No question
about it, I was a skeptic: the damn band put out a live record in 1970,
so what’s the point of this beyond cynical label cash-grab?
And probably that was the point, since what else motivates
labels? But that doesn’t stop this from asserting its own identity, independent
of (Untitled), and capturing the band
precisely at a transitional moment. It had only been four years since they
broke big, but it seemed careers ago; they’re clearly eager to move beyond the
past, cramming “Turn! Turn! Turn!”, “Mr. Tambourine Man,” and “Eight Miles
High” into one oldies-hit-parade medley that they blast through in a ten-minute
fury (as opposed to the sprawling side-long “Eight Miles” on the 1970 record).
It works—while McGuinn is rarely an impassioned singer (to his frequent
detriment), he shouts himself hoarse on a “So You Want To Be a Rock’N’Roll
Star” that could nearly pass as a punk band in 1978, all clanging chords and
John York swooping through on bass.
But the band wants to play its new material, and while the
just-released Dr. Byrds and Mr. Hyde
was hardly a high point, they rock “King Apathy III” as if it were, and almost
convince. McGuinn’s vocals on the tracks that Gram Parsons would also claim
separately (esp. “Sing Me Back Home” and “Close Up the Honky Tonks”) can’t help
suffering in comparison, but he and the rest of the group seethe through a
fantastic “This Wheel’s on Fire,” and close things out with more Dylan, a
rousing “Chimes of Freedom.” Even the generally lackluster “He Was a Friend of
Mine”—always one of my least-favorite Byrds songs, a treacly tread of misplaced nostalgia—comes to
life. I still have no idea why both McGuinn and Parsons were so thin-skinned
about being dissed by a DJ that they both kept “Drug Store Truck Drivin’ Man” in their sets, but at least it
dies before the 2:30 mark. Even David Fricke’s liner notes deliver—the idea of
the first Byrds show at the Fillmore, in 1966, occurring alongside a production
of LeRoi Jones’ The Dutchman is just
kind of astonishing—as is the fact that they were reduced to opening for some
Butterfield Blues Band dudes by the point of this recording. Huh?
