Before becoming Byrds, Clarence White and Gene Parsons
bummed around the bar and studio session circuit for years, recording this live in 1968 but leaving it unreleased
for about a decade. Hardly a lost treasure, it mostly shows a strong bar band
belting out tight covers. Well-curated overall--their “Green, Green Grass of
Home” stands nearly on par with the other Parson’s take, though “Greensleeves”
is taking things a mite far, fellas—probably the most interesting interpretive
trick is the way they dodge the sexual and gender roles of “Ode to Billy Joe”
by turning in an instrumental rendition, with some terrifically bleary fretwork
from White, a harbinger of things to come. For that matter, in a genealogy of
the Byrds, probably the main point of interest here is the brawn, unfurled
early on some crashing, crunchy chords that roll down over “Mental Revenge.”
Here’s where the musculature of the late-period Byrds albums was developed, one
set of handwashing-in-the-dirty-river workouts at a time.
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