Stop Me if You’ve Heard This One. Fleetwood Mac’s Rumors Gets Deluxe Reissue.

Rumors Expanded Edition (3 CD)

Fleetwood Mac

Released January, 2013

I’ve heard people talk of a future where mp3s and ipods become obsolete and digital media is stored directly in the human brain.  Sounds nuts until you realize it has already been done.   Until you realize that you already have this capability.  Until you discover one day that all you have to do is think of Fleetwood Mac’s Rumors, and within microseconds synapses begin to fire, connections are established and the DJ in your mind starts to play the tunes.  But your brain doesn’t play the album in the correct order.  It begins with Don’t Stop and plays the damn song four or five times in a row until you start to fantasize about hearing anything else.  Dreams, You Make Loving Fun, Go Your Own Way, and Gold Dust Woman follow, each of them so painfully familiar, so tired of revealing themselves to you and having nothing new to offer.  Each of them wishing they could finally pack up thier multi-platnimum hooks and harmonies and retire.   My point?  Listening to this record is a lot like driving home from work and realizing you can barely noticed the journey.

You probably know the back story.  Long running English blues act (Fleetwood Mac) recruits California singer songwriter duo (Buckingham Nicks) and before they even plug in the guitars, cash registers around the globe start filling up.  Three guys and two gals in the band.  Apparently everybody was fighting, hooking up, breaking up and sleeping together during the sessions, which reportedly helped generate some useful creative tension amongst the songwriters.  The songs tell the story as we listen with our ear and a milk glass cupped to the wall.  In some ways, you might view Rumors as an early, musical version of reality TV.

With this new set you get a remastered version of the original album and it really does sound fantastic.  The thing is, pristine as it sounds, I don’t want to hear it.  If anything, I want to unhear it.   I’ve heard it enough.  I got it.  I get it.  I think I’m done. Disc two features 12 songs from the 1977 “Rumors” World Tour.  You’re probably familiar with a few of the songs (see disk one).  It’s certainly a competent set of live performances, but there’s nothing here that outshines their well polished studio tracks.

Disk three, a fascinating set of unfinished early mixes, instrumental tracks and song demos, is the real stunner in this set.  To my surprise, many of these rough sketches manage to breathe brand new life into those overplayed Rumors songs.  Stripped of their studio production and polish, the songs now invite you in for a closer look — sometimes at the whole song, sometimes at just some interesting isolated parts.  In these stripped down performances, the stories connect in a new way, as though you are discussing them with an intimate friend instead of with a rock star.  Disk three offers an opportunity to see these songs transform back to their purest essence as extraneous working parts are disassembled.   For some, the joy of this disk will be reevaluating the finished tracks, through the prism of these deconstructed versions.  But there is much pleasure to be found in simply listening to these alternate takes on their own terms.  It’s like hearing an indie version of the album, raw, immediate and personal.  Disc three suggests that some of the emotions erupting during the Rumors sessions were foolishly boiled off and sterilized in the final product.   You can hear it in both the vocal and instrumental performances.

So it’s a tough call, but for me disc three makes this package worth it.  You get a fantastic sounding version of the original Rumors.  You get a useless live document.  And you get a fascinating look at what Rumors might have been.  Buy it.  Listen to it.  Get sick of it all over again.

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