Imagining a “Collected Singles” compilation (or two)

[Earl Gray]

I don’t know whether this is the sort of thing you should put as your second post on the Ledge, but I thought I’d throw this out anyway in case anyone is interested.

I always thought it a shame that, despite various compilations released over the years, there has never been a “Collected Singles” type compilation released for any Fleetwood Mac era. I am thinking of those compilations that include all the original 45s in chronological order A,B,A,B etc.

I have a couple of these for other bands and, despite their shortcomings, they are great for gathering up all the obscure b-sides, single edits and dedicated single mixes that are otherwise only available on the original 7" vinyl. (I know we have The Pious Bird Of Good Omen, but that falls short in a number of ways.)

For various reasons (rights, commercial interest, lack of Rumours material…) I know that this is probably pie in the sky stuff for pre-75 FM. However, in a period of boredom over the weekend I decided to play “what if”, and the results come out surprisingly well.

I can post the tracklist I came up with if anyone is interested. Somewhat conveniently, the singles up to Green Manalishi would fit nicely together onto one CD while the post-Green pre-Buckingham/Nicks singles would fit perfectly onto a second. This includes all the UK and USA singles (most of which were also released elsewhere), plus a couple of others that were exclusive to other countries.

What I did discover, however, was that when you take into account unique mixes, takes and edits, there is a quite a bit more rare or otherwise unreleased stuff than I had realised. I also discovered that there is a real lack of information on the internet about many of the pre-75 singles - particularly from the 1971-74 period. In fact I seemed to have ended up with more questions than answers!

Is there anyone here familiar with the original 45s who would be interested in discussing them with someone who grew up in the cd era? I did some searches here, but it seems like the original vinyl singles have never been much of a topic for conversation.