Fleetwood Mac - The New Mac Plays the Old Mac (1975-1977)

Here's something a little different. Every now and then I've put together a thematic album, like an album of Heart playing Led Zeppelin songs, or Sheryl Crow playing Rolling Stones songs. This is similar, except it's the "new" Fleetwood Mac - meaning the band from 1975 onwards, playing songs of the "old" Fleetwood mac, meaning the band from its start in the late 1960s to the early 1970s. 

They're almost two different bands in terms of musical style and personnel. The "old" band was dominated by lead guitarist Peter Green and his love of the blues. The "new" band was dominated by three singer songwriters: Lindsay Buckingham, Stevie Nicks, and Christine McVie, and they found massive success with a pop rock style. The only consistency throughout was the drummer, Mick Fleetwood, and the bassist, John McVie. 

In 1977, the "new" band released "Rumours," which is one of the most successful albums of all time, selling over 40 million copies. From that point on, the band hardly ever played songs made famous by the "old" band, because they had more popular songs to play than they could fit into a concert. Thus, there really was only a short window of time, 1975 to 1977, when the new band played some of the old band's songs. I'm compiled all those songs together that I could find in worthy sound quality. About half of them come from the 1975 tour. The other half come from a bootleg of rehearsals for the 1977 tour.

This album mostly features Buckingham and McVie on lead vocals. As the only male lead vocalist in the 1975 to 1977 time period, it was natural for Buckingham to sing the songs previous sang by Peter Green or Bob Welch. McVie features because she joined the band around 1971 (after a graduation transition period), so she had some of her own "old band" songs to sing with the "new" band. I don't think Stevie Nicks sings lead anywhere here, but of course she frequently can be heard on backing vocals.

I think this is an interesting album because it's almost like a lost album of the famous "Rumours" line-up. Buckingham in particular had a key role in crafting that "Rumours" pop rock sound, and you can hear his influence in rearranging these songs to make them a mix of old and new styles.

This album is 45 minutes long. That doesn't include the two bonus tracks, which are bonus tracks because of poorer sound quality. Note the last song, "Mystery Train," is a cover of a song made famous by Elvis Presley.

01 Get like You Used to Be (Fleetwood Mac)
02 The Green Manalishi [With the Two Prong Crown] (Fleetwood Mac)
03 Station Man (Fleetwood Mac)
04 Spare Me a Little (Fleetwood Mac)
05 Why (Fleetwood Mac)
06 Hypnotized (Fleetwood Mac)
07 Believe Me (Fleetwood Mac)
08 Oh Well, Part 1 (Fleetwood Mac)
09 Tell Me All the Things You Do (Fleetwood Mac)
10 Mystery Train (Fleetwood Mac)

Jumping at Shadows (Fleetwood Mac)
Sunny Side of Heaven [Instrumental] (Fleetwood Mac)

https://www.upload.ee/files/15116099/FleetwodMc_1975h-1977_TheNewMacPlaystheOldMac_atse.zip.html

For the album cover, I didn't want to have a picture of the "new" band and thus leave out the "old" band, and vice versa. So instead I went with some art. This picture comes from a Fleetwood Mac concert poster. I think it's from 1973. It was longer, but I had to cut the rectangular poster to fit into the square album cover format. The band name was there in the original art. I just added the text at the bottom.