When I turned 20, Mom Pierce offered to buy me anything I wanted
\nat the area record superstore. Heading to Rolling Stone (located in
\nNorridge, Illinois – haven’t been there in years), I made a rather
\nstrange selection: the then-new-release box set from The Byrds. It
\nwas strange for the simple reason that I didn’t know much about
\nRoger McGuinn and crew except for the one or two songs I had heard
\non the radio.<\/p>\n
Eight years later, I still don’t know a lot about the band – one
\nreason is I lost the damn book that came with the box set And while
\nI couldn’t appreciate the sudden change from light rock to country
\nthat The Byrds underwent when I was 20, it seems a little more
\nunderstandable these days. This set (now apparently out of print,
\nthough you can still get it at the little used record store I
\nfrequent) serves as more than an introduction or a retrospective of
\nThe Byrds; this is a college course packed into four cassettes.<\/p>\n
The first portion of the set features a band that is not only
\nengaged in some serious Bob Dylan worship, but is also sounding
\nlike they’re held together with duct tape. The musical tightness
\njust isn’t there on the first few songs. One can understand this
\nbeing the case on “Mr. Tambourine Man,” a song which featured only
\nMcGuinn from the band, but even other songs like “Chimes Of
\nFreedom” and “All I Really Want To Do” feature a band whose
\nexcitement of recording is clearly heard as they tend to rush
\ncertain portions of their music. Maybe it was a vocal here, a
\nguitar line there, but it’s noticeable (though it’s far from a
\ndistraction). By the time they kick into “She Don’t Care About
\nTime” (featured in a previously unreleased version) and “Turn!
\nTurn! Turn!” (the song that started it all for me with The Byrds),
\nthe band sounds a lot tighter. (Not surprisingly, the tensions in
\nthe band were rising around this time.)<\/p>\n
If I had to make the call, I would have sliced “The Bells Of
\nRhymney,” “Lay Down Your Weary Tune” and “Hey Joe” (sorry, but
\nHendrix’s version will always be
\nthe<\/i> one for me), simply because they don’t reflect well on
\nThe Byrds, and are more distracting than some other cuts like “I
\nKnow My Rider” and “Spanish Harlem Incident”.<\/p>\n
The experimental side of The Byrds is evident early on in the
\ntrack “Eight Miles High,” but can clearly be heard on the second
\ntape. The song that kind of spelled the end of the rock era of the
\nband was the controversial number “Triad,” a song that pales in
\ncomparison to some of the shit polluting the airwaves today. (Then
\nagain, in the ’60s, a song advocating a
\nmenage a trois<\/i> would have been the top of the iceberg.) One
\nsong that falls under the “shoulda-been-a-classic” moniker is “My
\nBack Pages,” a sentimental tale about life and the lessons learned.
\nThe more I hear this track, the more I love it.<\/p>\n
While there are a few more rockers left in The Byrds, the
\ncountry aspect clearly kicks in somewhere along side four. (One
\nsong I definitely would have cut was “The Christian Life,” a
\n“holier-than-thou” number that just annoys the listener, even if
\nthey happen to be of that faith. Check me if I’m wrong, but didn’t
\nMcGuinn get involved with some religious cult that wasn’t
\nChristianity? Isn’t that why he changed his first name from Jim to
\nRoger?)<\/p>\n
A simple fact must be stated by the time you kick into the
\nsecond half of the box set: If you weren’t aware of the Byrds’s
\nmove into country music, you’re gonna hate almost the rest of the
\nset. When I first listened to this in 1990\/1991, I was so shocked,
\nI filed the tapes away, only pulling out the first tape to hear the
\nsongs I knew well. However, if you give tapes three and four a fair
\nshot, they prove to have some very entertaining moments on them.
\nTracks like “Hickory Wind,” “This Wheel’s On Fire,” “Old Blue” and
\n“Black Mountain Rag” make the time just fly. (Any lover of guitar
\nwork should definitely give “Black Mountain Rag” a spin – and allow
\nyour jaw to hit the floor hard.)<\/p>\n
By the time you hit tape four, you can hear the band running out
\nof gas – how do you explain a waste like “Chestnut Mare”? – though
\nthere still are some quality moments contained therein. Check out
\n“White’s Lightning” for proof. The eventual reunion of McGuinn,
\nChris Hillman and David Crosby at the 1990 tribute to Roy Orbison
\n(and the four studio tracks recorded to re-establish ownership of
\nthe band name) prove that The Byrds still had the magic they showed
\nin the ’60s and early ’70s. In fact, after hearing the studio
\nefforts from 1990, I wonder why McGuinn, Hillman and Crosby didn’t
\ngive The Byrds another serious try; tracks like “Paths Of Victory”
\nand “Love That Never Dies” blew me away.<\/p>\n
Trying to digest this whole set in one sitting is asking a lot
\nof anyone (I was able to complete it in just over two days driving
\nin my car), but there are a lot of great moments on
\nThe Byrds<\/i>. And while there are their fair share of landmines
\nin the set as well, listening to this set will help you understand
\nwhere bands like The Eagles came from, and how Tom Petty was
\ninfluenced. This particular set is going to be a little harder to
\nfind these days, but if you’ve got the time and patience (and are
\nwilling to roll with the musical changes), this set will be a
\nwonderful addition to your library.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":27831,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","template":"","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"artist":[5885],"rating":[5612],"class_list":["post-39215","review","type-review","status-publish","has-post-thumbnail","artist-the-byrds","rating-rating-b-minus"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/review\/39215","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/review"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/review"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=39215"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/review\/39215\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/27831"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=39215"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"artist","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/artist?post=39215"},{"taxonomy":"rating","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/rating?post=39215"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}