Chud Album of the Month: Fleetwood Mac and Mahavishnu Orchestra

Fleetwood Mac-Live at the Boston Tea Party

I realize the first thing you think of when someone says the words Fleetwood Mac is west coast California pop/rock, Stevie Nicks and songs about mystical witches and an entire album about band members sleeping with each other. You'd never believe they actually started out as a pure blues band and somehow evolved. The original line-up of Fleetwood Mac consisted of Peter Green, Danny Kirwan, Jeremy Spencer, John McVie and Mick Fleetwood. What really amazed me about the Peter Green era is how amazing they were live, Live at the Boston Tea Party represents them at their most intense and their peak before it all collapsed in spectacular fashion leaving McVie and Fleetwood to pick up the pieces and carry on, there's alot of history in this band, Boston Tea Party shows what they could've been.
Boston Tea Party is how blues/rock should be played, loud and intense. Green and Kirwan provide some fantastic guitar playing, kicking off with 'Black Magic Woman, it turns into a great jump blues number towards the end, then Peter delivers 'Jumping at Shadows', the lonely solitary blues Peter is so perfect at doing. Like it This Way is an old fashioned chicago blues number sung by Kirwan, Only You is another Kirwan song sung by Danny and the band powering through it. The high point though is, Rattlesnake Shake, a 25 minute tour-de-force of blues/rock, Green and Kirwan are locked in all the way, the song ebbs and flows, starting heavy getting faster, then slowing down before picking up towards the end as the jam fades out, still going, you could call Green and Kirwan the duane and dickey of british blues, it's amazing to hear them play off each other and John and Mick providing a thumping rhythm section.
Jeremy Spencer comes on to play two classic blues numbers 'I can't hold out' and 'I got to move' before the band resumes with the last song 'Green Manalishi', Green's playing is great, he even delivers a tight bass solo.
I chose this one because it's one of the best live albums I've ever heard and truly underrated, Green era FM has been largely overshadowed by their later successes which is a shame, they were a hell of a band.



http://www.last.fm/music/Fleetwood+M...astered+Vol.+1

Mahavishnu Orchestra-Apocalypse



During the early seventies, Jazz was in a place of amazing creativity, artists like Miles Davis were experimenting with sounds and structures that sound almost alien. Out of this period came a band called 'Mahavishnu Orchestra', fronted by guitar player John McLaughlin and backed by Billy Cobham on drums, Jan Hammer on keys, Rick Laird on bass and Jerry Goodwin they came blazing out of the gate with 'Inner Mounting Flame' and 'Birds of Fire' before imploding due to creative conflicts. McLaughlin re-formed the band with a different line up, this time with Narada Michael Walden on drums, Ralphie Armstrong on Bass and Jean Luc Ponty on violin. With this line up, George Martin producing and an prchestra, McLaughlin went into the studio with balls the size of bowling balls and recorded 'Apocalypse', an epic musical statement or a complete load of bollocks depending on how you look at it. For me, this is the soundtrack to the most epic movie never made. The opener 'Power of Love' is quiet and contemplative, the 14 minute 'Vision is a Naked Sword' slowly roars to life, Smile of the beyond is the weakest song on the album but Gayle Moran's vocals are nice, Wings of Karma can be divided up into two parts, an opening with a middle eastern feel then a classic fusion jam before closing on the same middle eastern feel. Hymn to Him opens with some beautiful strings with the band easing in and building to an amazing crescendo, it's the longest track on the album.
I have to admire what McLaughlin achieved with this album, even if it doesn't fully work, the longer workouts do meander abit but the compositions are so good and the orchestra never overwhelms the band, it's a really nice balance. McLaughlin and the band gel really well, his playing is intense and soft when it needs to be, Ralphie Armstrong, despite being only 18 at the time, shows off some great chops, Narada Michael Walden had to live down being a replacement for Billy Cobham but he does some truly solid work here and Jean Luc Ponty fits like a glove.
Mixing Jazz/Rock with classical music is always a risky proposition, it can either come off as too cheesy and pompous, I think McLaughlin largely succeeded thanks to the strength of his compositions, both intimate and epic.

http://www.last.fm/music/Mahavishnu+...tra/Apocalypse

MO v2.0 got a lot of flak, being compared to the original line-up was a tough road but Apocalypse was really quite something, ambitious and ballsy. Although I like the follow-up 'Visions of the emerald beyond', it really does sound dated.

Both albums represent a point for the two bands. In Fleetwood Mac's case, it's where they started, where they ended up was a melange of pop/rock which is really nothing like the heavy blues rock they were playing in their first incarnation.

In MO's case, it's where they've come from, the first two albums were much more heavier rock affairs, much more tighter and focused, what I like to call Speed Jazz. Apocalypse represented a quantum leap in the sound of MO.

I'm glad you went with Rainbow, I already have Elegant Gypsy, I think Land of the midnight sun is still his best work in the seventies.

I don't think my picks are particularly difficult to find, I chose lastfm because they had the albums and it's a fairly well known site, I didn't realize they only had 30 sec clips.

As far as I know, they released the boston tea party live sets separately, I got the first two discs, I chose the first disc because it was a more intense performance. The second set has a more focused version of Rattlesnake Shake but the rest isn't as good. The third one is the weakest.

As far as Buckingham goes, he's one of rock's most underrated guitar players, I have nothing against the Stevie Nicks/Lyndsey Buckingham era of Fleetwood Mac, they were a totally different band than the Peter Green era but they could still rock.

After the disintegration of the original line-up, McVie and Fleetwood went through various frontmen and guitar players before finding Nicks and Buckingham, their sound evolved as a result of locating to southern california. There were pop elements in the original line-up, I can understand where you're coming from but I don't think you're giving them enough credit, they created some pretty good pop/rock songs. The only problem with Rumors era Fleetwood Mac is overexposure.

Enough talk about Stevie and Lyndsey. If you guys dug the first live at boston tea party, you should listen to the second disc, it's not as intense but contains a better version of Rattlesnake Shake.

I guess I could but they were sold separately and not as a three disc set, otherwise I would've included the other three performances. It's kind of weird but the performances get progressively weaker as the series continues.

"World in Harmony" "Oh Well" and of course, a full uncut version of Rattlesnake Shake are the only reasons to listen to the second disc, Jeremy's faux elvis impressions are ok, the rest just seem to lack that spark.

I never got around to picking up the third disc.

I'd also rate Green's playing as being up there with the best of them, BB King actually rated him as "having the sweetest tone I ever heard, he was the only one who gave me the cold sweats", I honestly think he was the best blues player of his generation and it was a goddamn shame he fell victim to his inner demons and spent over half his life in mental institutions.

Their first two LP's are straight chicago blues affairs, it's only on 'Then Play On' that they start to incorporate more rock influences.

Also recommended, although hit and miss, is their 'Live at the BBC' collection.

You have a point about MO not really being about making music that's hummable, I guess that wasn't their intent. It's funny you should compare Goodman and Ponty as Ponty was McLaughlin's first choice for the group.

I do agree that Apocalypse sounds like McLaughlin doing a soundtrack and yes, Moran provides pretty vocals but little else. I really like to listen to the album while jogging, it provides such a great musical soundscape to listen to while jogging at night.

Some of the titles do sound ridiculously silly, 'Vision is a naked sword' 'Smile of the beyond', they sound like something a prog-rock band would come up with but it all comes back to McLaughlin's compositions which meld classical and heavy rock in such a spectacular way. 'Vision...' is probably torture for anyone who finds 14 minute instrumentals indescribably boring but that opening really strikes a good balance between the orchestra and the band. When the strings kick in after 5 minutes it's almost glorious waiting for the band to wander back in and jam for abit. Wings of Karma has such a great middle eastern feel and Hymn to Him just flows along, the strings and the band mixing nicely, it never feels like they're falling over each other, when those strings kick in with the band after 13 minutes, man, it sounds really fucking epic. The first thing that came to mind when I listened to this was, holy shit, this sounds perfect for a mad max film.

I can understand how it didn't move you, I think there's a distance in McLaughlin's compositions, nicely composed and expertly performed but only appreciated for technical aspects.

Holy shit, Peter Green's bass solo near the end of Green Manalishi is just badass. Just thought I'd throw that out there.