Timing and production, they matter: I could see
this ramshackle album recorded on a four-track in 1996 getting some underground
traction, and I could see it slathered in Byrdsmaniax
overdubs, coming out in 2007 on Sub Pop as a Fleet Foxes opening act. Recorded
near-live in 1971, right after the aforementioned flop, it too wilted on the vine. If not a lost masterpiece, it still
deserved better, as Gene Parsons and Clarence White really showed themselves
the center of the group, Roger McGuinn overcame his lifelong songwriting stupor
to kick things off with the self-penned chugging 50s-style riffage of “Tiffany
Queen” (one of the most overlooked Byrds gems, with even modestly clever lyrics
from Our Man of the Norman Vincent Peale Reading Club), and the wretched
Skit Battin/Kim Fowley songwriting duo pushed their obnoxiousness into relative
remission here. We even get a moving dead-dog tribute.
Probably this was all they had in them and it’s just as well
the road ended here (it’s the final LP in the organically continuous life of
the Byrds, with the 1973 original-lineup return a reunion rather than a next-album). But the thing deserved better
than the critical and commercial neglect it received—even the bonus tracks on
the CD reissue kinda kill it.
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