Fleetwood Mac

★★★ Before The Beginning, 1968-1970, Live & Demo Sessions SONY CMG. CD/DL/LP Variable trawl through the Peter Green-era archive. Mystery surrounds Before The Beginning. Sony CMG are pitching this as previously unreleased music “discovered unlabelled and by pure luck in the US”. It features two live performances from 1968 and ’70, bookending co-founder/ guitarist Peter Green’s tenure in the group, plus a handful of studio demos. There’s no official information on where this material was recorded, though unofficial sources suggest the first show might come from San Francisco’s Carousel Ballroom. This lack of information will prove crucial, as Before The

Beginning is clearly aimed at completists, who most probably own the bootlegs. The infant Fleetwood Mac taking baby steps on Dust My Broom has curio value at best, while the 1970 live show drags, but, like the Mac’s troubled, gifted bandleader, periodically sparks into life, on Oh Well (Part 1) and Rattlesnake Shake. Approach with caution.