Oil Well Bootlegs - RSC CD: Fleetwood Mac – Mean Old World Oil Well

Fleetwood Mac – Mean Old World
Oil Well – RSC 035 CD

01. Albatross 2:50
02. Preachin' Blues 2:01
03. Blues With A Feelin' 2:57
04. Tallahassee Lassie 3:27
05. Man Of The World 2:54
06. Jumping At Shadows 3:41
07. Linda 2:07
08. Oh Well 2:27
09. The Sun Is Shining 2:34
10. Only You 2:55
11. I Need Your Love 2:32
12. You're A Mean Mistreater Mama 4:10
13. Whole Lotta Love 4:50
14. Talk With You 4:13
15. Mean Old World 3:15

Note:
All songs by Jeremy Spencer unless noted.
~~Live in Aberdeen, June 23, 1968~~

Track 1 Radio 1 Club. Playhouse Theatre, London - 1968-10-09
Track 2 Radio 1 “Top Gear”. Studio 1, London - 1968-08-2
Track 3 Playhouse Theatre, London - 1969-03-10
Track 4 Radio 1 “Top Gear". Playhouse Theatre - 1969-03-10
Track 5,6,7 Radio 1 "Chris Grant’s Tasty Pop Sundae". Studio 1 - 1969-06-10
Track 8 Radio 1 “DLT”. Aeolian Hall, Studio 2, London - 1969-10-06
Track 9 Session for Radio 1 'Top Gear'. Aeolian Hall, Studio 2 - 1968-01-16
Track 10 From Radio 1 “Top Gear". Playhouse Theatre, London - 1970-04-27
Track 11 AKA "That Ain't It" BBC session track
Track 12 Radio 1 "Top Gear". Studio 1, London - 1968-05-27
Track 13 Billed as "Whole Lotta Love". BBC session track
Track 14 Sometimes incorrectly billed as "A Talk With You" or "Talk To You". BBC session track
Track 15 BBC session track

Lineup:
Bass – John McVie,
Drums – Mick Fleetwood,
Guitar, Vocals – Danny Kirwan,
Slide guitar, Vocals – Jeremy Spencer,
Guitar, Vocals – Peter Green
Piano - Christine McVie
Guitar - Nick Pickett

This album is a digital clone of: Blues With A Feeling - Moby Dick Records ‎– MDCD 00 (1989) and of: Aberdeen Studios - Cellar Dweller Records ‎– CD-141201972 (2014)
Please note that it is a live-in-the-studio performance by the band ater broadcast on Scottish radio.
Much like the BBC live performances of the period, there is no audience.
Track 5 does not appear in the back sleeve and in the disc. The enumeration of tracks following it is wrong.

Please note that Whole Lotta Love is You Need Love; I Need Your Love is If It Ain't Me.
Tracks 11, 13,14,15 can ben found on: Greener Pastures - Hyacinth Records (2000) - unofficial album. Please note that this CD is one of the most rare from this italian bootleg label!
Read below for more informations!

Audio quality:

Quality content:

© Official released material:
Tracks 1 to 10; 12 have ben released officially on: Live at the BBC - Castle Communications - 1995
Tracks 11; 13 to 15 have been released officially on: Before the beginning 1968-1970 Live & Demo - Session - 2019
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The BBC recordings
Fleetwood Mac can best be described as a Russian matryoshka doll. Open it and you'll find another, smaller doll nested within it. Open that one and you'll find yet a third and so on. The BBC recordings of Peter Green's Fleetwood Mac represent the band hidden within the public image presented by their Blue Horizon recordings. There is a reckless energy to these recordings that they rarely captured in the studio; as the songs were all cut live, the rough spots can not be smoothed out, nor the excitement of hearing the music being created as you listen; you find yourself focusing on the various players, marveling at the interplay, better appreciating the well placed fill or the instinctive feel for when to allow for a pocket of silence. Of the fifteen songs on this collection, ten are available on the "Peter Green's Fleetwood Mac Live At the BBC" double disc from Castle Communications. Those interested in a more complete picture of the band at this stage will want this for the five unreleased tracks alone, but side by side comparisons with the "official" versions offer their own enlightenment. The disc begins with a previously unreleased version of Peter Green's sublime "Albatross", recorded about six months after the one on "Live at the BBC". While neither surpasses the studio original, the first version was a virtual duplicate - here, Danny sneaks in a note or two and Peter throws in a fill near the end and instead of letting the number reverberate to silence on Mick's cymbal roll, he tags on a little coda.

From this, we go to "Preachin' Blues", with Green slashing away Delta style at a National Steel Guitar - it would be a full year before he used that instrument again on record: for "Show-Biz Blues" from "Then Play On".
Then it's Danny Kirwan's turn with his excellent take on Little Walter's "Blues With A Feeling". From that same session comes "Tallahassee Lassie". Here is an excellent example of the aural differences. These tapes were not "mixed", beyond the balancing done for broadcast. There is an ambience on these tracks missing from the "official" versions. Mick Fleetwood's drums pound at your speakers and challenge the others to make themselves heard over him - a challenge they gladly accept! "Man of the World" and "Jumping At Shadows" follow - a very effective combination, and coming after "Tallahassee Lassie" only highlight more strongly the battle between light and dark raging within the singer.Jeremy Spencer's acoustic homage to Buddy Holly, "Linda" is up next followed by "Oh Well (Part One)" and two more from Danny Kirwan, "Although the Sun Is Shining" and "Only You".
The second of the unreleased tracks, Jimmy Rogers' "That Ain't It" kicks off with Peter Green's vocals before the band even starts to play. They recorded this song under the title "I Need Your Love" with Big Walter Horton on vocals at the "Blues Jam in Chicago" sessions and it's most likely Horton's original recording that they based this take on. With Jeremy (no pianist is credited, in any of the sessionographies I've come across, so I'm guessing here) banging at the keyboard like he's Otis Spann, Peter plays a fierce harmonica, it's shrill blasts punctuating the verses and powering the song, perfectly mixing the unschooled country sound with big city amplification like a Chicago master. More Chicago style blues and another surprise comes with Jeremy doing Elmore James' "Mean Mistreatin' Mama". The surprise is the heavy piano that was mixed down so low on the "Live at the BBC" as to be inaudible.

Again, no pianist is credited - but this time there's no mistaking Jeremy on slide - so who's playing? Christine Perfect had yet to do her first recordings with the band and the style is all wrong. A mystery. Recorded in the summer of '68, a full year before Led Zeppelin's over the top, retitled version, the band locks into a deep groove with Muddy Water's "You Need Love". Zeppelin changed the title to "Whole Lotta Love" and took the song writing credit. They were sued and lost. Danny matches John McVie's bass notes for a rock solid foundation and Green plays what must rank as one of his nastiest solos, utilizing the thin Stratocaster sound he used to similar effect on "Lazy Poker Blues". The only real down side is that Green oversells the vocals, deepening his voice as he intones "you need love, you got to have love". It's almost as if he were imitating Waters the way Jeremy did Elmore James. The playing here also uncovers the seeds to Danny's "Loving Kind". This is most easily appreciated in the Boston Tea Party version of that song. Danny turns in another heavy blues workout with an hard take on his "A Talk With You".
This was from his first radio session with the band, before they'd gone into the studio and he obviously wanted to make an impression. And he does, the "push me - pull you" interplay with Green already in evidence. The disc wraps up with a jaunty run through T-Bone Walker's "Mean Old World" - using the version he cut for Atlantic Records in the 50's as their template. I believe this is from the same session as the previous two numbers and they take it at a swinging pace that belies the downbeat lyrics. Here again, the natural ambience of the studio adds to the feel as McVie sounds as if he was playing a stand-up, rather than electric bass.
http://discog.fleetwoodmac.net/discog.php?pid=710

Before the beginning 1968-1970 Live & Demo - Session - 2019
Two live recordings featuring Peter Green’s Fleetwood Mac have been found and are being released officially on CD and vinyl as Before The Beginning 1968-1970.
The recently discovered recordings date from 1968 and 1970 and were discovered unlabelled in the US, so not much is known about them other than they have been authenticated by experts and approved for release by Fleetwood Mac.
These live performances almost bookend Peter Green’s tenure with the band as the 1968 recording represents the band in their early stages while the 1970 recording will, in contrast, be one of their final shows before Peter left the band. The earlier set contains early incarnations of ‘Madison Blues’ and ‘I Need Your Love So Bad’ from the blues era and the likes of ‘Long Tall Sally’ and ‘Willie And The Hand Jive’. The 1970 performance includes ‘Oh Well’, ‘Green Manalishi’ and the UK number one ‘Albatros’.

Before The Beginning 1968-1970 is being issued as a three-CD set containing all the live recordings and four previously unreleased demos. The images suggest that this comes packaged in what looks like a seven-inch book format.
In terms of vinyl, this content is being split into two volumes. ‘Volume One’ is a 3LP set that features the 1968 live recording and will be issued in June with the triple CD package. A second volume with the 1970 live recording (and the demos) will be released at a later date.
Before The Beginning 1968-1970: Rare Live and Demo Sessions will be released on 7 June 2019, via Sony CMG.