTube (the one that's there is speeded up), I made a playlist using individual songs someone remastered very well:

Fleetwood Mac - Bare Trees YouTube Playlist

video: [www.youtube.com]

I adore Danny Kirwan's guitar "voice" and writing so much, so melodic and sort of epic, groovy, transcendent, just suffuses into my soul like an aloe mist. I love all his contributions on Bare Trees.

Track by track

- dig "Little Child of Mine" because it's mysterious and rollicking

- "The Ghost" is ok if I'm in a Bob Welch mood

- "Homeward Bound" is enjoyable to me because it's Christine McVie--like others posting in this thread, I prefer Christine McVie's voice, her tone, and overall vibe to Stevie Nicks (although Stevie Nicks added interesting and not unappealing dimension to the group, particularly the first 2 albums featuring her and Lindsay Buckingham)--and also has some nice guitar work--both acoustic and electric, and any Fleetwood Mac song with strong piano (again: Christine McVie) is a favorite

- "Sunny Side of Heaven" I could hear 15 million times and be happy about it--it's one of those songs when I heard it as a little kid it just gave me hope--I knew that nothing in the "straight world" that struck me as hypocritical or unkind or stupid could touch, much less destroy, the far deeper beauty and truth of music like this

- "Bare Trees" has such a great groove and roll song. I really love the beats and rhythms to it. The bass and vocals in unison (with one guitar?) ("I was alone in the cold of a winter's day...") is a neat touch and then the other tasty, tasteful--and joyful--guitar licks and fills. I think if Danny Kirwan weren't singing lead Christine McVie could a good job on this one.

- "Sentimental Lady" - nothing to say at the moment. They're ok and part of the album.

- "Danny's Chant" - very acid rock.

- "Spare Me a Little" - from that snare roll intro and moving into, again, that so chill, laidback yet resolute, vibe that was always more authentically California-feeling than what came forth when they actually started recording with California musicians. I don't care for the chorus. But the verses just soar, with Christine's chantilly creme voice and the mix of the pure and distorted guitar interludes. And I never noticed until this minute when singing the 6 opening notes ("Why not li-ie he-re") that those first 6 notes are the same intervals as the guitar hook in "My Girl"! The song isn't a songwriting masterpiece and sort of disintegrates into a jam, but that's ok to me, because it's a good spirited jam, almost predating Allman Bros Dickey Betts/Ramblin' Man-esque sound, in a way.

- "Dust" - almost beyond words. It could so easily have remained an instrumental, but instead Danny Kirwan sings the first 2 stanzas of a poem by Rupert Brookes, "Dust," which fit so well. the first 2 stanzas lay the foundation for the poem, but interestingly, the poem isn't so much about when we die, or are in or near death, but the poet describing when he dies and when the poet's love dies, their spirits--which Brookes describes as one mote of a dust and an atom...

Still sentient, still unsatisfied,
We'll ride the air, and shine and flit,
Around the places where we died,

And dance as dust before the sun,
And light of foot, and unconfined,
Hurry from road to road, and run
About the errands of the wind.

Not dead, not undesirous yet...
One mote of all the dust that's I
Shall meet one atom that was you

--describes how they and dance and swirl and ascend into orbit above a garden of people who just sort of gape and have no idea what the hell this energy is, before it disappears--

"And they will know---poor fools, they'll know!---
/One moment, what it is to love."

The quintessential Romantic ode to those who are alive and awake to love, set against a backdrop of the banal and mundane and those who are not "Lovers." But Danny Kirwan quotes only the opening lines here about death itself...amidst a wash of lush contented melancholia.

- "Thoughts on a Grey Day" - I have always loved this woman and can speak her lines in her voice. So sweet. And her and her husband's patter/bickering at the end - adorable.


All that said, Future Games may even be more of a favorite album

-swiss



Edited 3 time(s). Last edit at 2017-02-09 12:49 by swiss.

Nice thoughts Swiss! I enjoyed reading those.

Quote
triceratops
Sands of Time is my favorite from that era.

"Sometimes" is my favorite, and "Sands of Time" a close second, but all of Future Games, really. Not a dud in the bunch (well, "Lay It All Down" is a bit silly, but I still like it).

Here's the sole non-speeded-up upload on YouTube of the entire Future Games album.

- swiss



Edited 3 time(s). Last edit at 2017-02-09 13:18 by swiss.

It not Bare Trees, but you know what's a great song? Jewel Eyed Judy. What a track. That early band was so totally different than what they became. Maybe not better or worse, but just totally different. Its worth people taking the time to check out cause there's some great stuff in there. I mean Oh Well and Green Manalishi themselves are incredible songs.

The Green Manalishi is a tremendous track indeed! The first time I saw FM, they actually opened for The Jefferson Starship at Boston Garden, late 70s. B&N had just joined them and we really didn't know anything about them - but they were great (I had a huge crush on Stevie for several years after - like much of the world at the time). But I remember there was a King Biscuit Flower Hour (remember that?) of one of those shows (Passaic NJ maybe) that had a great version of the Green Manalishi, with L. Buckingham wailing away - he is a fantastic guitar player.

Wow, now I'm really digging Future Games. Particularly Woman of Thousand Years and the beautiful title track. Sounds like Carl Wilson singing Neil Young. I love finding 'new' music!

Is there any video if them doing these track? My quick yt search brought up nothing

Quote
RollingFreak
It not Bare Trees, but you know what's a great song? Jewel Eyed Judy. What a track. That early band was so totally different than what they became. Maybe not better or worse, but just totally different. Its worth people taking the time to check out cause there's some great stuff in there. I mean Oh Well and Green Manalishi themselves are incredible songs.

RollingFreak,
I love Kiln House - particularly "Jewel-Eyed Judy"! and then there's "Buddy's Song" (such wonderful pattering tribal drumming by Mick Fleetwood) and playful vocals by Jeremy Spencer, and "Earl Gray" -- another absolutely sublime instrumental you can hear a million times, by Danny Kirwan.

Danny Kirwan seems to have been ambivalent about Jeremy Spencer, saying in an interview something like Jeremy Spencer was such a joker, never took anything seriously, everything was tongue-in-cheek and that made Danny Kirwan uncomfortable. However, "One Together" seems irony-free to me. It's a sweet melodic pop tune, with nice slide. And "Mission Bell" is an encapsulated case study in the differences between the beginning and the end of the '60s; written and originally recorded in 1960 by Donnie Brookes, the original version is in many ways similar to Fleetwood Mac's rendition, but very "square" and starched collar. Jeremy Spencer's singing, to me, sounds reverent, and harkens back to the earlier Buddy Holly theme, and the song is laced in LSD, or at least 1969 sweet dreamy psychedelia.

-swiss

Quote
peoplewitheyes
Wow, now I'm really digging Future Games. Particularly Woman of Thousand Years and the beautiful title track. Sounds like Carl Wilson singing Neil Young. I love finding 'new' music!

Is there any video if them doing these track? My quick yt search brought up nothing

I was turned onto all these from age 6...listening to them wafting through a shared wall of my eldest brother...can't imagine discovering them now. In a way, how lucky! And, on the other hand, I'm grateful to have traveled through life with them as part of me.

I don't recall ever seeing any videos of Future Games, but perhaps this will be new to you? Peter Green, Jeremy Spencer, and Danny Kirwan were all part of the band for this moment in time.

"Albatross" - Fleetwood Mac




-swiss

Thanks for that Swiss. I know Albatross very well, a beautiful piece. It seemed to be constantly used in television documentaries when i was a kid in the late 70s-early 80s

I can't find Pt 2 of this but this is a spectacular BBC gig with Peter Green still in the band.

Getting into FM Bare Trees and Future Games has got me back to Steve Hillage and his Fish Rising LP that I used to listen to quite a bit as a heavy stoner in the midlate 90s, and hadn't heard for a few decades now.

Pretty nice, space stuff!

Pass me the joint!