Sunday, 13 January 2019

Peter Green's Fleetwood Mac - The Lost Broadcasts


Rating: 2/5

Review:
Poor sound quality

This is one for real fans and completists only, I think. I tried it because I will listen to anything played by Peter Green, but it’s not great.

The problem is the sound quality. It’s not as absolutely terrible as some of the stuff foisted on us over the years (buyers of some Canned Heat and Clapton “lost” or “unofficial live” recordings, for example, will know what I mean), but it varies from the dodgy to the awful. Some of it is worth it – there’s a terrific solo performance by Green of Dead Shrimp Blues, for example, which I’m glad to have in spite of the crackles, scrapes and overall dismal quality – but a lot of it isn’t really. You can tell that the issuers haven’t taken this compilation at all seriously from the comic font on the cover (what??) and it shows.

The music itself is mostly pretty good without being brilliant with a nice mix of solid blues, odd covers like Peggy Sue Got Married (yes, really) and some of Jeremy Spencer’s enjoyable knockabout Rock & Roll parodies. There are flashes of genius from Green and the band is always very good, but most of these tracks aren’t as good as the versions already available either on original albums or compilations like Live At The BBC.

I’m a massive devotee of the original Fleetwood Mac and even I’m not over-keen on this. It’s basically an exploitative cobbling together of poor-quality recordings with no effort at cleaning them up or meaningful curation. On balance, I’m glad to have it in my collection, but I can’t really recommend it.

No comments:

Post a Comment