Fleetwood mac

Friday

Bill Kauffman

Picnicking in the park on July 4

From our US edition

Our July 4 was low on bombast and high on fraternity this year. There were no stealth-bomber flyovers, no tanks treading ominously down Main Street or any other minatory displays of military hardware straight out of a Soviet-era Moscow May Day. Even Lee Greenwood left us alone. I’m told Washington was another story. For the first time since Covid, “Picnic in the Park” was back in Batavia. This much-loved festival of food, music, and smiling, “hey, how ya doin’?” encounters fills the bosky park across the street from the New York State School for the Blind. (One of Batavia’s many ironies is that the best view in town is from the blind school.) For years, my wife, daughter and I manned the Landmark Society’s strawberry shortcake stand at Picnic in the Park.

Monday

Zack Christenson

Stereophonic is a love letter to creation

From our US edition

A chart-topping album. A drummer that can’t stand up straight without the aid of his giant bag of coke. Bickering bandmates and lovers. A rock band on the verge of break-up. These are some of the things on offer in just the first few minutes of Stereophonic. While I’m far from The Spectator’s resident theater critic, I do see my fair share of plays each year. Sometimes I’m compelled to write about them, but only when I’ve found something truly delightful. So let me start by saying this: Stereophonic is the best play I’ve seen in years.  On its surface the play is the story of a mid-Seventies rock band coming to terms with success while navigating tumultuous internal relationships with each other.

stereophonic

Sunday

Kara Kennedy

Jenny Boyd goes beyond the muse

From our US edition

The beautiful muse to great male artists is a tricky figure, omnipresent in history but a bad fit for our fussy time. From Edie Sedgwick to Zelda Fitzgerald, and even some male ones, such as Neal Cassady, they’ve always been part of artistic scenes. In the scene of great Sixties rock, one of the most important was Jenny Boyd. She may not be as well-known as Yoko Ono, or her sister Pattie, who was married to George Harrison. But she may have been as influential. She was in the backstages, the bedrooms and the jam sessions with some of the most iconic musicians of all time. Shortly after traveling around India with the Beatles, she married (then divorced and remarried) Mick Fleetwood. Later, Donovan would write a love-sick song about her, "Jennifer Jupiter." So would Mick Jagger.

Jenny Boyd

Wednesday

Michael Hann

Incredibly his new songs were the best songs: Lindsey Buckingham, at the London Palladium, reviewed

Lindsey Buckingham, at 72, still has cheekbones that cast shadows. He has the upright shock of hair, too, though now it makes him look less like the kohl-eyed pop god of 1980 and more like Malcolm Gladwell’s cooler, angrier brother. He still has fire, too. A couple of solo renditions of Fleetwood Mac songs won the crowd over, but it was the following run of three numbers from his newest album, played with his three-piece band, that put the spark to the show. It proved he’s not yet a heritage act. He had no choice, really, but to forge ahead. In 2018, he was booted out of Fleetwood Mac, for various reasons, chief among them appearing to be that Stevie Nicks couldn’t stand the sight of him any longer, and it was her or him.

Tuesday

Cockburn

Barack Obama’s music taste remains painfully mainstream

From our US edition

Like Moses descending from the heights of Mount Sinai, former president and current prophet Barack Obama has today delivered his latest tome to the masses. A Promised Land, his fourth book, is a 'riveting, deeply personal account of history in the making — from the president who inspired us to believe in the power of democracy'. Or so his publisher says. Cockburn, old-fashioned fellow that he is, has believed in the power of democracy for longer than 12 years. To mark the book's publication, Obama has summoned one of the spirits of his bygone era: he's tweeted out a playlist. 'Music has always played an important role in my life — and that was especially true during my presidency,' he writes.

barack obama