Fever Pitch (1997)

 

"And when your pants are tight . . . "

 

28/50

The Byrd Who Flew Alone: The Triumphs and Tragedy of Gene Clark (2013)

 

The shit I post on Facebook . . . musical edition (Day 2)

Day 2 of my task, to choose 10 albums that greatly influenced my taste in music. One album per day for ten consecutive days. No explanations, no reviews, just album covers. Every day I will ask someone else to do the same... today I nominate RW Thank you for nominating me MR . . . 

"No explanations, no reviews, just album covers . .  ."

Total bullshit, of course. What hides behind what is possibly the crappiest album cover in the history of music is an absolutely wonderful compilation, and if you don't fall in love with The Byrds after listening to it, someone supply me with your name and address and I will forward on your death certificate. (Poor taste in times like these? Of course.)

Bought it on cassette in Hemel back in 88 or 89, and I played it to death when I first went to University. So many great tracks on there that I refuse to single any of them out. Being an old geezer, I can't remember if I bought this or Johnny Rogan's book on The Byrds, 'Timeless Flight' (bought in a bookshop on my one trip to Aylesbury) first. It must have been this compilation.

Check it out, blogging bots.

Round 19: Going way back

Darts Thrown: January 21/22 2019

Blog Written: May 22nd 2019

Highest Score: 140

Lowest Score: 3

Sixties: 20
100+: 2

Blogger's Note: Written in haste, so there will be spelling mistakes and slapdash grammar.

Look at the date this blog was written. A backlog, people. No specially selected book, as a backdrop with the piss-poor excuses for why I haven't read it. Just a the facts, mam. I have a lot of these to steam through. Maybe I'll provide the colour commentary once they are all on the blog.

. . .  And you just know that I will have mislaid at least one sheet.

But I will use the this rush through as a cheap excuse to post music videos from YouTube. Why not? I need a soundtrack whilst I do this. Next up is The Byrds performing the Goffin/King classic, 'Goin' Back'. Some people insist that Dusty Springfield's version is better but I can't see it myself. (And I did give it a listen.).

According to the wiki page for the song, the Byrds recording song actually created a rift between David Crosby and the rest of the band, which is a shame 'cos that rift resulted in the classic Byrds line up parting ways. Still one of my favourite bands from the 60s, up there with The Kinks and The Beatles:

The Notorious Byrd Brothers by Ric Menck (Continuum Books 2007)

I'm not sure of the exact reason Gary Usher chose "Artificial Energy" as the first track on The Notorious Byrd Brothers, but it sure sounds like that's exactly where it belongs. A few swift cracks of the snare drum and the arrangement instantly springs to life. It feels as if the band are so charged up they can hardly wait to count the song off and go. The instrumental approach is hard and aggressive, and stylistically it relates to the recently released "Lady Friend" in that a horn section is featured. But while "Lady Friend" comes off sounding all strident and regal, "Artificial Energy" has a darker edge. This is mostly due to the song's lyrical imagery, which deals with the horrors of amphetamine use. Strangely, whereas their 1966 single "Eight Miles High" was banned because it supposedly contained overt drug references, no one batted an eyelash when the Byrds actually did write an honest-to-God drug song.

In "Artificial Energy" the song's protagonist takes his "ticket to ride" (okay, there's a drug reference and a Beatles reference all rolled into one), and sits alone waiting for it to take effect. Slowly he feels an "artificial energy" welling up inside, but as the drug takes hold something horrible happens. Instead of achieving some kind of enlightenment, our hero ends up losing control and, in the song's stark final imagery, kills a homosexual and winds up being thrown in jail.

Old NME quote of the day

The Byrds . . . a Postcard Records connection . . . pop cynicism . . . the nugget compilations (which I haven't listened to in the longest time) . . . and 1981, which is still my favourite year for pop music . . . this quote has everything for a Monday morning:

“We were all wound up in the Rough Trade Conditioning Syndrome, whereby you’re told that everyone on Rough Trade is ethically sound and morally very, very good; and that the people in the big corporations are evil ogres, bureaucrats and capitalists, bourgeois pigs. But once you meet those people you realize that they’re exactly the same as the people at Rough Trade—it’s just that their Kickers are newer… It’s stupid to stick to the sort of independent ideas that we had about 18 months ago. We can’t do it ourselves. I want to be able to sit back and say, well here’s 40 percent of a hit record – a decent song—and have someone else arrange it, produce it, get it played… That way you end up with ‘Mr Tambourine Man’. Only one Byrd actually played on it, but so what? It still stands up today as a great record. And if The Byrds had played on the single the way it had been written, then it would probably just have ended up as a track on the Nuggets album.” Alan Horne (NME, November 1981)

From Simon Reynolds Rip It Up and Start Again: The Footnotes blog. Hat tip to Brian over at the Like Punk Never Happened blog.