Man of the World

Dear James,

Happy New Year, although I see you haven't yet finished 2008 by putting up your songs of the year. I've got my friend Ian in one ear and Bill Drummond in the other telling me to listen to Peter Green-era Fleetwood Mac. I've just finished the latter's 45 and there's a bit towards the end where he talks about meeting an ageing Peter Green on a plane. I'd copy the relevant parts here for you, but I can never find the bits I'm looking for. I could start highlighting interesting parts with a pencil, but then I'd be one of those people who highlights interesting parts of books with a pencil. The same goes for Alwyn W. Turner's Crisis? What Crisis? Britain in the 1970s which I read before Drummond. I'm sacrificing my own wisdom for the preservation of books I'll never read again.

Anyway, back to the music, and I thought we'd start 2009 with a song from 1969. This is the best of the bunch of Fleetwood Mac songs I was instructed to check out, and even then I'm not that impressed. Sounds a bit like Cat Stevens. I could've posted Albatross, the best instrumental since Telstar, says Drummond. But it just sounds a bit dreary and one of those songs that fails to make an impression after so many years hearing on the radio. I bit like masturbating with the same hand all your life, but not really like that at all.

Other songs rejected from this post are the Mac's Oh Well and Green Manalishi but they're just not hitting the spot this afternoon. In fact that Telstar video was probably the most entertaining of the bunch. Sorry, Ian and Bill.

Dear Daniel and James (Ian writes),

Pace Peter Green, you aren't listening to the exquisite music of his guitar-playing: the dynamics, the melodic genius, the unfailing rhythmic sense, the studied but felt blues classicism, the tension between the rehearsed and the improvised, the quiet life-or-death drama, not to mention his voice.

This clip of an improvised concert moment might change your mind (don't look at the white man; listen to the soul of blues.) The lyrics ("gotta keep my feet on the ground, etc.") are tragic in light of his later illness. I'd say he's the second best R&B/Rock guitarist of the 60s after Hendrix.