Skip Battin (1972)

Skip Battin was the Slim Dunlap of the Byrds, joining just in time to ride out the band’s decline. He wrote a few songs on the final few albums, often with cinematic themes; nothing too subtle (cf. “Citizen Kane”), nothing too memorable. I actually like Dunlap’s halfway decent solo albums more; Battin’s s/t 1972 solo debut is basically akin to the originals a moderately talented C&W bar band in Topeka plays between covers. The film stuff continues with “Valentino,” and beats the sports stuff like “The St. Louis Browns,” but absolutely nothing sticks. All the songs are co-written with crackpot loony Kim Fowley, but it doesn’t matter; “Captain Video” aspires to breathless wordsmithery but peaks with “sexual intellectual.”

McGuinn and another Byrd or two show up, but mostly this reminds me of old novelty flexi-discs like the one my dad used to play for my mom on her birthday each year, with a thin-voiced singer crooning about coming from the moon just to sing her a tune. A+ cover art, though.