Fleetwood Mac - Dragonfly - Non-Album Tracks (1970-1971)

Since I've been posting a lot of Fleetwood Mac lately, here's one more. This kind of completes an era, because the Peter Green-led Fleetwood Mac had all kinds of stray tracks from its inception through this year. The songs here are actually from the year after Green led the band in mid-1970, but there still were lots of stray tracks in late 1970 and 1971. Then there's practically nothing from 1972 until the band significantly changed in 1975 when Stevie Nicks and Lindsey Buckingham joined and they found huge success.

This is a very excellent album in my opinion. I think it's my favorite of all the band's stray track albums I've posted so far. With Peter Green gone and Christine McVie fully on board, the band largely left the blues behind and became a rock band. Most of the songs here are originals and quite good, so it's surprising to me that they didn't make it on album at the time. Perhaps that had to do with the personnel changeover. Not only did Green leave in 1970, but guitarist Jeremy Spencer left in 1971, and guitarist Danny Kirwan would leave in 1972 after growing increasingly estranged from the rest of the band.

But despite the changes, the band was still going strong. The album "Bare Trees" came out in 1971, and it's one of my favorites, and it's critically acclaimed in general. So it's not surprising that other songs from that time are good too. Admittedly, four of the songs here were done by McVie during her short solo career before joining the band. You can find them on my collection of her best early solo songs.

https://albumsthatshouldexist.blogspot.com/2018/05/chiristine-mcvie-christine-perfect.html

That said, these are all the full Fleetwood Mac versions of those songs, and they're done somewhat differently. I see no reason why they couldn't have put at least a couple of these on a Fleetwood Mac album.

"I'm Alright Now." is a song sung by Christine McVie that appears to have been written by her as well, yet has remained totally unreleased. (The title is certain because she introduced it in concert that way.)

By the way, nearly all the songs here are from 1971, except for three from 1970 and one from 1972. I put the 1972 one here because, as I said, the number of stray tracks from the band suddenly drops off a cliff right after this. I can't find a single stray track from 1973 or 1974, which is startling considering that it took three and a half albums to contain all the stray tracks the band did in 1969 alone! This can be seen in concert set lists too, where the band dramatically reduced the number of different songs it was playing in concert by 1972.

That said, we have this one last burst of creativity before the band went into a fallow period where their popularity with fans and critics went way down for a couple of years. McVie in particular comes to the fore here for the first time, with about half of the songs sung by her.

This album is 43 minutes long.

01 I'm on My Way (Fleetwood Mac)
02 Madison Blues (Fleetwood Mac)
03 Crazy 'bout You Baby [Can't Hold Out Much Longer] (Fleetwood Mac)
04 Open the Door (Fleetwood Mac)
05 Get like You Used to Be (Fleetwood Mac)
06 Preachin' (Fleetwood Mac)
07 Lonely without You (Fleetwood Mac)
08 It's Alright Now (Fleetwood Mac)
09 Dragonfly (Fleetwood Mac)
10 The Purple Dancer (Fleetwood Mac)
11 I'd Rather Go Blind (Fleetwood Mac)
12 Trinity (Fleetwood Mac)

https://www.upload.ee/files/15116100/FleetwodMc_1971a_Dragnfly_atse.zip.html

Two of the songs here were released as an obscure single, "Dragonfly" backed by "The Purple Dancer." The cover art is just the cover of that single.