Saturday, February 12, 2011

Speaking of great songs, as I have been on the last couple of posts, here's one of my all-time faves: "Blue Letter" from Fleetwood Mac (1975), which was the first album with the configuration that was to be their most famous: Mick Fleetwood, Christine and John McVie, Lindsey Buckingham and Stevie Nicks. The song in question (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sniMg4mIUrU) seems to me an often overlooked classic from their repertoire, with all the elements that were to shortly make them into ultra-stars (i.e. bigger than superstars): glittering harmony singing, powerful and well-thought-out part-writing, strong rhythmic playing. In this case I didn't mention their greatest strength, their song-writing, because this one's a cover; it was written by the song-writing brothers Rick and Michael Curtis, past members of several bands including Crazy Horse. But they make it sound like one of their own. (By the way, I became a fan of Fleetwood Mac relatively late. Their fame got in the way of my appreciation of their music during their biggest years, I guess. My loss: they were, and are, great.)

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