A couple of interesting posts to draw your attention to, before we get into the business of this week’s playlist. First, Robin Pecknold from Fleet Foxes called in at the Department Of Eagles blog to tell us about the two bands having vague joint plans. And on last week’s playlist blog, liamdog7 posted something interesting about how much money Columbia are charging for Bob Dylan’s “Tell Tale Signs”. “As a completist fan I'm being taken advantage of,” he writes. “It's actions like these from record companies that actually promotes illegal downloading.”
Twenty minutes before they come on, the crowd’s excitement becomes increasingly palpable, an audible hum, an impatient restlessness swarming through the massed ranks of Drive-By Truckers die-hards pressed hard against the front of the stage and spreading quite contagiously through the serried ranks of the people craning their necks for a better view on the outer perimeter of an impressive turn-out, even thought here’s nothing yet to see, apart from a few scurrying roadies, bumping into things in the dark.
Residual indie prejudices can be tough to shake off and, for me, one lingered longer than most: a profound distrust of Fleetwood Mac. I read all the essays about them – and especially about Lindsey Buckingham – where they were extolled as great emotional confessors and discreet musical radicals. But their records always seemed to me the epitome of hollow decadence, redolent of a certain air-conditioned, blow-dried Hollywood vulgarity, the criticism of which is now every bit as clichéd as the original material.
Not for the first time, of course, I was wrong.
