Page 29 - the NOISE April 2014

vino he made himself (and playing the occa- sional gig with Puscifer)? Hell, no. I’d do the same and so would you.
All of this makes Three Sixty and Stone And Echo, the latest releases from A Perfect Circle, somewhat of a puzzle. A best-of after only three albums, none of which are out of print? With the obligatory new track so collectors will cough up $50 for the deluxe version with a t-shirt? And a limited edition $150 concert set consisting of the three LPs played live with a couple covers thrown in?
That’s four hours of product at a cost of two hundred bucks with exactly one new song. Ah, yes ... the Great American Tradi- tion of selling the consumer something he already owns wrapped in a pretty new package.
Nothing is wrong with the music itself, which still sounds better than 98% of the swill out there. It’s a good introduction for the kiddies or folks who missed out the first time. If those sound like excuses invented in a boardroom somewhere, they probably are.
[Right about here is where I would praise the artwork, but I don’t actually have the items, just mp3s. Cheap newspaper. The pictures on Amazon look pretty cool.]
Why DO these two albums exist? Is it be- cause Ashes Divide, Billy Howerdel’s post- APC project, hasn’t quite set the world on fire and he realizes he needs Maynard’s powerful voice, enigmatic lyrics, electric stage pres- ence and celebrity to sell records? Is Virgin attempting to keep the band’s name in cir- culation as a viable commercial entity? Has A Perfect Circle really only come up with five minutes of material since 2004?
In comparison, Tool’s last LP was eight years ago. They easily could have filled that gap by putting out a greatest hits and a live collection with some bitchin’ artwork and had a couple of smashes on their hands to pump up their bank accounts ... but they haven’t. And A Perfect Circle has.
Does it really matter?
I guess I wouldn’t care if I didn’t respect the guy so much. Oh well. It’s only music, right? The next time I start complaining about four CDs of GOOD tunes being released, repack- ages or not, someone smack me upside the head.
— Tony BallZ
PETER GREEN
& FLEETWOOD MAC PART 3
Early in 1969, Peter Green had renounced the Jewish faith of his childhood and began studying Christianity. Nothing odd there, un- til he started growing his hair and beard and took to wearing a long white Jesus robe and crucifix, both onstage and off. He declared money to be the devil and refused to touch it. He signed entire royalty checks away to charity and strongly suggested the rest of the Mac do the same (it was not a popular idea). He gave long rambling interviews to music magazines about God. Privately, he told his bandmates he was tired of being Fleetwood Mac’s leader and suggested Kir- wan or Spencer take over. He wanted noth- ing more than to quit the music business entirely. His personality quirks were becom- ing full-fledged tics and he needed to stop before it was too late.
The rest of the group, frightened at the thought of a Green-less Mac, appealed to his sense of camaraderie and convinced him to stay long enough to honor their upcoming US concert dates.
It was hard to take his talk seriously though. Fleetwood Mac was more popular than ever. They WERE rock stars. This was what they’d been striving for all their lives. No one thought he would actually leave.
Jeremy Spencer’s self-titled solo LP came out in January 1970, and it’s basically a Fleet- wood Mac album of just Jeremy’s songs, pro- viding a glimpse of what a Spencer-led Mac would sound like. And it’s not bad at all.
Spencer tackles a different genre on every track, from country to surf music, psychede- lia to protest songs, teen death ballads to the English blues his own band helped pioneer. It’s quite a tour-de-force, and proves the lit- tle man had musical ideas beyond that one slide lick.
The album’s climax is the riotous Elvis spoof “If I Could Swim The Mountain,” with Spencer channeling the King Of Rock & Roll at his mumbling, incoherent best/worst. The LP sold diddley, but it’s an essential part of the Mac canon, a missing puzzle piece.
The band played more US concerts be- tween late 1969 and early 1970, mostly with
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