Rumours - Fleetwood Mac

A travelling circus of three close friends has joined us for the weekend. Fleetwood Mac’s seminal 1977 album, Rumours seems apt. Not because this group of friends mirrors the marriage-adultery-break-up-drug-fuelled-ludicrous-behaviour drama of this album but because there is also a shared history of beauty, joy and yes, drama.

Rumours is Fleetwood Mac’s 11^th album (yes, 11^th! But only 2^nd with the band's finest line-up after Stevie Nicks and Lindsey Buckingham joined). It has sold 40 million copies worldwide. It’s easy to see why. Every song is familiar and popular.

Second Hand News is a fun opener, setting the tone for a rocking album. It evokes images of middle-aged chubby housewives dancing around the lounge room, swigging stubbies of West Coast Coolers and singing along, drawing in all their hatred and disappointment for their middle-aged chubby husbands and building it up till they can let it all out, wailing Go Your Own Way across the rooftops of the suburbs.

The opening line to this song, “loving you isn’t the right thing to do”, might be the pivotal lyric. The abiding mood of the album is of either loving the wrong person or not loving the right person.

The conversation as we listen to Go Your Own Way goes downhill very quickly. According to rumours, Stevie Nicks had cocaine administered straight up an unconventional orifice, thereby, in the words of our erudite friend, ‘going her own way’.

  

Wander the streets of your suburb on any given Saturday night and Don’t Stop will be blaring out from a 50^th birthday party. Walk straight in, join the group dancing in a circle, put your arm around whoever’s next to you and sing at the top of your lungs. They’ll assume you’re one the nephew’s/niece’s girlfriends/boyfriends and welcome you like the prodigal son.

By the time Songbird comes on, we defy you not to think, “holy crap, this album is just one great song after another.” One of our guests, J, plans to walk down the aisle to Songbird. If her boyfriend ever proposes to her. And if he doesn’t, this is not a bad song to listen to alone, feeling sorry for yourself.  “I wish you all the love in the world. But most of all, I wish it for myself”.

The women wrote most of the good songs on the album and they are some of the best pop songs ever written. B officially retracts his long-standing claim that women have not made a substantial contribution to popular music.

You Make Loving Fun is one of our favourite songs on the album, despite its vomit-inducing title and “I do believe in miracles” chorus. It’s got one of the grooviest keyboard riffs of the 1970s and the harmonized coda makes the words of the title sound so sincere and catchy that we can’t help but feel happy.

Rumours is a perfect album for a gathering with friends. Everyone loves it (and rightfully so). The album spans generations. Your mum loves it, your aunties love it even more and your dad can’t stop himself from dancing to it. Admit it, you love it too.

Nashville Skyline - Bob Dylan

After a week's hiatus, we're revisiting 1969 again this time from a perspective across the Atlantic. Bob Dylan's so-called country album, Nashville Skyline.

It starts with a haunting, lonesome version of his "Girl from North Country", sung with Johnny Cash. It takes the playful courting of the original and turns it into a ballad of loss and longing. L starts to wish into her martini we were listening to Johnny Cash's Live At Folsom Prison instead.

But what the hell is Johnny writing about on the liner notes? "This man can rhyme the tick of time. The edge of pain, the what of sane." The hyperbole wasn't just Cash. The Rolling Stone review of the time includes comparisons to Kafka, Jean-Paul Sartre and Jean-Luc Godard.

Nashville Skyline Rag is an instrumental ragtime piece, moving into the boppy To Be Alone With You. One reason we love this album is that it sounds like Bob and his musos having fun. This album is perfect to relax and just listen to. It's not rocking, it's not challenging, it's just a bunch of great tunes. There are no statements. All the songs are about girls. We love protest music as much as the next white, middle-class, young professional. But all great art is about girls. Period. 

And the love songs are beautiful, even with Bob's bloody annoying voice. Lay Lady Lay is like a sombre plea for somebody to stay in your bed. Tonight I'll be Staying Here with You is Bob's best song. It's the song every girl wants her man to play for her. This has been on many a mix tape.

So if you're looking for an album while you pour your lady a drink and try to seduce her, this is it. Bear in mind though, your charm, or the drink, better work fast because you've got a little over 25 minutes until the finale Tonight I'll be Staying Here with You helps you seal the deal.