Racial Profiling?

I was driving with my girls (6 and 8) over the weekend. They were sitting in the backseat, listening to Casey's $15 MP3 player with two sets of headphones. When they share headphones like this, a pattern emerges. They tend to play 20-30 seconds of a song, tire of it, and skip to the next one. About every 10 songs or so, they land on one that they are really excited about, emit a couple of squeals, and listen to the entire song. They pepper each song with commentary, which is normally very loud because they don't understand that they are speaking loudly due to the headphones.

I had them pretty well tuned out when I heard my eight-year-old say the words, "brown skin". Intrigued, I asked what she was listening to. She was listening to the 80's classic "Oh, Yeah" by the band Yello. You will probably remember this song from Ferris Bueller. I asked her what she was saying about "brown skin". She explained: "You know the low voice that says, 'Ohhhh Yeaaaah'? Well, in my imagination, he has brown skin."

In Praise of Mirage

[Warning: this post will likely be boring to anyone who does not enjoy Fleetwood Mac]

My friend Dan and I are both very passionate about music. Curiously, although we are both rabid consumers of music, we've learned that our musical spheres have only a narrow sliver of overlap. This is not a bad thing. We are both agreeable chaps and very rarely come to blows over things like this. On the contrary, we are often able to expose each other to music that we would normally not come across in our day to day explorations.

Our divergent tastes are epitomized by the band Fleetwood Mac. We are both Fleetwood Mac enthusiasts, but we view the band through entirely different lenses. I see Fleetwood Mac as a tool for Lindsey Buckingham to write and arrange excellent rock music with the help of some very talented musicians. Dan has a much more Stevie-centric view of Fleetwood Mac's contributions to the world. [side note: a recent conversation on this topic prompted Dan to wonder - Are their devoted Christine McVie die-hards out there?]

Dan recently wrote an in-depth post about Fleetwood Mac's double album "Tusk" in which he essentially surmised that he tolerates Lindsey's songs as a necessary price to pay to get some great Stevie songs [I'm exaggerating here for comic effect]. It got me thinking about Tusk from the perspective of Lindsey and Stevie fans. I would hypothesize that Tusk is probably the most difficult album to enjoy in its entirety if you are a strong Lindsey fan or a strong Stevie fan. Both Stevie's and Lindsey's songs on Tusk magnify their songwriting quirks to their extremes. Lindseys songs are extraordinarily strange and not at all commercial (which is exhilarating for a Lindsey fan...and frustrating for others). Stevie's songs can't seem to produce a melody shorter than 30 bars (again...great for Stevie fans, frustrating for others). Tusk was an album in which the two dominant personalities of Fleetwood Mac were speaking directly to their solo fans...and not so much towards the general Fleetwood Mac fans who loved Rumours.

Today I've been listening closely to Tusk's follow-up, Mirage. I've always thought of Mirage as an apology of sorts. Lindsey's songs are radio-friendly again. Stevie's songs are more concise. But, most importantly, the album sounds like a band recorded it, unlike Tusk, which sounds like 3 solo albums mixed together. Mirage hasn't aged as well as Rumours, thanks to a more pop-oriented production, but I will always consider Mirage to be under-rated. Sure, it had a couple of strong hits (Hold Me, Gypsy), but it was also graced with some excellent album cuts. Love in Store, Can't Go Back, That's Alright, and Eyes of the World are among my favorite Fleetwood Mac songs, and they are largely unknown to the radio-listening public. I have no broad point to this post. Just go buy Mirage.