Mystery Penguin

I guess it's just my rebellious outsider nature that makes the Bob Welch/Christine Perfect years my preferred Fleetwood Mac iteration. Get over it, as we edgy, in-your-face types like to say. Deal with it.

I saw th' Mac live in '69, during their Green Manalishi period, with Peter Green in full-on white-robed Jesus phase. Stunning. But their recorded legacy is, what? Take out Manalishi, Oh Well and [YOUR CHOICE HERE - Ed.] and you're left with a slew of adequately-played blues covers, a couple of pretty instrumentals The Shadows might have covered, and some dreadful rock n' roll pastiches from the nodding-head dash ornament of the group, Jeremy Spencer. Deal with it. Their best album (I suppose) is Then Play On, which should have been outstanding, but it's just sitting in. Dull, dull, dull. You can make it listenable by adding Manalishi and Oh Well, and then improve it further by trashing all the other tracks.

And the big globe-conquering hit machine of the Buckingham-Nicks years always left me cold. If there's a more irritating pair in the History Of Rock than Lindsey and Stevie I don't want to know (but Sparks give them a run for their money). Fleetwood Mac already had a superlative chick vocalist (woops! sorry, millennials!) in Christine Perfect. They didn't need the mystical yodels of a scarf-waving nuisance prancing about the stage. And enough already with the "pop genius" respect shown to knob-twiddling curlyhead Lindsey Graham (woops! - Buckingham). Sing me one fucking song he wrote. Just one. Okay, now one from his solo years. See? Let's move on, back to Bob Welch.

He was a weird one. Those Vegas sunglasses. I'm pretty sure it was his lyrical obsession lampooned by Zappa in Inca Roads. He believed in the Bermuda Triangle, and that Jimi Hendrix was buried at Stonehenge, and you shouldn't use those pine airfresheners in cars because they're made by the Illuminati. He believed in any old shit. But that doesn't concern us here. He had a curiously beguiling voice, never over-amped, and an absolutely golden way with a tune. Couple that with Ms Perfect's ever-underrated singing and composing chops, add one of the greatest rhythm sections in rock, and you have a fantastic band making fantastic records.

Here's a doubling of Mystery To Me and Penguin, with the crap kicked to the curb. It's what Tusk never was - a bunch of great songs from a great band.