This is an absurdly arranged bootleg compilation from 2019 that would require at least two more LPs to do justice to its misleading title. Yet it’s an almost essential addition if someone (like me) is attempting to acquire on vinyl every recording involving Christine McVie.
The problem is that most of the Many Faces presented in the set’s first half are relatively inconsequential when it comes to Fleetwood Mac’s lengthy list of lineups.
Revisiting A&M Records No. 28
Herbie Mann: ‘Glory of Love’ (December ‘67)
I must not be jazzbo enough to understand why this very enjoyable one-off the groundbreaking flutist cut for Creed Taylor’s CTI subsidiary isn’t held in nearly as high regard as albums that came before and after it.
Finally, 14 years later, a second solo album!
And what can be most quickly discerned from even a cursory spin? That at this point, late January ’84, Christine McVie had become such a reliably strong songwriter that she’d fully established a signature style as recognizable as Elton John’s.
Time once more to play the vinyl community’s favorite new game, Who Among Us Remembers This Guy?
Full disclosure: I sure as hell don’t.
And I haven’t found out much about him, either.
Lindsey Buckingham and Stevie Nicks weren’t the only ones from Fleetwood Mac to pursue solo ventures after the Tusk tour of ’79-’80 ended acrimoniously (again). The front half of the group’s namesake did likewise, releasing his noble failure The Visitor in June ’81.
I get why Robbie Patton didn’t make it big, though I also see why so many in his orbit really thought he would — not just Atlantic Records execs looking for a new star but particularly Christine McVie, who sings on (but did not produce, as erroneously stated elsewhere*) this third album of his after co-helming his second.
This is a very fine Randy Newman record, perhaps not among his all-time greatest (that’s a tall order) yet teeming with cleverly caustic commentaries that rank among his best.
My mom got the cassette soon after it arrived in January ‘83 and it remained a constant for months, until I had every line of it memorized by the time she took me to see Newman live for the first time that April at Universal, when I was 14.
At last: a new Fleetwood Mac album!
New, that is, for this ongoing deep dive into the discography of the late great Christine McVie, following 10 posts dedicated to things she did to keep busy after the Tusk tour of ’79-’80.
That’s when we last found the most famous Mac-ateers all in the same room, sounding like cocaine as much as looking it and rapidly getting on each other’s nerves (again). A healthy break was needed — and maybe should have lasted longer?
Time again to play the vinyl community’s fastest-growing game: Who Among Us Remembers This Guy?
Reintroducing Robbie Patton, another likable wannabe rock star who caught his big break opening for Fleetwood Mac’s troublesome tour behind Tusk — although Christine McVie, whose discography I’ve been revisiting, clearly took a shine to him more brightly than she did the focus of our previous post in this deep dive, Danny Douma.
Initially I’d planned for this lengthy look back at A&M Records to be a series of twofers, the better to coincide with #VinylTwosDays, a weekly scene I’m always happy to join. But as I started sorting through titles and structuring future installments, it quickly occurred to me that not everything will pair up so pleasingly.
