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Rating:
I can't bring myself to completely dismiss this album, which many reject and just as many, perhaps because more from the heart and less from the brain, praise. I will nevertheless give Roger what is Roger's and allow myself to point out that the live album, despite being contradictory in some of its peculiarities, showcases a line-up of a decidedly high level.
Regarding the live performance, then, between warhorses, covers not released in official works, absolute unreleased tracks, there's a feeling of being taken aback. Apart from "Eight Miles High", there is not a single track in the setlist attributable to other former members of the Byrds, except for Chris Hillman, co-author along with McGuinn of "So You Want To Be A Rock & Roll Star". It's as if McGuinn wanted to erase the past (or were there already initial lawsuits and bans underway?). So I listen to this disc-one all live and I feel that the warhorse is accelerated by such a rhythmic section that it seems like pure bluegrass. In "Mr. Tambourine Man" there are decidedly invigorating but unfortunate guitar inserts. In "Mr. Spaceman," then, the rhythmic section seems more like rockabilly than bluegrass. The feeling is that the band is split in two: on one side, the melody, McGuinn, his voice, and his twelve-string always faithful to itself; on the other side, the driving country rock, bluegrass rock, rockabilly rhythm. In the middle, there is Clarence White on lead guitar, who almost doesn't know what to do. Emblematic "So You Want To Be A Rock & Roll Star", in which White alternates hard strumming with country rock phrases between one verse and another, all over a beat shot to a thousand, thus making the song a beat over an Appalachian quadrille.
Live, the folk rock is more acoustic, the country rock is more rock, the early successes, that sort of "beatfolkrock," have become jagged chimeras, while the psychedelia of "Eight Miles High" has even become progressive rock, and with splendid results, with a suite of a quarter hour and more.
I listen to disc-one and thus don't know what style the Byrds will follow after the live. Prog? Hard rock like in "Lover Of The Bayou"? Crossover of everything with everything? I do know, however, that this "(Untitled)" was meant to be emblematic called "Phoenix," or even more daringly "The Byrds' First Album." So the change is there, it must be there.
And instead, as was for "Dr. Byrds & Mr. Hyde," which in itself is not a compliment, this studio disc is unoriginal and almost split in half. On one side the folk rock, even in studio rendered acoustic, I would say almost semiplugged, result of McGuinn's compositions - together with theater director Jacques Levy - for the improbable "Gene Tryp," a never completed musical version, in American root rock sauce, of Ibsen and Grieg's Peer Gynt. The other half of the tracks is represented by the country rock of Skip Battin, the band's new bassist, who avails himself of the strong friendship and collaboration of the crazy Kim Fowley, who in those days - which must have been eight or ten at most - was tripped up on country rock.
Roger's songs travel under the banner of the purest Byrdsian tradition, amidst a thousand chimes, this time accompanied by much acoustic guitar and sometimes by some piano notes. The matrix, however, remains undeniably the same as always. Very enjoyable "Chestnut Mare," classic McGuinn, and "All The Things," while the pattern of "Just A Season", to Byrdmanaic ears like mine, sounds a bit hackneyed.
On the inevitable cover front, "Truck Stop Girl" by the rock&roll (and country) band Little Feat is simply autumnal, semi-nostalgic, an absolute pleasure, while "Take A Whiff On Me," a success of the folk&blues super-crooner of color Lead Belly, is nothing special in the end.
On the country front, Battin collaborates with drummer Gene Parsons for "Yesterday's Train" and relies on Fowley in the perfectly country "You All Look Alike". The result is almost dignified yet a bit cold, perhaps too academic, holistic. Together with Fowley and McGuinn at the same time, he presents the super-crazy mid-tempo rock "Hungry Planet", really a successful episode, then closing in solitude with an accomplished, shouted and lashing folk, titled "Welcome Back Home."
The almost totality of expectations generated by listening to the live album is thus unfulfilled in the studio product. There's no prog, no hard and pure rock, the beat-folk of bygone times does not contaminate with anything and is limited to becoming more acoustic, more folk and that's it. The country pieces are a bit too aligned and covered, though very good.
A good but timid album, for a band that has almost always had the courage to dare, to renew, up to presenting live setlists so heterogeneous as to leave one puzzled as I am left with that offered in this "(Untitled)".
An untitled album: always better than one too pretentious.
Tracklist Lyrics and Videos
01 Lover of the Bayou (03:39)
(Roger McGuinn and Jacques Levy)
Catfish pie in a gris-gris bag
I'm the lover of the bayou
Mark your doorstep with a half-wet rag
I'm the lover of the bayou
Raised and swam with the crocodile
Snacked-eye taught me the moyo style
Sucked and weaned on chicken bile
I'm the lover of the bayou Yeah!
Instrumental (Electric Guitar)
Well, I learned the key to the master lock
I learned to float in the water clock
I learned to capture the lightnin' shock
I'm the lover of the bayou
And I've got cats and teeth and hair for sale
I'm the lover of the bayou
Baron Samedi is on your tail
I'm the lover of the bayou
I cooked the bat in the gumbo pan
Drank the blood from a rusty can
Turned me into the hunger man
I'm the lover of the bayou Yeah!
© BMI
02 Positively 4th Street (03:03)
You got a lotta nerve
To say you are my friend
When I was down
You just stood there grinning
You got a lotta nerve
To say you gota helping hand to lend
You just want to be on
The side that's winning
You say I let you down
You know it's not like that
If you're so hurt
Why then don't you show it
You say you lost your faith
But that's not where it's at
You had no faith to lose
And you know it
I know the reason
That you talk behind my back
I used to be among the crowd
You're in with
Do you take me for such a fool
To think I'd make contact
With the one who tries to hide
What he don't know to begin with
You see me on the street
You always act surprised
You say, "How are you?" "Good luck"
But you don't mean it
When you know as well as me
You'd rather see me paralyzed
Why don't you just come out once
And scream it
No, I do not feel that good
When I see the heartbreaks you embrace
If I was a master thief
Perhaps I'd rob them
And now I know you're dissatisfied
With your position and your place
Don't you understand
It's not my problem
I wish that for just one time
You could stand inside my shoes
And just for that one moment
I could be you
Yes, I wish that for just one time
You could stand inside my shoes
You'd know what a drag it is
To see you
04 So You Want to Be a Rock 'n' Roll Star (02:38)
So you want to be a rock and roll star?
Then listen now to what I say.
Just get an electric guitar
Then take some time
And learn how to play.
And with your hair swung right,
And your pants too tight
It's gonna be all right.
Then it's time to go downtown
Where the agent man won't let you down.
Sell your soul to the company
Who are waiting there to sell plastic ware.
And in a week or two
If you make the charts
The girls'll tear you apart.
The price you paid for your riches and fame,
Was it all a strange game?
You're a little insane.
The money, the fame, and the public acclaim,
Don't forget who you are,
You're a rock and roll star.
05 Mr. Tambourine Man (02:14)
Hey mister tambourine man, play a song for me
I'm not sleepy and there ain't no place I'm going to
Hey mister tambourine man, play a song for me
In the jingle jangle morning I'll come followin' you
Take me for a trip upon your magic swirlin' ship
All my senses have been stripped
And my hands can't feel to grip
And my toes too numb to step
Wait only for my boot heels to be wanderin'
I'm ready to go anywhere, I'm ready for to fade
Unto my own parade
Cast your dancing spell my way
I promise to go under it
Hey mister tambourine man, play a song for me
I'm not sleepy and there ain't no place I'm going to
Hey mister tambourine man, play a song for me
In the jingle jangle morning I'll come followin' you
07 Eight Miles High (16:07)
Eight miles high and when you touch down
You'll find that it's stranger than known
Signs in the street that say where you're going
Are somewhere just being their own
Nowhere is there warmth to be found
among those afraid of losing their ground
Rain gray town known for its sound
In places small faces unbound
Round the squares huddled in storms
Some laughing some just shapeless forms
Sidewalk scenes and black limousines
Some living some standing alone
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