Baby, please stop messing around

Continuing my trip back through the 1968 album charts.

15/09/68 : Mr Wonderful - Fleetwood Mac

Unsurprisingly, I have heard of Fleetwood Mac - but I also know that late 60s FM were very different from all the other types of FM (and please don't ask me how many types of FM there have been).  I believe this is blues-y but don't really know what that means - let's find out, shall we?

Woah.  It's not blues-y - it's blues with a capital B.  It's interesting to compare this with this previous entry which was blues-rock, but this very much goes back to the source - much more so than I was expecting from a band that was 100% British at this point of time.  It's certainly not my area of expertise - it sounds like it's done well enough if you like that sort of thing, but I found the whole album grew tiresome very quickly. It's also incongruous for me to even associate this sound with the name Fleetwood Mac, particularly so when you see that "Albatross" came out in November of this year and that's another completely different sound!  Also, the album cover is just horrible.

We're down at #13 in the charts this week on their third week of a surprisingly long eleven week run, with it peaking at #10 in its sixth week.  The top five this week were Tom Jones, The Hollies, Simon & Garfunkel, TSOM and Engelbert (an interesting mix to say the least) -the highest new entry was The Beach Boys (#27 - and one I've not heard even heard of before) and there are no new women on the list, although Julie Andrews does make another appearance with the original soundtrack of Star!, which I'd never heard of but is based on the life of Gertrude Lawrence (who I'd heard of, but no more than that!)

Back to Fleetwood Mac, Wikipedia doesn't have a lot on the album - it wasn't received as well as their debut, with a few comments on the sound not being great.  I thought it sounded quite flat but just assumed that was because of the time, but apparently they made the somewhat dubious decision to play it live in the studio and record it through mics.  It also tells me that "Lazy Poker Blues" was covered by Status Quo on their 1971 album - I fear I'll be forced to experience that at a later date.  The album didn't exactly set the world alight, only charting here and in Norway (#8).

"Customers also listened to" Peter Green, Eddie Boyd, Christine Perfect (later McVie - she looks so young on the album cover!) and Otis Spann - I've absolutely no idea who Eddie and Otis are and can't be bothered to investigate.  Mostly because this album sorely tested my patience - I found it very tiresome indeed.

08/09/68 - Utterly bonkers, but obviously influential
22/09/68 - Mad, but unexpectedly enjoyable

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