In 1968, Fleetwood Mac was all about the blues, and especially Peter Green's bluesy lead guitar work. If you like that, you'll love this. As with the last album in this series, I've included any Chicken Shack songs that they played at the BBC too, so long as they were sung by future Fleetwood Mac star Christine McVie (then still known by her maiden name Christine Perfect). For this album, there is only one such song - "Strange Things Happening." It's just as bluesy as the rest.
For the previous album in the series, most of the songs were officially released. On this one, all but six of them are unreleased. I think, though, some of those were released, but I found better sounding unreleased versions, surprisingly enough. All the songs here have very good sound quality, because I've been highly selective. There are a bunch of bonus tracks this time, due to performances that didn't make the grade.
Actually, that's not entirely true. I bumped "Long Grey Mare" to a bonus track because I included a different version of that song performed at the BBC on the last album in this series, and I only have one performance per song for the whole series. Luckily for me, the band almost never played the same song twice at the BBC, at least for the recordings of the sessions that have survived, so there are only a few more cases like that. ("Wine, Whiskey and Women" is also a bonus track, simply because the sound quality is poor.)
"Intergalactic Magicians Walking through Pools of Velvet Darkness" is an interesting original by band member Jeremy Spencer that parodies the psychedelic songs that were all the rage at the time, such as "I Am the Walrus." (It even has a specific poke at that song with one lyric.) That song was never officially released in any format. It has been given a variety of names on various bootlegs, but a book on Fleetwood Mac claims to know the real title, so that's the one I've used.
"Dead Shrimp Blues" is one of the album tracks because of a helper named MZ. "Dead Shrimp Blues" actually has been officially released, in 2019, on a limited release for that year's Record Store Day. But it still sounded pretty bad in spots, with bursts of loud crackling. So it didn't make the cut for me. However, MZ largely eliminated the crackling and sent the improved version to me. By eliminating the crackling, some brief sections of the song had been sonically reduced to a very quiet level. I then largely managed to repair those spots by patching in sections from other parts of the song. Furthermore, I felt the officially released version was slow and low pitched. MZ also found a bootlegged version that was about 5% faster and about half a step higher pitched. I think that's how it was originally. It certainly sounds better. So I've adjusted the version to be like that as well. The end result still has some issues, but I think it's vastly improved, mostly thanks to the work of MZ.
01 How Blue Can You Get (Fleetwood Mac)
02 My Baby's Sweeter (Fleetwood Mac)
03 Buzz Me Baby (Fleetwood Mac)
04 I'm So Lonely and Blue (Fleetwood Mac)
05 Strange Things Happening [Love Me or Leave Me] (Christine McVie & Chicken Shack)
06 Mean Mistreatin' Mama (Fleetwood Mac)
07 Sheila [Edit] (Fleetwood Mac)
08 I Have to Laugh (Fleetwood Mac)
09 If You Be My Baby (Fleetwood Mac)
10 You're the One (Fleetwood Mac)
11 Preachin' Blues (Fleetwood Mac)
12 I Need Your Love [That Ain't It] (Fleetwood Mac)
13 You Need Love (Fleetwood Mac)
17 Dead Shrimp Blues [Edit] (Fleetwood Mac)
Long Grey Mare (Fleetwood Mac)
Wine, Whiskey and Women (Fleetwood Mac)
https://pixeldrain.com/u/c9uxApae
alternate:
https://bestfile.io/en/2U408NepwUFOkIj/file
The cover art shows the band playing on some TV show in 1968, but I don't know which one.
"Love Me or Leave Me" is really a song written by Percy Mayfield called "Strange Things Happening" according to AMG (Chicken Shack - From the Vaults (2006))
ReplyDeleteThanks, I just changed it.
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