Light On Dark Water

Dea Matrona / Fleetwood Mac: “Oh Well”

On one of my very very few ventures outside the US, I was in Belfast in 2018. In the middle of the city I heard a familiar riff and realized it was Black Sabbath's "Paranoid." It came from two girls busking–guitar, bass, and a drum machine. They looked like they were having the most fun in the world, and their vocals sounded better than Ozzie's. (I mentioned them in this post at the time).

A few days ago I was looking for early (when they were good) Fleetwood Mac on YouTube and this popped up. They are now officially a band called Dea Matrona, with a drummer who is the younger sister of one of them. I love this. And I love the line about God in the song (be careful what you ask for).

At first I wasn't certain that it was the same girls I'd seen, because I was pretty sure that one of them, the one with the more abundant hair, had been blonde. But that, as my wife remarked, is easily changed. Also, I thought the blonde had been the guitarist.  But watching a few more of their videos shows that they swap around and are equally adept on both instruments and vocals. 

It sounds to me like little sister is maybe trying to keep up with them rather than vice-versa, but she's probably come a long way in a short time. I think a note on one of the videos says she's only fifteen. 

Maclin Horton

23 responses to “Dea Matrona / Fleetwood Mac: “Oh Well””

  1. Don

    “…early (when they were good) Fleetwood Mac…” – I get the feeling my musical taste doesn’t quite match yours :). First Elton, now this.
    I’m less of a Stevie Nicks fan than I used to be, but I think Lindsey Buckingham is amazing.

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  2. Mac

    Heh. Actually I meant to excise that parenthesis. I posted the video and the first two paragraphs of this on Facebook, and later added the comment that I really shouldn’t say that about later Fleetwood. It’s not even true in relation to my personal opinion that they weren’t “good” after Buckingham+Nicks joined. They were extremely good by any fair standard, but just not especially to my taste. I agree that Buckingham is amazing. I think the only song from that period that I just really loved was one of his, “Go Your Own Way.”
    But I never was keen on Stevie Nicks, and even less on Christine McVie. That wasn’t helped by the Clintons using one of her Fleetwood Mac songs as their anthem.

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  3. Don

    I can’t listen to “Don’t Stop” anymore.

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  4. Mac

    Yeah, I went from “song you don’t especially like but don’t object to when it comes on the radio” to “song that makes you change stations”.
    Stevie Nicks’s white-wing dove song is played during the credits of one of the Crown episodes involving Diana.

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  5. Rob G

    My favorite Nicks song of that period by far is “Gypsy,” which I’ve always loved, and which has a great video. Otherwise I tend to like the Buckingham songs better also.
    Good video — I hope they do well!

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  6. Mac

    The first thing that comes to my mind when I think of Stevie Nicks is that annoying line “Thunder only happens when it’s raining.” Huh?!?

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  7. Rob G

    I never really thought about that but I see your point. To me that’s one of their middling songs — I don’t dislike it but I don’t love it either. I’d have to say that my two favorite songs of the Buckingham/Nicks period are “Go Your Own Way” and “Gypsy,” with “The Chain,” “Lies,” and “Tusk” being a cut below. And I’ve always sort of half-liked “Rhiannon,” if that makes any sense.

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  8. Mac

    I guess it’s the pedant in me. I think the first time I heard that line I thought “Not necessarily!”

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  9. Don

    I would say that Tusk is their best album. It has my favorite songs by Stevie (“Beautiful Child”) and McVie (“Brown Eyes”, with “Think About Me” a runner up). It’s Buckingham’s album, but his songs don’t really stand out. I would say “Go Your Own Way” is his best FM song. I’m also partial to “I’m So Afraid.”
    One song of his which isn’t a great Fleetwood Mac song is “Big Love.” The studio version is ok. But when he plays it live it is an amazing song. I saw him live when he was touring with his 2006 album Under the Skin. I was totally blown away by “Big Love.” His band took a break, and it was just him on the guitar, but it was at least as big a sound as any song with the full band.

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  10. Mac

    I don’t think I’ve heard Tusk, except maybe the title song. I don’t recognize those song titles. Maybe I should give it a listen.

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  11. Rob G

    I saw him live when he was touring with his 2006 album Under the Skin. I was totally blown away by “Big Love.”
    I saw an MTV or VH1 live show of his at the time of Out of the Cradle (1992) and was blown away as well. I think of him along the same lines as I do guys like Richard Thompson and Phil Keaggy: I’m not a huge fan of their albums or even many of their songs, generally speaking, but they are fantastic in a live performance setting. I do think that Out of the Cradle is a very good album, however. The others have some great moments but OotC is pretty solid all the way through.
    I’ve never heard Tusk all the way through either. I too should remedy that.

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  12. Don

    Rob,
    I agree that Out of the Cradle is a really good album, though I think I like his later stuff better than you do.
    Out of the Cradle is one of the two albums that marked some sort of switch in my mind – which had nothing to do with the albums (the other was Wrong Way Up by Brian Eno and John Cale). From 1992 to 2006, Out of the Cradle was “the new Buckingham album,” and Wrong Way Up is still “the new Eno album.”
    Another Buckingham song that was not well served by technology is “Go Insane.” The album/official video isn’t bad. But when it was just him and a guitar, was much better.

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  13. Mac

    Ha. I’ve been doing that kind of thing with “new” and “recent” for a long time. I think of Radiohead as a group that became popular “recently”, and Ok Computer as a “recent album.” If “recent” means 23 years ago….

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  14. Rob G

    Actually Don, I haven’t heard much of Buckingham’s later stuff. I pretty much lost track of him after Out of the Cradle, as I started playing in a folk band in 1993 and spent much of the 90’s concentrating on various types of folk music and “Americana.” As a result I missed a lot of 90’s rock and only caught up with it in retrospect.
    I do the same thing with “new” and “recent” as well. I think this is because I listened to so much new music in the years around the millennial turn that I tend to gauge what is “new” and what is “old” by that period. What also plays into this for me is that fact that there isn’t a whole lot of music from the first 10 or 12 years of the 2000’s that I really like, while the period of roughly 1997-2001 is loaded with great stuff for me. The truly newer things that I have gravitated to are mostly from the last six or seven years.

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  15. Mac

    For the most part the then-current pop music that I heard in the mid-to-late ’90s was whatever was on the radio or played by my then-teenaged children. And for the most part I didn’t care much for it. Smashing Pumpkins were big and I would have liked them better if I hadn’t found the vocals annoying. Who else?…I don’t really remember that many names.
    By the way: I just watched a documentary about the making of Steely Dan’s album Aja, and if you have Amazon Prime and are at all interested, it’s worthwhile. I was never really a fan but thought their musicianship was really impressive, even more so now.

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  16. Rob G

    In the mid-to-late 90’s I was listening mostly to what was then called alt-country or Americana. The only rock record from the period that I can recall getting excited about was The Verve’s Urban Hymns, which came out in ’97. I never really cared much for the big single, “Bittersweet Symphony,” but I liked the rest of it. It was around that same time that I was introduced to both trip-hop and some of the earlier 90’s stuff like The Cranberries, so I listened to a lot of that. I had several friends that were into Britpop at the time (Oasis, Blur, etc.), but that never really grabbed me.
    That Aja doc sounds really good. I’ll try to check it out over the weekend.

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  17. Mac

    Donald Fagen is very odd-looking. Or has become so. The documentary is 20 years old so he must be even odder-looking by now.
    I was trying to think of The Cranberries’ name yesterday, actually. I really liked one of their albums.

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  18. Don

    This discussion got me watching some Buckingham videos. There’s one (I already saw) of a performance / interview he did at USC in 2015, which I wish my son had gone to. He was a student there at the time (nothing musical -chemical engineering). He probably wouldn’t have appreciated it…
    But he did crash a music class that his roommate was in…where there was a guest appearance by Donovan. I wish I could have crashed that one too 🙂

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  19. Mac

    Donovan’s albums prior to about 1970 are big favorites of mine. I started to say his work is underrated but realized I don’t actually have any idea how they’re rated.

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  20. Don

    I’m glad to hear that despite your errors with regard to Elton John and Fleetwood Mac you’re right about Donovan :).
    I’m sad to say that the fact that you don’t actually have any idea how he’s rated indicates that he’s not really rated. I’m probably less aware of what the consensus is about any artist than anyone, but my impression is that Donovan is pretty much forgotten (except for the people who remember him 🙂 )

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  21. Mac

    AllMusic gives most of the work of his best period 4 to 4 1/2 stars (out of 5), so somebody there thinks well of him.
    https://www.allmusic.com/artist/donovan-mn0000799053/discography
    But talking of underrated, I think they err greatly in giving Hurdy-Gurdy Man only 2 1/2 stars. I think it’s quite good.

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  22. Don

    I don’t get why they dismiss Hurdy Gurdy Man (especially when they give Barabajagal 4 stars). There’s only one song I don’t really like (“Tangier”). I think it has less “filler” than most of Donovan’s good albums. I particularly like “Teas.”
    I guess one reason I always assume people dismiss Donovan is that when I first started listening to him in the mid ’80s, I looked him up in the Rolling Stone Record Guide and they said something like “Listening to Donovan is like being forced to relive the most insipid parts of the ’60s.”

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  23. Mac

    A few years ago I picked up an old Rolling Stone Guide from the library’s giveaway shelf. I think it was from the mid or late ’90s. There were a fair number of reviews that I thought were just pretty much stupid, and now that you mention it I think that was one of them. I can’t look it up because I gave it back to the library.
    I like “Teas”, too. I’m not sure I ever heard the whole Barabajagal album. I didn’t like the song.

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