The Byrds, Dr. Byrds and Mr. Hyde (1969)

Clarence White is here, and he ain’t yer Sweetheart: he rings this LP in with some crashing chords that bring “This Wheel’s on Fire” closer to Blue Cheer than Gram Parsons. Later, fellow Byrd-n00b Gene Parsons adds such a cavernous drum sound to “Child of the Universe” that one might mistake it for a guest appearance from John Bonham. This is what happens when you repopulate a rock band in 1969, apparently. 

Dr. Byrds and Mr. Hyde is an odd, deeply uneven LP, lost in the shadows of 1968’s moment in the sun, and their biggest commercial dud, according to David Fricke’s reissue liner notes (which strive nobly, if futilely, to reclaim it as "the Great Forgotten Byrds Album"--it is one of those things, but not both). I’ve been listening to it every other year or so for a decade, and have only just begun to appreciate it, so I guess it’s what you’d call a grower. Still, it has its moments: “Old Blue” proves you can’t go wrong singing about a favorite dog, and “Bad Night at the Whiskey” is a great title for an anomalous outlier at the rockier end of the Byrds spectrum. There’s some dumb, lazy political commentary in “King Apathy III” and “Drug Store Truck Drivin’ Man” (a McGuinn/Gram Parsons co-write that the latter would also play, and also fail to bring to life), and I’m not sure why White and the new Parsons imported some of their Nashville West jamming, but all the confusing twists and turns do ultimately make for an unpredictable, if muddled, one-off experiment. Clunky as the title is, it captures the schizoid feel of this one. And that title-font, wow. 

Gram Parsons and the Fallen Angels, Live 1973 (1982)

Tuesday afternoon in Long Island: Gram Parsons and crew show up at the local radio station, play a live set, then head on to Philly. Probably nobody involved would have ever thought of it again, but a decade later some suit sees green, and presto: posthumous live album. Nothing here supersedes LP versions, though a sparse “Love Hurts” lets the Gram-and-Emmy duet vocals run the show, without the distraction of lead guitarist Jock Bartley, building some cred as a Fallen Angel before shaking it for soft-rock lucre in Firefall (and thus constituting one more node in the dense web of Byrdsian connections of 70s rock). All too often, Bartley drenches songs in what wankers used to call “hot licks,” but the more restrained takes, such as “The New Soft Shoe,” can be lovely. Parsons’s demeanor ranges from diffident to dickish in his banter, and he doesn’t seem particularly enthused to be there; the tired toursong “Six Days on the Road”—which the Parsonsless Burrito Brothers were also playing at the time—might be the truest thing here.

So, hardly revelatory, but no album with Emmylou Harris has ever been less than listenable.

Chris Hillman, Like a Hurricane (1998)

As mushy old-man country-rock of the late 90s goes, the closing track here, “Heaven’s Lullaby,” isn’t bad—not quite a melody for the ages, but it would have been a more deserving hit than, say, that crapulent “Butterfly Kisses” song. The rest of the album suffers from the same blandness as most Hillman solo LPs—apparently he really needs a band around him to shake him from his complacency. Still, it’s never less than pleasant, and the old Searchers song “When You Walk in the Room,” which the Byrds picked up from them three decades earlier while gigging together, retains power-pop kick even as midtempo country. Hillman frequently sounds treacly and churlish—“Sooner or Later” opens by chiding a woman for wasting money “buying foolish things,” gah—but the most obnoxious thing here is the title. I know titles can’t be copyrighted, yada yada yada, but come on man, I think you might be familiar with an obscure Canadian recording artist called Neil Young? Not only is your song vastly inferior to his, but the central simile isn’t even developed in any extended way that makes it crucial. Couldn’t you just call it “Like a Tornado” instead? Like a Whipping Wind? This always annoys me, though I suppose it's better than that classic track “Wish You Were Here,” by those gods of hubris, Incubus.

Manassas, Down the Road (1973)

Several months ago, the first Manassas album pulled off the surprising feat of forcing me to say nice things about Prig of Prigs Stephen Stills. So I approached the followup with trepidation: must I set aside my disdain yet again? I prefer to wallow in scorn. 

Well, hmm: it’s not bad. Down the Road has none of the epic sweep of the debut double-LP, coming in at a concise half-hour. The first side has some strong moments; opener “Isn’t It About Time” comes vaguely close to incisive social commentary, while a rare Chris Hillman composition, “Lies,” approximates rocking. While the second side begins to blur together, Stills is still at his best when drowned out by his large, dexterous band, and there’s an ambitious multiculturalism here, with some lyrics in Spanish (including all of “Pensamiento”). As always, Stills has little to say but a big desire to say it, though the ego sprawl is held in check by a rhythm section that knows how to assert itseslf, and it’s over before it can grate. Dig the cover art, too (though of course Stills poses himself like the lord of the table). 

Rice, Rice, Hillman & Pedersen, Running Wild (2001)

Louvin Brothers citation notwithstanding, that title wildly overstates the case; Sitting Mild comes closer to the condition of these four gents (longtime friends who first met in 1963, as Geoffrey Himes’s helpful liner notes observe), who sound as if they’re chilling on a porch together having an off-the-cuff hootenanny. I mean that as praise, though—they’re all pros, who have eased into a relaxed warmth that suffuses the whole album. Songs come and go, but the organic vibe stays cohesive, with the one glaring exception of Larry Rice’s cringe-inducing, treacly “The Mystery That Won’t Go Away” (if you’re going to sing a godawful song about JonBenét Ramsey, maybe try to at least pronounce her name right?). Hillman sings lead on about half the tracks, with the others spread around; there’s not a ton of original songwriting here, with covers ranging from the Beatles to the Louvins to Buck Owens to Hillman’s old bandmate Stephen Stills (a terrible songwriter, but nicely redeemed through performance alone on “4 + 20”), but Hillman’s “San Antone” kicks things off a strong Desert Rose Band note. 

Pretty sure anyone who listens to this knows exactly what they're in for; there's something comforting in that, though at times you almost wish for some random left-field radio-bait cameo from, say, Dave Grohl or Christina Aguilera just to throw a curveball into the mix. 

The Byrds, Preflyte (1969)

I know their artistic ambitions aspired to ever loftier terrain, but I like the Byrds* as a simple pop band, which is exactly what Preflyte delivers. Recorded in 1964, when they were just five cute, goofy young men posing on the back cover with rifles (Gene Clark, unarmed and pensive, hides behind a scrawny tree, naturally), but leaked only in '69, this delivers eleven songs in 25 minutes, only one topping 2:30, and then by a mere second. Some are dry runs for album tracks, and none are holy grails of lost song, but “You Showed Me” reclaims a McGuinn/Clark composition from its better-known Turtles hit, and Gene Clark has never rocked as unselfconsciously as he does on “You Movin’,” surely the most Beatles-dance-party song he ever wrote. I can imagine the older, wiser, sadder Clark sneering at it, but for two shouted, stomping minutes, it’s the best thing in the world.

* I only just noticed that the only place the Byrds are actually named on this LP is in the liner notes--not on the cover, side, or record itself. So technically it should be credited to Jim McGuinn, Gene Clark, David Crosby, Chris Hillman, and Michael Clarke--but to hell with that. 

The Flying Burrito Bros, Last of the Red Hot Burritos (1972)

Nobody’s ever going to mistake Chris Hillman for a charismatic frontman, but with Gram Parsons off en route to an early death and Rick Roberts departed for more of a slow artistic death in Firefall (after a strange alternate/parallel-Burrito-Bros tour, it seems), it fell on Hillman to steer the good ship Burrito. That he did so by charting course for bluegrass instrumentals halfway through side 1 of this live LP probably helped seal the commercial fate of the record, though it does have a loopy integrity (unlike the disingenuous liner notes, which begin with a meaty Parsons interview, his absence from the album be damned).

Nothing here catches fire—lord knows this “Hot Burrito #2” ain’t red hot at all—but Hillman gives “Six Days on the Road” a solid journeyman go, and it’s got that contract-filler brevity that keeps things from overstaying their welcome. Still, a pretty inauspicious way for the last lingering vestiges of the original FBB lineup to say goodbye and clear the decks for the hacks who replaced them.