Recently, I finally caught the episode of "Classic Albums" focusing on Fleetwood Mac's "Rumours". It's a candid look back by all five band members, but is lacking in a certain lucidity. There are revealing moments into the recording process and the bands' state of mind during the albums' creation, but they are often disguised behind thick veils of cryptic wordplay. Keep in mind that I adore "Rumours", it came out in 1977 but is still miles better than any punk album ever made.

Ex. A. Christine:"Mick's the Big Daddy. He became Little Daddy for a few years because we were all a bit worried about him. But he's the Big Daddy again, he's bigger than ever, he's Mighty Mick, he's great. He's been the gel, the glue behind Fleetwood Mac. This is his life".

Christine's comments are generally quite concise and to the point, certainly compared to the rest of the FM bunch. I love her finely textured accent. Here, she throws around monikers like candy in reference to Mick Fleetwood. But somehow, the "Daddy" imagery is disturbing, particularly since Mick looked more like a Mad Hatter than a cuddly Santa back in the 70's. Definitely more Pimp Daddy than Poppa. Mick says that "Oh Daddy" is about him. The lyrics plead for acceptance with a childlike wonder. Hey, wasn't it Stevie who slept with Mick? But the image of Mick as the gangly pusher is just too strong.

Ex. B. John:" [Chris] saw me at the worst one time too many, and bless her heart, she said "Enough. I don't want to be around this person". And, so we talked about it and made the decision, but at the bottom of all that stuff was, we have something musically that we can achieve".

This is more like it. John McVie takes a sludgingly morose 45 seconds to say these lines. It's as if he just walked off the set of "Eyes Wide Shut". That's how he talks throughout the entire show. I'd worry that he's fried one too many braincells over the crazy years, but in the archived footage he's STILL speaking this way. On second thought, I believe he's reliving the moments as he retells them, and has to keep pausing to recover from the horror.

Ex. C. Mick:"I was not spared at all. My best friend was having an affair with my wife Jenny and he was sort of still a friend, and he still is. He's a great chap. And I was sort of happy that if someone was going to do that, it was him rather than someone I didn't know, it was like a weird ... that was all twisted too, it was a total mess, and that's how we made that album".

"Hey, remember me? The guy who the band is named after? I may have been the odd man out in the pre-Abba-esque double couple splitsville arrangement, but I was just as messed up as the rest of them! My wife was boffing this other guy, man! Great guy, him, fantastic geezer. Boy, am I ever glad he was riding my wife. I kind of enjoyed it, actually. It warmed my heart to know that my best friend was stabbing me in the back rather than some wanker who I didn't trust or anything. Jeez, there was some wacky, wacky stuff going on back then. I think I drowned my pain in illegal substances, but hey, what a great geezer he was to be doing my wife on the side like that. Hmm ... I've got a bit of a twisted mind myself, don't I?"

Ex. D. Stevie:"'Gold Dust Woman' was a little bit about drugs. It was about keeping going. It was about cocaine. And after all these years, since I haven't done any cocaine since 1986 I can talk about it now. At that point, it ... I don't think that I've ever been so tired in my entire life as I was when we were doing that. It was shocking me, the whole rock and roll life was really heavy, it was so much work and it was so everyday intense. Being in Fleetwood Mac was like being in the army -- it was like, you have to be there, you have to be there, you have to be there as on time as you can be there, and even if there's nothing you have to do you have to be there. So, 'Gold Dust Woman' really was my symbolic look at somebody going through a bad relationship and doing a lot of drugs and trying to just make it, trying to live, trying to get through it to the next day".

Ah, yes. Another endearing chapter of "Pop Stars Acting Coy About What Their Songs Represent and Denying the Obvious Even Though We All Know the Answer". Line this one up next to recent stuff such as Jason Pierce claiming that the album "Ladies and Gentlemen We Are Floating in Space" isn't about drugs, and the Spice Girls claiming that "Goodbye" isn't about Geri. Stevie changes her mind every five seconds as to what the song is about. Is it about survival or about drugs? Or is it about surviving drugs? Make up your mind! Of course, it's quite obviously about drugs. "Gold Dust"? Come on. If cocaine were flour, these guys were inhaling a loaf of bread every day. The song is far darker and menacing than anything else on the album. Drug hallucinations/comedowns, anyone?

I can't stand it when people cite the "rock and roll lifestyle" as the source of their problems. That's a cheap, flimsy excuse. There is no such thing as a rock and roll lifestyle. If you play rock and roll and you choose to get wasted on drugs every night, that's your problem, it's not the music acting for you and impelling your hands to grab the nearest mirror. If someone goes to college, drinks all the time, and flunks out, that's entirely his own doing. He flunked out because he was screwed up all the time and did poorly in his course work. It's NOT because the "college lifestyle" is so hard, and you always have to be in class, and you always have to be on time for your exams. If one lets the "college lifestyle" get in the way of, you know, "college", then the "lifestyle" is the cause of the hardships, not the effect.

I'd like to hear more rock stars say "Yeah, I did drugs. I did them because I wanted to", rather than, "Yeah, I did drugs, but everyone else was doing them too, so don't just blame me!".

Ex. D. Lindsey:"You really have to address it in terms of the times, and the times were a lot crazier. There was a sense of expansiveness in the business, of anything being possible, of budgets being unimportant, and certainly there was a subculture of drugs that was considered almost a norm in the business back then as opposed to today when it's more of an aberration. That was sort of the last period of time when maybe there was a kind of 'us vs them' feeling, of 'establishment vs anti-establishment'. It was grinding to a halt as the biz got tighter, but in the mid '70's there was a sense that you could do no wrong".

Here is a startling bit of revisionist history, spoken with an embarrassed semi-smirk. One one hand, it's 40 minutes into this program and someone's FINALLY owning up to drugs being a key element of the Rumours-era turmoil. On the other hand, based on these comments, Lindsey Buckingham must think he's living the 80's again, but without the drugs, it appears he hasn't listened to anything new or picked up a music magazine in about 20 years. First off, Lindsey, people still do drugs these days. They're different drugs than the ones you were doing, but that's the evolution of mankind for you. I understand that I'm generalizing here, but I'd say that drugs are more of a problem these days because of the increased problem with "diluted" substances, i.e. E dealers who alloy their product with a bunch of other chemicals to keep their costs down. You can literally have no clue what you're ingesting these days, and that's scary. But when budgets aren't important, you can afford to buy the really quality shit and thus have a better idea of what you're getting. Crazy times, indeed.

That sense of expansiveness was the bloating of the rock and roll industry, which is why punk had to happen. Strangely enough, Lindsey saw these times of mega-tours, mega-albums, and mega money as just another chapter of "us vs them". News flash: when you sell millions of albums and can afford to sit around doing drugs all day, you ARE "them". It's just surreal to watch him saying this stuff, looking to come off as the rebellious rock star who was sticking it to the Man, as my TV flashes old footage of FM at a glossy press conference/photo op.

Once rock stars felt they could do no wrong, rock lost it's ball-busting primal sex appeal and rested on it's aristocratic laurels. "Sure, stretch the guitar solo out for another ten minutes. It's not mindless noodling because we can do no wrong!".

To finish up, let's blast off into outer space with comments more cryptic than the Sunday crossword.

Ex. E. Mick:"Christine could have cut ['Don't Stop] ten years before it was made and the difference would have been, was not having this cream on the top that took it into a whole different zone where musically and rhythmically it wasn't just a shuffle, and it's like, that's what it is, and that was this powerful marriage where we were just taking that and running with it".

What in the name of G-d is he talking about? I listen to him, and read these lines over and over, and I'm lost every time. Mick, if you don't remember recording the track, it's OK to just say so. I THINK he's saying "The song is piano-based, so Christine could have written and performed it herself. But when doing it with the whole band, it turned into something much more special".

Ex. F. Lindsey:"I had met a young lady that didn't turn into being anything heavy but what it did do was sort of put a little wind in my sails in terms of having sort of a regenerative spirit and sort of move on, which I hadn't been able to do for a little while".

Who talks like this? What's with this Wordsworth meets Timothy Leary free-form naturalist garbage? Translation: "I was having casual sex. I liked it".

Hey, I knew I hated Korn for a reason other than the fact that their music is crappier than a backed-up toilet at a refried bean eating contest. Guitarist Munky thinks that Hitler went to heaven. Why? Because he did what he believed was right, and if you always do what you believe is right, boys and girls, then you too can go to heaven.

Hey Munky, the next time you and your asswater stupid bandmates come to town, maybe I'll hunt you down like the ignorant mama's bitch that you are, take a machete to your neck, drink your fresh blood, hack off your testicles with a cheese grater while you're still alive and feed them to my dogs, and piss in your eye sockets just before you take your final breath. Because if that's what I believe is right, then damn, I'll go to heaven no matter what the law does with me afterward. And I guess I'll see you there, eh?

Drugstore aren't just a great band. They're also a great covers band. They've been tossing acoustic covers into their live sets from their outset, and through the wonders of internet P2P software, I've found a few wonderful artifacts. Pink Floyd's "Wish You Were Here" strays close to the original but adds a hint of country-tonk swagger, much like the kind on the last album's opener, "Baby Don't Hurt Yourself". "Black Star" comes off as melancholy and defiant (think "Favourite Sinner"), ditching the overblown quiet/loud histrionics of Radiohead's version. Best of all is The Flaming Lips' "She Don't Use Jelly", which is somehow more playfully silly than the original. If you didn't think the band could pull off cheeky and cute, take a listen. Why they're so good at this stuff is anyone's guess. My guess is that Drugstore are already so adept at acoustic dirges, so it's easy for them to cover songs with their own signature stamp in an acoustic format. The same logic could apply to Johnny Cash's recent American Recordings III (or any of the scores of cover versions he's done).