For the Love of Lindsey (Buckingham)

Good morning!

I just can't hold it in any longer, folks; I have to spread the gospel of Lindsey Buckingham!

I love how hilariously realistic this looks because of the similar body language.

My eagle-eyed sister saw the listing for last Thursday's show at the War Memorial Auditorium a while back, told me, I told Matthew, and Matthew managed to login just as they went on sale to score us tickets second row, center section. I made the above Paint program collage to celebrate the occasion on Facebook and joke about how my proximity to one of the major creative forces behind one of my very favorite bands was going to practically touching distance...little did I know that when it said second row, center section, it really mean LITERALLY DIRECTLY IN FRONT OF LINDSEY BUCKINGHAM AT A DISTANCE OF LIKE SIX FEET. I think I actually made eye contact with him at one point. You could see what color his eyes were from where I was! It was....significant.

I did not take this picture, but this is only slightly closer to him than I was at a show earlier this year. You could cut glass on those cheekbones! Source

Now, let me make it clear here that I do not like to go to concerts. I do not go gaga over personal appearances. I have an almost nineteenth century big game hunter outlook on it where if I saw some famous person I admire at Target for thirty seconds and I was able to snap a picture, that would count as much as seeing Carnegie for three hours. I'm ashamed to admit that I get so bored during concerts. I'm standing, I'm listening, I'm standing and listening-- mainly, I want to see what the person looks like in real life and then get a drink and a t-shirt and wait it out until I can go home. And listen to their records while doing something else. It always made me uncomfortable in high school when you'd be over at someone's house and they would go, "Hey, listen to this awesome new song!" and you would have to sit there, nodding along and specifically "listening" to the song. I am too frenetic for all that, folks!

           

Somehow, though, through an hour-long set list that began promptly at 8:00, I was mesmerized the entire time. Besides the fact that he's an insanely good, classical-style, for-real guitarist, Buckingham's self-penned songs have the kind of lush arrangement that even in a solo, one-man show, feature long passages you feel you could actually curl up inside of. My favorite from the show were "Bleed to Love Her" and "Go Insane". The latter is funny because the album version just does not do it for me at all-- in spite of his much maligned-for-no-reason, I-thought-it-was-flippin-fantastic production work on my second favorite Mac album, Tusk, his two solo albums of the eighties', Law and Order and Go Insane, suffer from near-fatal overdoses of Miami Vice style synth sounds and overlays. Stripped down to just the guitar and Buckingham's always-just-on-the-edge-of-desperate vocals, THIS IS MY FAVORITE SONG. Who knew it was hiding behind all drum tracks and vocal distortion effects? "Bleed to Love Her" was also a heart-stopper...and I almost actually cried hearing the instrumental "Stephanie", as it was the background music for about 80% of my college years. Isn't it weird thinking this song he wrote almost forty years ago broke my heart and put it back together again several times ten years ago, and here I was sitting six feet from him listening to it again? Being played? By him? It was too much for my sentimental little brain.

Stevie Nicks, I want this exact look from you, thanks, I'll be wearing this next week.

So, like I always do, I've plunged headlong back into a Fleetwood Mac obsession. About every six months, for the last fifteen years, I end up listening to Fleetwood Mac, Rumours, and Tusk on loop and diving back into some of my favorite music. In 1997, at the tender age of twelve, I was going through one of those completely-glued-to-VH1-all-summer phases you have in middle school. Back then, VH1's programming was primarily sixties' and seventies' nostalgia...re-runs of The Mike Douglas Show and The Midnight Special, shows like Eight Track Flashback that would feature Suzanne Somers VJ'ing videos like "Billy Don't Be a Hero" by Bo Donaldson and the Heywoods or "Knock Three Times" by Tony Orlando and Dawn...and TONS OF BEHIND THE MUSIC (you have no idea what a formative force this was on my still developing personality at the time). During a video countdown, I caught the recently released "Silver Springs" from Fleetwood Mac's reunion tour and album The Dance....aaaaand that was it. Totally obsessed with the band for the majority of my middle and high school years. Again, the intensity of interest would ebb and flow, but like David Bowie and Frank Sinatra, they're the first thing that comes to my mind when I think "all-time favorite music of all-time".

An oldie but goodie from Dec 2010...where are those earrings of mine?!

So! In summary-- if you're a Mac fan, catch Lindsey Buckingham's solo show which is still touring, or at least have a listen to Live at the Bass Performance Hall because in spite of being released in 2008, it's pretty much the exact show I almost died over last week. How does he keep his energy level up! I think he might be a Highlander.

Do you have a band that you perennial go gaga over all over again? Are you a Fleetwood Mac fan(atic)? Do tell, do tell.

That's all for today...see you guys tomorrow!