For Your Holiday Weekend Listening Pleasure: Fleetwood Mac's '78 Cotton Bowl Landslide

At last night's Gasland screening, an environmentalist activist of some note noted how much he enjoyed reading Unfair Park ... for the Friday musical offerings, many of which were echoes of shows he'd once attended. Then, this afternoon, a request from another Friend of Unfair Park: Steive Nicks or Fleetwood...

By Robert Wilonsky

June 30, 2011

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At last night's Gasland screening, an environmentalist activist of some note noted how much he enjoyed reading Unfair Park ... for the Friday musical offerings, many of which were echoes of shows he'd once attended. Then, this afternoon, a request from another Friend of Unfair Park: Steive Nicks or Fleetwood Mac, please? So, with the long weekend fast approaching, I thought I'd go ahead and post an early weekender, though not the last: Fleetwood Mac at the Cotton Bowl on July 23, 1978 (scroll down), on a bill that included Billy Thorpe, the Little River Band and Steve Miller -- otherwise known as the Cotton Bowl Jam 2, which wasn't a Texxas Jam ... not really.

The recording's an audience keepsake, though it sounds awfully good in spots for a stadium-sized back-pocket keepsake -- especially, and this'll make our Friend happy, during "Landslide." From the looks of the Rumours tour itinerary, the Cotton Bowl gig was toward the very end of a long road slog; a Billboard review outta New York a few days later insisted "Stevie Nicks was in poor form as she seemed unable to get her voice to do the things it does on record." The beauty of the vinyl-to-digital boot -- if she's shot, you can hardly tell. Setlist says the recording's incomplete, only because it lacks the beginning of "The Chain" and closer "Songbird." Which reminds me: What happened on The Voice last night? Ah.

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