An iconic album I just don't get

Maybe it is just not your cup of tea.

Funny a question often asked about your favourite albums!   

What mystifies me more is that the reissue has all these extra songs like Reputation, Pretty Polly and Lazy Days which are quite amazing performances, but they left them off the original vinyl elpee. I love the music of the Byrds and I like Gram Parsons and they could obviously make great music together, but .... perhaps as Matt says, the original album just isn't my cup of tea. 

A review starts After Chris Hillman dragged new friend Gram Parsons into the Byrds, they made an album as close to a country masterpiece as a rock act could ever make. Well with those ingredients I should love this record and I do like the reissue from the first bonus track to the end (which is an album in its own right). 

BigH - good to have you back on the forum. 

All the best, Guy

Good morning

I think it is revered through hindsight as it was a groundbreaking new style of music ie "country-rock" at a time when the heavy metal beasty was on the rise.

 As the genre of what is now called Americana or alt-country is very much in the mainstream, the influence of The Byrds, and this album in particular, is often cited by the bands. There is also of course, the cult of GP to add weight to The Byrds status.

Still an excellent album but much like  "Forever Changes" (which would be in my Desert Island Box") and many other albums,  it has had its reputation enhanced over the years by people discovering the contents for the first time rather than being universally praised upon release.

Have to agree with GF here.  I too have never been able to get into Sweetheart of The Rodeo, despite loving all of the earlier Byrds albums (particularly Younger Than Yesterday and The Notorious Byrd Brothers) and even some of the later stuff.  Somehow this album always gets left on the shelf.  Perhaps I need to take it with me as the only CD on a long car journey.  Trouble is, I'll probably just end up listening to Radio 4...

Richard Dane, you have no soul!

(I never thought that I'd say that.) 

Au contraire Graham.  Some might argue I have too much.  Shelves of it, in fact...

GF, as you probably know, Gram Parsons featured as a member of The Byrds on this album only. Brought in as a sideman/replacement, he became very much the prime mover in the studio sessions. When McGuinn and Hillman (who had been running the group until then) realized what was happening, they panicked and re-recorded their own lead vocals over those made by Parsons, even on some of the songs that he'd written. At the time, they cited "legal difficulties" in having Parsons singing lead vocals, but Parsons wasn't impressed and left shortly afterwards.

I suggest that one reason that the extras on the reissue are so impressive is that you have the chance to hear more of Gram Parsons, singing his own songs and covers.

I've always loved 'Sweetheart..' (particularly 'You Ain't Going Nowhere' and 'Hickory Wind'), but these outtakes show that the original release could have been spectacularly better.  

Thanks Graham - I didn't know about the re-recording, but it explains why I like the extras more than the original (official) release.  

Hi Richard - have a listen to the "Legacy" edition in your car if you can - the extras are certainly worth it in my view. Usually extras don't impress, but this is a definite exception. 

All the best, Guy

Only listened to the vinyl.  I bought all the reissues with extras on CD but am ashamed to say Sweetheart remains, as yet, unplayed.  I shall dig it out, unwrap it and give it go.

Funny someone should mention "Forever Changes" in a thread about albums one doesn't "get". I have a copy of FC which I play every now again and think. "Well, it's pleasant but hardly seems earthshattering."

I suspect there are lots of similar albums that affect folks in different ways.

steve

Guy,

I had the original vinyl album in my original vinyl collection

It never got much play.The others got loads.

I picked up a good copy from a charity shop a couple of years ago, and after a clean on the moth i played both sides.

Its been in the rack ever since.

I am not a big lover of Gram Parsons style of music.

I do get what he was about at the time though,He wrote some good songs.

Another  that died much to soon.

Stu

I have to admit Forever Changes is one of my favourite albums and I would always put it my list of essential recordings. I think it was Arthur Lee at his brilliant best. I like it because it is understated and has some very clever moments without ever becoming showy. Basically, it is collection of great songs with a twist, nicely performed. I think I had to hear three or five times for it to click when I heard it back in formative years. However, I can understand why you feel as you do about it, 

An album I would describe as pleasant, but not earth shattering is Pet Sounds and the much vaunted unreleased item that should have followed it Smile, | have both these records: the original Smile rather than the recent recording. As I say I find Pet Sounds enjoyable and the track God Only Knows remarkable, but that apart I would not call it essential. I find Smile better, but some of it is bit too clever; Do You Like Worms? What's that all about? Lovely harpsichord sound though. Smile often sounds like a collection of nice sounds interspersed with weird ones rather than a collection of songs: perhaps that is what Brian intended. In no way do I dislike either album, but I can't really see either as iconic. Yet the consensus is they are.   

I still remain totally puzzled by Radiohead, but then I'm getting on in years, so perhaps that is not so surprising. They do seem to figure consistently in those greatest of all time lists. 

I just listened for a few seconds to this "great album". The fact that you do not get this is indeed a very good sign. Maybe it will take time, but I think you are on your way to a full recovery.
We wish you well in the meantime.

Cheers for the heads up Guy, your choice of difficult album is getting me through the end of long shift

Chris

GF, it seems to me that we have quite similar tastes, and yet the Radiohead thing is where our tastes diverge; Admittedly I'm not such a big fan of the earlier releases (although there were moments of brilliance on The Bends and OK Computer) but by the time Kid A and Amnesiac came on the scene I was a total convert.  In Rainbows is in my view a masterpiece, especially the full two disc release.  In some respects the second disc is stronger than the main release, although less of a "whole" if you get my meaning.

Get you on Pet Sounds; Without God Only Knows it would be only so-so.  Unlike my favourite BB album, Surf's Up, where although the title track is truly sublime, the rest, while quirky, is still so very strong.

Apparently there are people who don't like Brain Salad Surgery!  

More fool them.

The album's pretty good too...

steve

+1 Steve. 

BSS is a wonderful record - loved it from the first time I heard it; it was a record I waited for in great expectation and I was not disappointed. I remember queuing up at my local record emporium to get my copy after having heard the NME flexidisk. I was first in the queue for for Tarkus, Trilogy and Pictures as well, I think I was a bit further back for Works. Except for the first album, which was out for around a month before I grabbed a copy, I've bought every ELP album on the day of its release.  

BigH, I know you are winding me up; there aren't really people on this earth who don't think BSS is a landmark recording; everybody loves ELP, even Johnny Rotten said he liked Sir Keith. BSS is an iconic album that I really do get. 

Next you'll be saying there is a forum member who doesn't like Eldorado. 

I still have the free flexidisc.

I bought one of the new vinyl pressings a couple of months back.

I think my original SH copy sounds better though.

Tarkus will always be my fave.

I also didnt get OK computer?

How it got voted the best album ever made is beyond me.

In rainbows took alot of plays to grow on me.

I love all the ELO albums.

I never got CCR and still dont.

Stu

"I also didnt get OK computer?

How it got voted the best album ever made is beyond me."

Totally agree Stu.

steve

+1

I do like ELO and CCR though. 

I tend to see CCR as a singles band really. But 'Willie and the Poor Boys' with the sublime 'Down on the Corner' works for me everytime.

I am always bemused by the records that get DCC or MFSL (etc) treatment. I always used to assume that somebody was making a very special record more special............................and then I see which ones someone obviously thought was special!!

Back to my 'In a Silent Way'..........................I know, it's just me

atb

james