Time Casts A Spell On You

Fleetwood Mac, "Silver Springs" (original version) - Apparently, unlike most people's parents, my mom and dad weren't ever really all that gaga over Fleetwood Mac. I mean, they grew up in the 60s and 70s, so I'm sure they had their requisite government-issued copies of Rumours floating around somewhere in their record collections, but I remember hearing a lot more Peter, Paul, & Mary than Lindsay, Mick, & Stevie back in the day. In fact, I'd go so far as to say that my first exposure to Fleetwood Mac came when they reunited in the mid-90s for that big-news MTV Unplugged special, or to be more specific, when the acoustic rendition of "Silver Springs" from that concert grew to be an ass-hair away from inescapable on the radio and MTV - for a couple of months, I seriously couldn't turn on G105 without being greeted by that tinkling piano intro. I remember liking it, of course; this is probably because at its core, "Silver Springs" is a really great song, easily as good as "You're So Vain" or "No Matter What" or any of those other songs whose major sin was allowing popular acceptance to cheapen the song's profoundly personal original nature. But I also distinctly remember the radio version having an outro where Stevie Nicks thanked the incredibly receptive audience and offhandedly remarked on how she'd always thought it had been such a beautiful song, which I suppose is accurate but, as it turns out, not exactly very honest.

A few weeks ago, I finally upgraded my old Rumours CD to last year's remastered two-disc extravaganza (this would have been done much earlier if a new copy of the remaster didn't cost twenty two fucking dollars - you're killing me, Larry!). For some reason, my ancient copy of Rumours had dropped "Silver Springs" from the tracklisting, although since I'm nowhere near an expert on Fleetwood Mac I didn't even know to notice. As anyone with ears can tell you, however, Rumours is a bit of a world-killer, the kind of album that can change your mind about things you think you know, especially when those things have to do with the artists making the album. I always thought that the endlessly fascinating thing about Rumours wasn't that it was a great breakup album or even that it's a perfect pop album (although of course it is, Big Time, in both cases) so much as the raw tension between the two; somehow, everyone in the band seemed to settle on a single method of dealing with their lives becoming a shambles, namely to make utterly flawless AOR pop. I mean, "Gold Dust Woman" wouldn't be a perfect pop song if it weren't for that razor-sharp edge in Stevie Nicks' voice, nor would it be such a perfect articulation of captive loathing if it weren't so relentlessly musically compelling.

My point, if you want to call it that, is that I had absolutely no idea that "Silver Springs" was one of those songs, but boy howdy, is it ever. Every time I throw the new edition of Rumours into the deck, I skip straight to "Silver Springs" simply because it's still so overwhelming; the last thirty seconds of this song might as well be subtitled "Stevie Nicks Vs. The Devil" judging by the effort she summons in order to spit those lyrics out. It's also pretty striking how different the song sounds when it's removed from its cloying Unplugged boomer trappings, which puts a(n admittedly strikingly beautiful) tinkling piano front and center at the cost of some of the song's dynamic and a LOT of Stevie Nicks histrionics. But the cool thing, and the thing that makes me one thousand percent sure of Fleetwood Mac's legitimacy as a band where it was probably for the best that they made a living off of making music, is the fact that, like Stevie said in 1994 (or five, or six, or whenever), it really is a beautiful song. She just neglected to mention exactly how she meant that. (Click here to buy the remastered 2-disc version of Rumours from Amazon.com)

Louie, "Trees" - Ever run across a single that, precisely because you don't even have to think twice before being able to point out the stuff that's going to make it a gigantic world-conquering hit, you're sure isn't going to do a damn thing in the charts? I mean, I hear this song and all I can think about is how it's way more pop-articulate and pop-concise than any of the Orange County pop-punk bands terrorizing everyone else's radio dials back in the late 90s; there's really no good reason why Louie's debut single shouldn't be playing in the background of a movie as a thousand kids bolt out of a party at Tara Reid's house when the cops suddenly show up (and I mean that in the best possible way). It also rocks like a motherfucker, two minutes and twenty seconds of the best furious self-taught guitar precision you're likely to hear coming out of England in the next couple of months. It actually reminds me most of "London Bridge", last year's debut single from Dogs which I really should get around to posting one of these days since it rules over just about every nu-Britpop song out there in contention; it just sounds like one of those songs that'll take over your life for however long it lasts and then suddenly gets outdated without losing any of its luster. It's just that I thought "London Bridge" was going to be a sure-fire hit too - guess how well that turned out. Oh well, I guess; at least the song still rules. This one too. (Click here to buy the single for "Trees" from HMV, or click here to watch the video for "Trees")

ELSEWHERE

- My guess is that everyone who goes ballistic over the Beach Boys already knows about Jefitoblog (now linked on the sidebar) hosting Dennis Wilson's motherfucking incredible unreleased album "Bamboo", but if you didn't, well, here you go. Looks like I know what I'll be listening to this weekend.

- Also, make sure you check out Regnyouth while you can for a RIDIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIICULOUS mix of an Air song.

- And, just to follow up from yesterday regarding Goldfrapp/DFA: the internet was all like pai-DOW.