Hmm. So I've been playing the French Kicks nonstop this year. I'm a noob Fleetwood Mac fan (feel free to recommend your favorite album) and it's clear that the French Kicks are channeling some of that sound. Anyway, the point is I stumbled across their cover of Trouble this weekend. So I went back and found the original, which was done by some guy named Lindsey Buckingham? Who the fuck is that?? Heh, just joking white folk--though not really. I had to Wikipedia the dude to find out he was part of Fleetwood Mac. Yes, yes, the ignorance is indeed stunning. Anyway, all this is to say I think I like the French Kicks cover better. Maybe the goofy video, which you can see below, turned me off.
« Not the way to introduce Susan Rice... | Main | NFL Talk » The journey into white music continues...01 Dec 2008 12:12 pm Comments (65)
The Smashing Pumpkins did a surprisingly good cover of Landslide, FWIW. 
I'd stay away from most Stevie Nicks oriented Fleetwood Mac. She is a disgusting and despicable character. Christine McVie always had a better voice anyways. Although Gold Dust Woman is a pretty awesome song.
man, don't lay that crap at my feet. I disavow fleetwood mac, the eagles, all that. at least pick up some krautrock or a gang of four album. what you want is some can, neu, amon duul, that kinda thing. can't get whiter than german hippies on acid. And Japanese pop. the ultimate white people music.
I'm gonna agree with Fighting Words on your next 2 stops on your White Music Express tour. However, I just gotta ask (not trying to hijack a post, but).....can we please talk about football? ;)
Welcome to the dark side! It's gotta be "Rumors." I second Fighting Words's J-Pop. Puffy (not the Diddy one) continues to crank out awesome records.
Lindsey Buckingham is one of the great under-rated guitarists. Pick up a copy of him doing "Oh Well" from the FM live album. He "covers" an older FM song by another great under-rated guitarist, Peter Green, who went crazy before leaving the band, opening the way for Buckingham and Nicks to join. Lindsey Buckingham knocks it FLAT. Mick Fleetwood is also a great, great drummer. "Rumors" is the first essential FM album, but I'm more partial to their live record. FM gets lumped into the suck generated by The Eagles, but they were really a remarkable band for a couple of years.
The Smashing Pumpkins did a surprisingly good cover of Landslide, FWIW. Out on tour with
Now you gotta get into the pre Buckingham-Nicks incarnations of Fleetwood Mac. There is a double CD called Men of the Blues that covers the really early stuff. Then the Peter Green era albums are very good, lots of songs you may recognize and not have known they were Fleetwood Mac.
Zak, Puffy is my favorite J-Pop group. I have seen them live - one of the best shows I have ever seen - lots of energy. Fun fact, did you know that Puff Daddy (aka Puffy, Diddy, P-Diddy, etc.) actually sent a cease and desist letter to Puffy (Japanese) telling them not to use the name Puffy? That is why they go by "Puffy AmiYumi" in the States.
Patrick, Mick Fleetwood on "Go Your Own Way" is the best performance by a drummer that I can think of in white music. How often does a drummer dominate a song? It is just beautiful. The only really good Eagles album is "Hotel California," a must-have for those on a journey into white music. The only Fleetwood Mac albums I would recommend are the first two after Nicks and Buckingham joined the band, "Fleetwood Mac" and "Rumours."
Ack - I never comment, but I want to save you from the Stevie Nicks-Lindsay Buckingham-dominated-Fleetwood Mac that's being suggested with Rumors...you can hear half that stuff on some crappy Top 40 Radio... Luckily for you, there's oodles of GREAT Fleetwood Mac with some songwriters like Christie McVie and Bob Welch...
"However, I just gotta ask (not trying to hijack a post, but).....can we please talk about football? ;)" Second!
Sufjan Stevens does a wonderful folk orchestra cover of "Don't Stop Thinking about Tomorrow" called "Carlyle." It's on The Avalanche
Why not kill two birds with one stone and familiarize yourself with late-70s Scottish punk and the best Fleetwood Mac song ever? You can also hear the 70s Akron punk version, which sounds a lot more like the FM original.
this is an easy one TNC---rumors and fleetwood mac are the albums to listen to. oh, the white blues boys will scream that the genius of fleetwood mac was adulterated by the addition of popsters (true, and damn good ones, much better than bob welch). and the cool kids will say nothing good came out of the LA era and you should resolve to listen to something more angry and therefore authentic. and some young one will say, ignore all that old crap. and they'll all be wrong. now that i am done demolishing my straw people, here's why rumors and fleetwood mac are the important two. these albums brought together people who needed each other at a time when there was a trememdous creative spur in the group. mick fleetwood and john mcvie were excellent players who provided a very good rhythm section for a couple of popsters who needed one. nicks and buckingham provided personality and an urgency---lyrically, vocally, and with buckingham's nervous guitar lines---for a couple of players who needed it. on top of that christine mcvie added a strong, yet detached, presence. that buckinghan-nicks were falling apart and nicks sounds alternately dismissive and vulnerable while buckingham sounds aggrieved and, occasionally, a bit unnervingly insistent, at teh same time the mcvie's were splitting and christine was filing emotional dispatches of that loss made for a great couple of albums. it couldn't last. it was the capturing of the perfect emotional/musical storm on vinyl. after rumors, there isn't much, a handful of interesting songs, including the title cut, on tusk and a trailing off into terrible pop songs like hold me by the mid-80s. rumors and fleetwood mac are gems, though. and i say that as someone who didn't (and still doesn't)like much mainstream 1970s LA rock. these albums transcended that scene. dreams, rhiannon, oh, daddy, go your own way, gold dust woman, the chain. those songs didn't waft innocuously into the room like most LA rock. they insinuated themselves into your brain and soul; made you feel the tension, the love, the hate. good stuff.
Rumours [Reprise, 1977]
Fleetwood Mac? Say it ain't so. Please TN, as a boomer, not to mention a practicing music critic, I can say it with authority and nothing personal, but: don't drag that weakassed Fleetwood Mac stuff in here--the end of all that was good in American and British mid 60s through early 70s guitar band rock music--elevator and grocery store muzak. It was nostalgic faux foo fum when it first came out. The psychadelic equivalent of boy bands. I mean I have my own musical guilty pleasures, but I keep them to myself. At least the Cowboys are something to hate.
I always liked L.B.'s "Go Insane" Never listened to anything else he did, for no reason at all.
Fleetwood Mac were great. the eponymous record and Rumors especially (for all the reasons mentioned above). sure, they were 70's Pop, but they were incredibly good 70's Pop. some of the songs on Rumors are essentially perfect. and even much of the Bob Welch and Peter Green stuff was great - groups as diverse as Santana and Judas Priest have found Peter Green songs worth covering (and covering well). and yes, Buckingham is a great guitar player.
Listen to any and all Fleetwood Mac! None of it is bad. The early British blues years, the 70s peak cocaine soap opera pop years, and I love the latter-day 80s fake new-wave revisionist years too. They've always been fantastic. There is enough used Fleetwood Mac vinyl out there to reshingle every house in Ohio so if you have a record player it'll cost you about 15 bucks to get the whole discography. This is probably a bridge too far for most but I'm even a fan of this version of "Everywhere," which is subtly reorchestrated to sound almost Afropop in a Paul-Simon-ripoff kind of way. It's the backing vocals I think. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ocRhjtLIPMs For what it's worth I think the French Kicks really blow that cover. They screwed up the guitar lick, come on!
Why has no one mentioned TUSK?! TNC - that is the one to go to. Sure, there's some crap on there, but more than a few great gems. Besides, every song on Rumours has been unconsciously implanted into our collective brains via radio/tv for decades.
I like lots of "white music" too, but I think what you've just put means we need some hip hop at some point today. PLEASE.
Aight, I'm going to go against the flow here, speaking as someone who got into them well after hearing all of the mid seventies self-titled and rumors shit (thanks mom n dad) and pretty much losing the ability to listen to it objectively (who REALLY wants to hear 'don't stop thinking about tomorrow' again, seriously). While, yes, their early peter green era stuff can be pretty cool, and i'm a big fan of "oh well" etc etc, I'm not really that into extended guitar jams, and I've seen no evidence from Ta-Nehisi's music posts that he is either - he seems, like me, to be leaning more towards the sharper, shorter, more stylized, more elaborately produced and textured stuff, as far as rock goes. I've always pretty much felt like Lindsay Buckingham is the sole genius of Fleetwood Mac (songwriting-wise, at least) - the rest of them can be too soft, too dippy, too on-the-nose, whereas he's always seemed more paranoid, edgy, and downright weird than the Mac's whitebread rep would allow. The point of all of this is that I think the album you would most enjoy is Tusk - although the contributions of the other bandmembers don't all hold up too well to the obsessive, spare production, his work on the album is stronger than it is anywhere else. Half of the indie rock out there is indebted to it, whether they realize it or not, and the songs sometimes sound closer to Brian Eno's first solo albums than to their contemporaries on late 70s -early 80s radio. The songwriting is amazing - just listen to the tripped out beach boys like 'that's all for everyone', the punky, weirdly drummed and guitared 'not that funny', and the paranoid marchtime creepiness of the title track. Plus, as a fan of TV on the Radio, you've gotta dig the production (by Lindsay) - backwards fuzz guitars, echoey vocals, instruments run directly into the soundboard and sped up or distorted, bizarrely dry and separated drum sounds. In short, its the shit. Alright, I think i've used up my daily quota of commas and hyphens. Wotta fanboy. I'm a huge fan of this blog by the way, and have been reading it (and its commenters) daily for months. It took a Fleetwood mac post for me to finally comment, though - boy do I feel like a herb. Peace out for now, and keep up the good work!
Pls don't lump all of us white people in with Fleetwood Mac. (I can barely type the words.) Instead, pls pick up some Clash, Squeeze, the Pretenders, Blondie, or even the Dead Milkmen for some good white people music. Better examples of white people music happening at that time. But perhaps I'm confused by what you mean by white people music. Is it music made by only white people? Music popular with white people? Much better would be to go back to basics with Creedence or even Bob Wills and the Texas Playboys. A new world awaits, TNC.
For Fleetwood Mac, it's gotta be "Rumors". "Gold Dust Woman" FTW. However, my favorite Mac song is probably the version of "Silver Spring" on "The Dance". Stevie just slays it. I'm big into the French Kicks as well. I'd recommend checking out The Walkmen (a NYC outfit) or if you want something a little more soulful, Ray LaMontagne...dude has one of the biggest voices out on the scene right now...and he's this reserved dude from Maine who looks like Jesus. He does a cover of Gnarls Barkley's "Crazy" that's pretty sweet.
When considering my own extensive knowledge of the FM catalogue, I am reminded of Chris Rock's reaction to his finding himself on a date in the Late 1980's at a Color Me Badd/ Vanilla Ice concert: I must really like having sex with this woman. This is the only reason for my listening to a great deal of FM through the years. A HS girl friend, and then later my wife were seriously into this formulaic pop relational train wreck called Fleetwood mac. You want white people music? Seriously white, pale white, suburban hippie white music? Check it out: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_tz7PnfCj3E Yeah, you're welcome.
TUSK = Paul's Boutique There, I said it.
I remember buying the Rumors album when it came out. We already had the Fleetwood Mac album. It was downhill after that. Get those two and you have what you need of Fleetwood. But I have to say that they weren't our main entertainment at the time. Just interesting enough to warrant buying the albums which we probably still have somewhere in their scratched up LP format.
Check out the Stone Roses.
French Kicks are indeed awesome, amazing, and lots of other words starting with vowels. And they're surprisingly energetic live---very entertaining, and not at all shoegazery.
Frankly if you are interested in white music and come from a hip-hop and poetry background I don't think you could do better than giving a listen to a few (any of them, they're all great) "White Stripes" albums. Jack White is one of the most playful lyricists I have ever encountered and he displays a delight for word-play usually only seen in rap. I love the sound of the band (stripped down and bluesy with frequent excursions into heavier territory), but even if you don't you should try it for the language he shoehorns between his notes.
Everyone likes "Rumours." I like "Tango in the Night." It's commercial and poppy and a giant smorgasbord of hurt feelings and zaniness. You should go and buy Lindsey's solo album "Out of the Cradle." It's brilliant and beautiful, exemplified by gorgeous tunes like "Countdown" and "Soul Drifter." If you're looking for good dorky white folks' music, I'd suggest some of our British New Wave (and later) friends: XTC - "Drums and Wires" (for punk), "Skylarking" (for pop) There are so many more...!
The only really good Eagles album is "Hotel California," a must-have for those on a journey into white music. Because Joe Walsh, is why.
There must be some kind of test, "Are you too pretentious to live?", and one of the the questions is, "do you think Rumors is not Fleetwood Mac's best album?" Of course Rumors is their best album. It's one of the best albums in rock history, and I'm not even a big Fleetwood Mac fan. If you want white-boy blues rock, early Mac is OK, but there's better stuff out there.
Tusk is definitely the weirdest and coolest Fleetwood Mac album. Also Stevie Nicks Belladonna is great..
Just finished listening to this music, and man... it is awful. Teenybopper meets I don't know what. On behalf of all people everywhere who have lived through the Seventies and have conscious memories of that time: T-N, if you want to get to know white music, please don't listen to Fleetwood Mac or The Eagles! Don't torture yourself so much, there's no need. Turn towards British early Seventies glam, or late Seventies, early Eighties British new wave. Just listen to two bars of Bowie's unforgettable beginning of Heroes, that tsunami of sound. And let me know what you think.
Daphne: No kidding. It reminds me of the Big Lebowski. "I FUCKING HATE THE EAGLES." Bowie's a good suggestion. Hunky Dory is a nice album to ease into.
Look, if you want honest-to-by-God White Peoples Music™ that doesn't suck, you gotta look toward Steve Earle, Drive-By Truckers, Uncle Tupelo... stuff like that. Forget Glam from any era, write off New Wave totally and find something with a little dirt in the groove.
Joe Henry is great. His album, "Civilians", is money. Check out "Parker's Mood". Very chill, introspective stuff.
TNC - if you want good white people music, you gotta give these cats a look: Man Man - "Gold Teeth" or anything off Six Demon Bag. No blaring guitars here, but keeps the essential rock attitude. Animal Collective - "For Reverend Green" Yeasayer - "2080"
TNC, the French Kicks cover is not bad at all actually. As a Sista who enjoys rock more than RnB (yes there are a few of us out there)-I concur with many of the previous recommendations. In addition, try: 'I have the touch' by Peter Gabriel (or the whole So album by PG),'Ballroom Blitz' by Sweet, 'Hold Me' or 'Chain' by Fleetwood Mac, 'The Stroke' or 'In the Dark' by Billy Squire or anything by Joni Mitchell or Steely Dan.
No love for Crosby, Steels, Nash, and Young?
Try "Greetings From Asbury Park," Springsteen's first album. It will blow your socks off, and not just because he mentions me.
French Kicks are mediocre. The Dodos' Visiter is currently my joint. Ps. Ta, you're on fire today.
TNC, As long as you are going whole hog into White People Music from the 60s-70s here are some more suggestions: As mentioned above Springsteen, really all of his 70s albums are musts. Look for the deluxe Born to Run with documentary on the making and concert from London in '75 on DVD. Anything with Neil Young in it (Buffalo Springfield, solo, CSNY, Stills Young) Jackson Browne's early stuff - what the Eagles wanted to be. Gram Parsons, solo, Flying Burrito Brothers and the last couple Byrds albums. Big Star - in a just world they would have been huge. Loggins and Messina - Lyin' Eyes is a must, the rest only if you are going for completeness. Allman Brothers Derek and the Dominos - Clapton before rehab made him a far healthier person but made his music boring, porbably a good trade for him though:-) Traffic - Forget the 90s beer commerical crap, Winwood was a mega talent Blind Faith - ditto
Patrick: Fuckin' eh about Drive By Truckers. Their newish album, Brighter Than Creation's Dark, is righteous. I went on a week-lock backpacking trip this summer and listened to it almost every night while cooking dinner (powered by a little 9v doohicky and lots of batteries). eric: I haven't thought about Big Star in years. It's really too bad they never worked out. I have a feeling there's a good documentary in there somewhere. My slightly obscure suggestion: Josh Ritter. He's what you'd get if Springsteen and Bob Dylan had a love child who is less self-indulgent than either of them. His early stuff is kinda generic folk, but his last album went electric. Great instrumentation, frenetic pace, amazing Dylanesque vocals.
here's my 2-3 cents... Neutral Milk Hotel. there are only a couple albums out there and they're 10 years old. but certainly sent this white boy into spasms of delight and still does.
Oh no. This is white people music? I guess it is. One of the drawbacks of being a member of the "default" ethnicity, I guess, is being associated with all sort of things that in no way characterize oneself. Or really, I guess that's a drawback of being a member of *any* ethnicity. Since everyone else seems to want to suggest bands to which our gracious host will never have the time or (let's be realistic here) the inclination to enjoy, I would like to suggest the alt-folk Dresden Dolls, who are about as lyrically clever as anyone writing music today and are, I believe, both white. For a bonus (in the form of a mild traumatic brain injury: see below), Retching Red's "Scarlet Whore of War" album is definitely very clever lyrically and an example of hardcore punk's modern apotheosis. I also think it takes a certain form of brain damage to *really* like hardcore, or maybe listening to it *causes* brain damage, so either way I usually avoid recommending them to people I like. But the members of Retching Red are all, I believe, totally Caucasian in that predominantly-white world of punk.
I will third the nomination of Drive-By Truckers as a truly awesome band. Actually, their thinking on race and heritage on "Southern Rock Opera" is pretty sophisticated and TNC might dig it. That album is great in its way, but uneven. "Brighter Than Creation's Dark" is better, I think.
A few points, partially in response to above posts: * Matt K is on point about _Tusk_. Much of its material is not as catchy as the music of _Fleetwood Mac_ and _Rumors_, but there's some great music on it. And the title track is one of the coolest things that the post-1975 Fleetwood Mac ever did. * I wholeheartedly agree with the pro-Buckingham sentiments voiced above. LB, unlike many rock guitarists, is an actual *musician*, as opposed to being, well, a guitarist. Also in this category, as underrated as Buckingham, is the Police's Andy Summers (although his playing on the recent reunion tour was subpar). * Finally, for all you Lindsay Buckingham fans out there, check out _Buckingham Nicks_, if you can get a hold of it (it's never been released on CD, believe it or not). It's the album that the two of them recorded in the early 70s, prior to joining Fleetwood Mac.
I've never been a huge FM fan, but I agree completely on Buckingham being underrated. I think it's partly because his technique is so unusual that not many people have tried to imitate him.
I second the point about people who don't think Rumours is FM's best album being too pretentious to live.
Rumours is fine, but I'm really surprised no one has mentioned "Mystery to Me". Great music, plus one of the great album covers of all time. Nothing pretentious about the music, either. Some great tunes with good rhythm.
I remember Go Insane by Lindsey Buckingham. I don't think anyone ever forgets it after they hear it. It's one of those songs that's tough to get out of your head once it gets in. And it's been running in my head all day thanks to you. It's beyond a catchy tune, it's downright contagious.
Let me start by dispensing with the Mac topic: Now, let me second Elvis Costello (for sheer diversity, from new wave garage like "Radio Radio," to ultra-wry "Beyond Belief," to silken "Almost Blue," to the great pop of "Everyday I Write the Book," to the touching "Veronica," to the rootsier yet cynically comical "Monkey to Man.") And second Peter Gabriel, but the earlier stuff - the self-titled "Melting Face" album with Biko, Intruder, Games Without Frontiers, etc. And second the Clash - oh yes, The Only Band that Matters. Hardly a bad song on the entire London Calling set. But where oh where is the love for the Replacements? "Androgynous," "Answering Machine," "I'll be You," and the better-than-the-original cover of Kiss' "Black Diamond." (But if you want to see just how white the white music can be, I'd say Carole King's career highlight, the gazillion selling "Tapestry." While I can appreciate the skill, I'd still recommend having a place to sleep nearby.)
"I'm So Afraid" off Fleetwood Mac (and esp. live) spots the Seattle sound about 20 years early. The sound of people losing their minds while playing really loud. Look for the live you tubes, but not the crappy reunion stuff. Newer? My Morning Jacket and Maktub (although that's integrated rock, not white people music).
t-nc is into one of my favorite bands what? i think the kicks have yet to match trial of the century, and swimming just feels lazy to me, but there are a couple good tracks. if you ever catch them live, pray they play "one more time"; it's that good
also, all this talk of fundamentals is great from a purist's point of view but probably not the best way to introduce someone to the genres involved. just start with something simple and stunning like broken social scene and work backwards. which, how have they not been mentioned yet?
There are some nice LA Fleetwood Mac moments, but I"m a Peter Green man. If you'd like to hear some top notch "white people music" a-bornin', Neil Young has (today, Dec 2) released the whole tape of his Canterbury House show from 1968 (just after Young had left Buffalo Springfield, and was trying to figure out what a Neil Young song and show sounded like), where the B-side "Sugar Mountain" was recorded ("Sugar Mountain" is about growing up, as punctuated by visits to a local amusement park -- a marvelous and (for me) always moving evocation of the passage of time -- I'm told it was the impetus for Joni Mitchell's "Circle Game"). Anyway, for the time being NPR is streaming the entire recording, and it's worth a listen, for historical value and perhaps you'll like it too. http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=97253221
But Broken Social Scene would lead to Delerium and Sarah McLachlan and Single Gun Theory. Safer to stick with Depeche Mode ;-)
on the topic of music, I wonder how this Cadillac Records movie will be? Jeffrey Wright as Muddy Waters? I have never NOT enjoyed seeing Jeffrey Wright in a movie, and I know he played Colin Powell and all that, but Muddy Waters is about as major a role as there can be, in my estimation.
big bad wolf said all I had to say, only better, so I'll just reiterate: Fleetwood Mac's "white album" and Rumours are both remarkable milestones. All the dissing in the thread has been either snobbish or ignorant. (Although I will concede that they've been overplayed to the point where I can't listen objectively.) The production on Rumours still blows my mind. Get yourself some headphones and dive into "Gold Dust Woman".
The topic of music brings out the teenager in many of us, it seems; "I hate that!" and "You must listen to this!!" The responses here make me realize just how many genres there are, for whole swathes have been left out (hardcore, grindcore, industrial; all surely "white". . .)! What is white people's music? And which white people, exactly? For every recommendation you get, you'll hear a counter. So, perhaps you should turn on the radio. Here in rural white America (where I live), I'd bet that Lynyrd Skynyrd is #1 on any bar jukebox. If I never heard "Free Bird" again, I'd be delighted.
and to make this more relevant to those younger than I am. . . :) mike noted the extraordinary production on Rumours, which was engineered by Ken Caillat, father of Colby Caillat, she of "Bubbly" fame. and while the FM discussion has been all well and fine re white music, I suppose if one really wants to go back to the beginning, Buddy Holly's mix of very whitened blues and choir-boy love songs is a great place to start. From there you see the world of pop and rock music branch out over and over and can almost draw a "whiteness" spectrum - Elvis and the Stones? A much less white music than the Beatles and the folkies, for example. heck, this sounds like a great book project!
JR, let me try to answer your question. TNC's music threads probably aren't even about exploring music made by white artists, contrary to black artists, as much as him giving free reign to new ideas. If his readers feel free to participate, regardless of our backgrounds and nationalities, we can get to some level of truth about what all this music means to us. Don't you remember with some songs, some music, the sheer soul uplifting joy you felt when you heard it for the first time? Suppose someone reads this and thinks I need to get myself a helping of Rumours? Or Bowies Heroes? Or Skynyrd? What if that person gets the same enjoyment, the same soul moment we once had? That would be great. It could be anything by the way, even Hotel California, a song a sincerely loathe, but maybe someone else will enjoy it immensely. I remember listening to Massive Attacks Unfinished Sympathy for the first time and thinking: what the hell just happened here? That was a life changer for me.
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Now we just need to get you into early 1970's Glam Rock and late 1970's/early 1980's Postpunk/New Wave (1978-1984) and you will be set.
Oh, and you might want to try French hip-hop. And Japanese pop.
Posted by Fighting Words | December 1, 2008 12:31 PM