That’s right, Mac watchers, you’ve guessed correctly: It’s time now to resurrect a trove of Tusk-an tour mementos. Buckle up, kids, because there are two more live sets right behind this one — literally seven LPs & 14 sides of performances to get through before we take a fresh look at 1982’s Mirage.
I’m still toying with whether to include solo debuts from Stevie Nicks and Lindsey Buckingham, both released in ’81. This is a deep dive into Christine McVie’s career, after all, and ok yes, including how it coincides with others. She does sing on one of Lindsey’s tunes, so … maybe. Her next mostly Fleetwood-free enterprise doesn’t arrive until ’84.
Of these three platters presenting highlights from that outing — 1980’s Live arrived first, with an alternate edition initially issued as a Record Store Day exclusive on Black Friday 2021 — In Concert comes the closest to replicating what the group played at most every show from just before Halloween ‘79, when Tusk was two weeks old, to just before Labor Day ‘80. During that stretch they only took January and July off.
More than half of this triple-LP trifold comes from a six-night stand at London’s Wembley Arena late in the run, by which time their cocaine-fueled freneticism is at full force; these are some of the nerviest versions of classic Mac you’ll ever hear.
Lindsey’s paranoiac persona penetrates everything, not just expected extensions like ‘I’m So Afraid’ and ‘Not That Funny’ but sunnier spots (like a verging-on-honky-tonk ‘Don’t Stop’ and a raved-up ‘That’s Enough for Me’) and his fretwork on, well, virtually everything. Stevie sounds especially unleashed on ‘Sisters of the Moon’ and ‘Rhiannon,’ extra impassioned on ‘Sara.’ Everyone leans hard into ‘Tusk,’ with Christine attacking accordion like a Laurel Canyon ‘Weird Al’ Yankovic.
Gotta pace myself on analyzing these.
Cross-pollination amid the next two Mac posts is unavoidable.
But I’m convinced of this: there likely isn’t a better version of ‘Over & Over.’ Less immaculate, much realer.
Like the best live Mac always is.