Lindsey Buckingham is an all-time rock hero of mine, but not so much for his guitar playing but for his song writing ability, vision and innovation in the mid 1970s with the soft rock genre and then with later new wave influences etc.

That is a good live album the Boston Tea Party that is kind of long forgotten. In regards to blues rock of that era, I always think of it as one of my fav genres of the late 1960s but when i think about it in more depth, its the genre as a whole that I like especially watching live, because album wise most of the bands put out a lot of run-of-the-mill albums. Its main rival psychedelic rock had far more classic albums and was far more interesting to listen to. Imo the best blues rock stuff album wise, is probably the early hard rock infused with blues Zeppelin and Blue Oyster Cult releases.

I still think Buckingham was a good guitar player. I really like some of his stuff.

Yeah, he is a helluva picker, a unique style for a Rocker, more a a Bluegrass style....and his main guitar is awesome, it`s Rick Turner a Model 1.

Don't get me wrong, I also think he was an amazing guitar player, its just that I think his songwriting ability and vision were even better attributes.

US just echoes my feelings

except that even a comp of Green-era material isn't even much interesting to me

Well being of a certain age,I can`t recall any blues albums of that time which featured the likes of "Oh Well", "Green Manalishi" or even "Man of the World".
Buckingham was a very different type of guitar player and in that era, Mac had 3 established songwriters, Buckingham, Christine McVie and Stevie Nicks.
In no way was this Mac Lindsey Buckingham`s band.
He was/is a very talented guitarist, but put it this way.
Without Peter Green, Fleetwood Mac would not have existed.

Was looking for a place to post this question and this seemed like the most obvious thread...

So Fleetwood Mac announced their 2013 tour dates and it turns out they're playing by where I live. I was thinking of getting tickets for my dad and I since he always loved Fleetwood Mac but never got to see them. I know their live album in 1997 was great but that was 15 years ago and are they still worth seeing live today?

The only real difference between now & '97 is that Christine is no longer touring, so I assume they're making up for that portion of the catalog with cuts from Stevie & Lindsay's solo efforts. The band has toured semi-regularly since '97, so they're not rusty or anything. Also, Lindsay's solo tours have been top notch. And Stevie just performed at the Sundance Film Festival with Dave Grohl's band to promote his new film, Sound City (which is superb). They've all still got it, as much as they did in '97, I suspect.

I think everyone in the band would disagree with you there. Even if he didn't write all of the songs, it was his arrangements that tied them all together, & you can see the band increasingly relying on him, to the point that Tusk is practically his singular vision. Christine had a stronger presence than Stevie, certainly, but if you check out the new release of Rumours, there's early versions of Stevie's The Chain (which sounded completely different than the final version, except for the chorus) & Christine's Keep Me There, of which the second half was appropriated to create the final The Chain, & I get the impression that Lindsay was orchestrating that sort of stuff. Stevie even comes out & says on the Classic Albums Rumours doc that Lindsay had a way of arranging her songs to be the best that they could be "when he wanted to."

I really feel like both incarnations of the band were in the upper echelons of what they did, which was two completely different things. But in terms of Peter Green's playing, I actually listen to John Mayall's A Hard Road more, which was the precursor to Fleetwood Mac. Peter & John McVie were both Bluesbreakers at the time, & Aynsley Dunbar did most of the drumming but Mick is credited as a guest artist. Paul Butterfield is on there, too, & Mayall's harmonica is second to none.

I think when the Sotch/Irish immigrated to the U.S. during the mid/late 19th century famine, that heavily influenced what would become American folk music, & that's the banjo connection. I'd never really thought about it before, but while Lindsay's Fleetwood Mac was easily the more "modern" sounding incarnation, Lindsay's playing was a style that long predated the blues that Peter was interpreting. It's also interesting that Peter was playing a style that was geographically closer to Lindsay, & Lindsay was playing a style that was geographically closer to Peter.