New Riders of the Purple Sage, New Riders (1976)

I’m not much of a betting man, but here’s something I’d lay money on: close your eyes, point your finger to a map of the continental United States, head immediately to the nearest dive bar, and whatever random ragged band is playing there will offer more spirited renditions of “You Never Can Tell” and “Dead Flowers” than these lazy bums, coasting into a new contract with MCA that must have just thrilled the suits. Truly, this is one of the most phoned-in albums I’ve ever heard, major label or self-released. Not for one flickering instant does it spring to life; they don’t write songs (there’s one paltry original, and it ain’t much to speak of), and the otherwise all-covers track listing seems mostly chosen to allow Skip Battin to do nothing but ride bass scales for a whole LP. Nobody else does anything, either; there may be legitimate metaphysical questions as to whether this album even exists. God knows I can’t vouch for it, and the damn thing is playing as I type.

Skip Battin, Topanga Skyline (2012)

The mind boggles at the thought of hardcore Skip Battin fans—what is there to love, exactly, beyond Kim Fowley songs sung by someone other than Kim Fowley?—but they exist, at least two of them, contributing liner notes from France and Italy to contextualize this unreleased album from 1973, apparently lost during the petroleum crisis and finally recovered nearly four decades later.

As far as ecologically-debilitating uses of world resources go, slapping this on vinyl would have been better than refueling another gas-guzzling American car, but not by too much. Battin does drop some of his unendearing novelty-tune shtick and attempt to deliver a genuine roots-rock LP; it’s credible enough, but still no better than a set of non-Fogerty CCR tunes. Credit where credit is due, though: in “Wintergreen,” Battin and Fowley unexpectedly knock out a real song, full of genuine emotion. It’s certainly their high point to date (and the closing bonus track “China Moon,” taken from later sessions, might also come close, were it not for some questionable racialized lyrics). Otherwise, mostly this just leaves one with questions, such as, does this mean there are also Gene Parsons obsessives out there? John York ones?

The Byrds, (Untitled) (1970)

Untitled and also seemingly rather unsung, but a remarkably strong album with an adventurous format: double-LP, first one live, second new studio tracks. They bring the muscle for the live stuff, with a set spirited enough to reclaim even the doofy “Mr. Spaceman” from its 5^th Dimension doldrums. “Lover of the Bayou,” one of McGuinn’s last strong originals, opens things—live rather than studio was the right call—and an entire sidelong “Eight Miles High” avoids feeling like one of those awful San Francisco jam bands stretching out aimlessly in some poor ballroom; these guys hammer ferociously.

The studio material contains more solid McGuinn/Levy compositions (“Just a Season” especially), and balances nicely against the live record. The Skip Battin/Kim Fowley songwriting machine that would irreparably mar the next two Byrds albums begins to seep in here, but is held slightly in abeyance by the fact that McGuinn takes the mic, and these actually sound like rock songs and not irritating novelty tunes—though the concluding “Well Come Back Home” drones on twice as long as it should.

That we're pretty far from "Mr. Tambourine Man" is signified by the brief two-minute rendition it gets, squeezed late on side 1--the Byrds could never escape their folk-rock origins, but they race through it to better move on to where they're now at. It's a better place than one would be primed to imagine.

The Byrds, Farther Along (1971)

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.  

The Byrds, Byrdmaniax (1971)

The near-universal consensus is that producer Terry Melcher killed this album by drowning it in sickly sweet strings and horns. Which gives him both too much and too little credit; okay, he lays it on thick, no question, but this was bound for mediocrity no matter who tweaked the knobs. Nothing could polish these tunes into gold, nor does Melcher entirely stifle what is there; McGuinn’s gentle but simple “Kathleen’s Song” was going to be endearing but forgettable whether or not swirling symphonic fills were crammed into its open spaces.

That and the Gene Parsons co-write “Pale Blue” are the fearless leader’s most—only—valuable contributions (the less said about his faltering stab at political commentary, “I Wanna Grow Up To Be a Politician,” the better; on his go-to co-composer Jacques Levy, let even less be said). Team Battin/Fowley can’t compete with even that, turning in more of the lazy pap that marked Battin’s Byrdsian contributions. Clarence White moves behind the mic for a few songs, credibly enough, though surely even the young Jackson Browne had better offerings for him to cover than “Jamaica Say You Will.”

At least they were smart enough to leave off the once-requisite Dylan cover that traded in and simplified the complicated sneer/sorrow combo of “Just Like a Woman” for a more straightforwardly sentimental version that thus missed the point.  Otherwise, all the markings of a slapdash contract filler are here, including the goofy, unappealing cover and title. Ladies and gentlemen, this is what uninspired journeyman rock music feels like.

New Riders of the Purple Sage, Brujo (1974)

When I was a teenager, punk songs about how the only good Deadhead is one that is dead were my idea of clever songwriting. Then I grew up, got more boring and/or less dogmatic, and reluctantly conceded that at least American Beauty and Workingman’s Dead are better than 85% of all punk albums.

Even still, the idea of volitionally listening to a Dead spinoff seemed beyond the pale, but here I am, rocking some New Riders solely on account of Skip Battin’s presence in the band (begun with this album, their sixth). Battin was arguably the third least essential Byrd, after passing bassist John York and mediocre drummer Michael Clarke, but completist tendencies are ugly things.

It’s not bad, the album. The first side, in particular, rides a mellow stoned country groove through a spirited rendition of Bob Dylan’s “You Angel You” (from which Roger McGuinn in 1974 could have taken a cue or two, given his lifeless covers of the era) and the great standard “Ashes of Love,” along with singer John Dawson’s “Instant Armadillo Blues,” whose tale of “going down to Austin” to watch the armadillos could have come straight off the pages of a Tom Robbins novel. Then Battin and songwriting partner Kim Fowley take over side 2 and grind things to a halt with more of the simplistic novelty songs that they had already dumped on several late-period Byrds albums. Considering that the New Riders were cranking out multiple albums per year at this point, I suppose the stakes were low and consequences small. But still, Battin doesn't add much to the group except song-quantity--which probably counted for something given their prolific output. 

The Flying Burrito Bros, Airborne (1976)

The sole point of interest here is the head-scratcher question of how a group of scraggly, skeevy, second-tier country-rockers managed to convince Stevie Wonder to take time off from his astonishing run of 1970s albums to sit in on piano for an inert rendition of his own “She’s a Sailor.” Otherwise, it’s modest, unremarkable stuff through and through. The Byrds presence has doubled from the last LP; Gene Parsons is now joined by Skip Battin, meaning the Burrito Bros have now perversely replicated the earlier band’s personnel shifts of the last decade, with the Hillman/Gram Parsons/Clarke lineup giving way to the late-Byrds rhythm section—and the accompanying decline in quality. I suspect this also speaks to the insularity of the mid-decade country-rock scene; apparently Richie Furay was busy this year. But it’s all harmless enough, and they seem to be having fun, so it’s as difficult to resent this as it is to remember it ten minutes later.

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.