Fleetwood Mac Dance

The Blues has always been popular in England. Performers like Screamin' Jay Hawkins, Howlin' Wolf and even Freddie King and Bo Diddley were stars in England before making it big in their own country. When John Mayall formed the Bluesbreakers it was out of respect and admiration to those performers; and he's stayed with the blues, cultivating a number of fine young blues musicians including guitarists Eric Clapton and Peter Green. After Clapton left Mayall, moving on to form Cream, Peter Green replaced him. Now Green has formed his own group, Fleetwood Mac (along with another former Bluesbreaker, bassist John McVie).
Whereas Clapton expanded onto new horizons with Cream, Green has chosen to remain dedicated to the blues, and on this, their first recorded effort, Fleetwood Mac have established themselves as another tight English blues band—joining Mayall's Bluesbreakers, Ten Years After and Savoy Brown as chief practitioners of blues in England.
Green, like Mayall, has studied the records and performances of Howlin' Wolf, Memphis Slim, Junior Wells and Elmore James carefully. The piano riffs on "Hellbound on My Trail" are lifted directly from Slim's classic "If You See Kay," but it's done well, if perhaps a little too self-consciously. Fleetwood Mac (the name is a combination of the names of members of the group), know what they're doing, they dig the music they're playing and that's great—but the drawback here is that they don't put enough of themselves into it instead of what they've heard from the original artists.
Green is a more than competent guitar player, and the Mac's treatment of "Shake Your Moneymaker" is just as powerful as the first Butterfield version (on the Paul Butterfield Blues Band album). The harp work is proficient in most places but rather weak on "Got to Move," the old Sonny Boy Williamson song. Green's composition "Long Grey Mare" is one of the best cuts on the album, anchored by McVie's strong bass line. The record has a strange, prematurely vintage (if there can be such a thing) sound to it, like an old classic recording made in the late Forties or early Fifties.
Like most modern white bluesmen, Fleetwood Mac try very hard to live the kind of music they play—not picking cotton in the Delta, but maintaining the hard-life blues tradition, gigging at small clubs in Northern England and in scruffy halls in the East End. Their music retains an unaffected rough quality. They play well, and if it sounds a little scratchy at times it's because that's the way they happen to feel at that particular moment. The licks they've copied from other performers are natural enough—it's more of a tribute than an imitation.
The English continue to prove how well into the blues they really are, and know how to lay it down and shove it back across the Atlantic. Fleetwood Mac are representative of how far the blues has penetrated—far enough for a group of London East-Enders to have cut a record potent enough to make the South Side of Chicago take notice.

Say You Will is the 17th studio album by British-American rock band Fleetwood Mac, released on 15 April 2003. It was the first Fleetwood Mac album since Kiln House in 1970 that did not include tracks written by vocalist/keyboardist Christine McVie, who had left the band in 1998. It was however the band's first studio album since Time was released in 1995. Members Lindsey Buckingham, Stevie Nicks and John McVie shared keyboard duties for the album, though Christine McVie is featured on two songs which had been originally recorded for an unreleased Lindsey Buckingham solo album (tracks 13 and 14). It also marks the first album in 16 years to feature Buckingham as a full-time member. A limited edition version of the album was issued at the same time, featuring two live tracks ("Peacekeeper" and "Say You Will"), two additional studio tracks (Nicks' "Not Make Believe" and Buckingham's cover of Bob Dylan's "Love Minus Zero/No Limit"), an expanded booklet and poster.

While most bands undergo a number of changes over the course of their careers, few of them experienced a more radical stylistic evolution than Fleetwood Mac. Initially conceived as a hard-edged British blues combo in the late '60s, the band gradually evolved into an incredibly popular and influential pop/rock act over the course of a decade. Originally, guitarists Peter Green and Jeremy Spencer provided the group with their gutsy psychedelic blues-rock sound, then the band moved toward pop/rock with the addition of keyboardist/songwriter Christine McVie.

Four CD set. This latest instalment of Arthur Baker Presents Dance Masters finds the production/songwriting/remixing maestro taking the spotlight for a long overdue snapshot of his own classic 12" mixes during a crucial evolution of dance music, club and pop culture. Arthur Baker helped codify the remixer as artist. His genre fluid approach to projects has resulted in a joyous myriad of classics that spans many decades. This 80 's focused Dance Masters collection offers a welcome glimpse at Baker's illustrious career and many long out of print 12" versions and previously unavailable mixes. This 43 track, four CD edition includes a wide array of selections from the likes of Robbie Nevil's "C'est La Vie", Fleetwood Mac's "Big Love," Neneh Cherry's "Buffalo Stance", Jeffrey Osborne's "Soweto", Freeez's "I O U", Rockers Revenge's "Walking On Sunshine" and of course the juggernaut "Planet Rock" with Afrika Bambaataa & Soulsonic Force. Complete with in depth liner notes by Bill Coleman, track by track notes written by Arthur Baker himself, previously unseen session photos from Arthur's personal archives and a signed insert. All tracks remastered by Nick Robbins at Sound Mastering.

12" Dance 80s Remix showcases an essential selection of both the finest and the best-selling 12" single remixes of the decade, featuring mixes of songs by iconic acts such as Duran Duran, Spandau Ballet, a-ha and Ultravox, Alternative classics by Roxette, Echo & The Bunnymen and New Order, plus definitive pop anthems by Fleetwood Mac, Simply Red, Aztec Camera and Alphaville.