So that leaves ten previously unreleased tracks, and while they're not all good, enough of them are to show that the band had a good reserve of material beyond that which made their terrific debut (in other words, the relative shortness of MTM wasn't just because they had no other good songs). The big lost highlight is the opening "Tomorrow is a Long Ways Away" (which also closes the album, with the latter an all-acoustic version), a classic example of the band's sound that, at the very least, could have knocked Turn! Turn! Turn! up a notch in my eyes. The crooning mid-section in the acoustic version is something I could live without, but hey, it's not like that's the version I'd put on my imaginary Byrds best-of.

As for the other tracks, the best of them tend to sound just about finished, but they also tend to sound a little different from the usual Byrds sound, which probably explains as well as anything why they never made it to official release. Examples of good "almost Byrds but not quite" songs are "The Reason Why" (which has the harmonies and instrumentation in place, but almost seems too happy to be 'real' Byrds), "You Movin'" (quality generic early 60's rock) and "You Showed Me" (which starts with the main melody line of Dylan's "I Don't Believe You," but then turns into a good regular Brit-pop song). Yay for reviewing outtakes, which basically dictates a namecheck review like that. Ugh.

Anyway, there's also a few lame tracks that show directions the band could have taken if they hadn't decided to be good, and they really only interest me from that perspective. In particular, "Boston" is mediocre guitar-rock, "The Only Girl I Adore" is ultra-mediocre generic late-50's bubble-gum, and "The Airport Song" introduces the world to David Crosby's "bachelor pad" music (when Mark Prindle is right, he's right). Meh.

Taking all these and a couple of tracks I didn't mention, this ends up coming out to a pretty enjoyable 38:10 (sheesh, even their CD-age outtake collections were short!), and one I happily grant a solid 9. I won't regularly pull this out in favor of MTM, but it'll get played enough in my lifetime, for sure.

As with most albums of the day, the tracklisting consists of about half originals and half covers, and while the covers are what get the album virtually all of its fame, the originals should most definitely not be dismissed too quickly. I get the feeling while listening to these that, like probably most bands of the day, Clark had spent hours upon hours listening to Beatles albums (while McGuinn was playing Dylan non-stop, of course) in trying to figure out how to write good songs for the band's first recordings. This shouldn't be taken as an insult, btw - everybody may have been ripping off the Beatles style to some degree in those days, but Clark shows some real legitimate talent in the way he manages to take the essence of the Beatles songwriting and churn out a small handful of excellent originals for this album. I've always liked "I'll Feel a Whole Better" since I first heard it, and the liner notes make a good point of one of the reasons for this when it points out the subtle emotional ambiguity contained when the band sings, "I'll probably feel a whole lot better when you're gone ..." - it's standard early 60's lyrical fare at first glance, but a little more upon further examination. Even better for me, though, is "It's No Use," where the main guitar line sounds like evil surf music to me and the whole friggin' vocal melody has leeched its low-key pissitude solidly to my brain, never to let go.

The other originals aren't as striking, but definitely not bad. I guess the main thing that lets songs like "You Won't Have to Cry" or "Here Without You" (or "I Knew I'd Want You," for that matter) down for me here is the relative lack of energy - the hypnotic vocal harmonies are definitely the main focus of these tracks, but the way they're presented in these tracks makes them so soothing that they unwittingly start to make me want to doze a bit. Please don't mistake me, I'm trying to say that in the nicest way possible - I like these songs, but the sound is almost too perfect, and while their effect would be to make me doze off with a smile on my face, dozing is still dozing. Yet again, though, please don't think I'm trying to say these originals suck, because that is definitely not what I'm trying to say - to the contraire, these originals betray plenty of songwriting talent within the band, just not necessarily presented in the ideal way all the time.

When all is said and done, though, it's not the originals people care about on this album. No, what truly made the group famous was the four Dylan covers on this album, three from Another Side of Bob Dylan and the most famous, the title track, from Bringing it All Back Home. Only one of these improves on the original in my opinion ("Spanish Harlem Incident," with the vocals taking better advantage of the melody), but like I said, that's mostly because the originals were so amazing in the first place, and not a slight against these covers. They all follow the same formula - Dylan's lyrics and vocal melody + 12-string jangle + BOW DOWN AND WORSHIP vocal harmonies - but it's a great formula here, and all four covers rule mightily. I'm assuming you've heard the heavenly title track, but it is possible that you haven't heard the others. Like, say, the terrific rearrangement of "All I Want to Do" into a glorious pop song with a massively clever twist, or "Chimes of Freedom" which manages to retain at least a good portion of the majesty of the original while making it more "palatable" for the general public.

The other covers are less notorious, but still quite good. "Bells of Rhymney" is a cover of a Pete Seeger composition, and while of course the lyrics aren't as good as those from Dylan, the vocal performance is as great as that on any of the Dylan covers, and besides, I really really like the 12-string solo in the middle for whatever reason. "Don't Doubt Yourself Babe" is slightly throwaway, but then it's all redeemed with the closing "We'll Meet Again," which for whatever reason I like much more when the Byrds are singing it than when Vera Lynn sings it (if you've never heard the original, go rent yourself Dr. Strangelove and watch to the very end), and is a perfect cozy sendoff of the later "Good Night" variety.

So there's your massively influential debut album. It can get a little boring as the sonic formula gets repeated into the ground, but the songs are mostly terrific, and that's enough for me. And besides, the reissue has a bunch of bonus tracks, which has a couple of rare duds but also a couple of alternate versions that aren't so different from what we heard already, so if you liked "It's No Use" as much as I did, you'll be pleased as punch to hear it again. Or something.

The album isn't completely devoid of greatness, of course. EVERYBODY in this world has heard their cover of "Turn! Turn! Turn!," which definitely deserves all of the massive airplay and accolades it's gotten over the years, so that's one positive. And like most Byrds fans, I'm quite fond of "The World Turns All Around Her," the one point on the album where I feel the band really reaches beyond the debut in terms of quality. The main riff is this great simple-yet-anthemic thing, the vocal melody is pure genius, and the harmonies ... wow. I mean, the harmonies are always great with these guys, but for whatever reason, the structuring of the parts gets me even more than usual here.

But the rest is not so great. Oh, sonically it's just fine for those who like this sound (which I do), but I'm very hardpressed to pick anything out of my memories that really jumped out and distinguished itself in a positive way. "Lay Down Your Weary Tune" is an interesting cover that has the advantage of coming early in the album, before I really start falling asleep, and "He Was a Friend of Mine" is a decent enough cover that's helped out by the good associations in my mind with it from Dylan's version on The Bootleg Series. Oh, ok, I can also note their amusing (but not particularly entertaining) ending cover of "Oh Susannah," and the cover of "A Satisfied Mind" that probably seems a lot better because of its contrast with the only other version of the tune I've heard, as the opening track of Dylan's Saved (ugh).

But that's all I can think of in terms of song-specific positives. Their cover of "The Times They Are A'Changin'" is just about the very definition of needless throwaway filler - the cover adds NOTHING positive to the original, the vocal arrangement is clumsy in terms of where they stick the harmonies in relation to the places where power was in the original, and in short it's the first time where I'm really and truly offended by one of their covers (and I was never a huge fan of the track to begin with). As for everything else, including the other originals ... nothing. I can't remember a single thing. All of them are great soundwise, and all of them stink as individual tracks.

So anyway, unless you're a huge fan of the band's sound as opposed to the band's good songs, I can't really see where anybody could find this superior to the debut. Even the bonus tracks are less interesting than before, except for a really really nice cover of Dylan's "It's All Over Now, Baby Blue." Ah well.

The most famous song on the album, of course, is Clark's lone contribution (at least, in terms of the melody and lyrics), "Eight Miles High." Predictably, many people assumed that because it included the word "high" in it, it must have obviously been about drugs, but it actually deals with Clark's fear of flying and the culture shock the band encountered during their first trip to London. On the other hand, though, it's not terribly difficult for me to see how people would have failed to grasp that when listening to this, if only because McGuinn's Coltrane-inspired solos are so paranoid that they manage to depict that particular side of narcotics use far better than the band probably ever intended. After all, it definitely says something that those solos (more than any other aspect of the songs) accidentally created one of the major touchstones of early psychedelia. Of course, the solos aren't the only great aspect of the song; the rhythm guitar has a much "darker" feel and sound than anything the Byrds had yet done, and the decision to mix the bass as high as it is certainly lends additional interesting character to the track.

That said, as great as the track is, I feel that it's far superceded by the RCA Studios version, obligingly included on my version as a bonus track. David Crosby has gone on record as saying he prefers this version, and I definitely must concur - the right parts are stretched out just a bit further, the guitar parts manage to raise the tension more than before, the harmonies are eerier ... just perfect.

Unlike what some might have you believe, though, the album is far more than just "Eight Miles High" and a bunch of lesser tracks, just as the debut was more than just the title track and a bunch of lesser tracks. As banal as the lyrics of the opening title track might be, I can't come within a mile of making a similar claim for the swaying, naturally anthemic melody. There's a little less jangle here than on the title tracks of the last couple of albums, and the instrumental parts seem slightly less immediately logical than before, but the beautiful vocals are as omnipresent as ever, so I'm happy. Also in the anthemic ballad category are three covers (and none of which are Dylan!) that are as beautiful as anything on the past two albums and then some. "John Riley" has its origins in 17th century England of all places, and it's graced with a nice 'rolling' guitar underpinning, some appropriate bits of strings, and of course more perfect harmonies. "Wild Mountain Thyme" is an incredible ode to the beauty of the western US (well, parts of it anyway - I can tell you from driving across the country to get to Berkeley that Wyoming is the state that God forgot to finish), with GREAT orchestration (especially for such an early date as 1966) bringing out the beauty of the standard elements that much more.

The best of these, though, is "I Come and Stand at Every Door," a translation of a Japanese poem set to a traditional melody; at first, I might want to be offended at what seems like an overly purposeful attempt on the part of the song to tug at my heartstrings, what with being about a young child killed at Hiroshima, but I've found that to be more shortsighted than I'd like. For whatever reason, the song really conveys a ghostly, vaguely unsettling and eerie feeling, matching the sad confused innocence of the lyrics and their protagonist, and that's definitely enough for me.

Just as important to this album as the ballads are the up-tempo, poppier tracks, all of which are normal except for the fact that they aren't, if you get me. "Mr. Spaceman"s is one of the great paradoxical tracks I know of, a song with a "down-to-earth" country-style melody that's about flying saucers and has the incredibly catchy chorus, "Hey, Mr. Spaceman! Please take me along, I won't do anything wrong. Hey, Mr. Spaceman! Please take me along for a ride." The following "I See You" was improved when Yes covered it on their debut, but it's still terrific, with what's essentially a standard-style (yet still original) melody altered just a bit here and there with a bit of discordance, particularly in the guitars, while the vocals deliver their incoherent-yet-love-tinged lyrics with aplomb. And finally, while I know that it pales to other covers of around that time, I still can't bring myself to bash the Crosby-sung cover of "Hey Joe," where the frantic 12-string solos over the chugging bassline grab me every single time.

The other tracks aren't as incredible as what I've listed ("What's Happening?!?!" is an ok Crosby raving, "Captain Soul" is a pretty decent blues jam with Hillman at his best), and the closer is kinda lame ("2-4-2 Fox Trot (The Lear Jet Song)"s is just an excuse to use airplane sounds as the main feature of a track), but these are hardly enough to make me dislike the album at all. Any album that has this many cool melodies and cool gimmicks gets a definite thumbs up from me, and I really hope that you can feel the same.

Yup, I really dig the five Hillman numbers on here. The opening "So You Want to be a Rock'n'Roll Star" is one of the best over-the-top satire works I've ever heard in rock music, a solid pop song packed to the brim with purposeful lyrical cliches (it's about the Monkees, after all), topped off with a tape of screaming girls and a totally out-of-place horn section in the background. If you think it's just stupid and corny, well, I weep for the death of irony appreciation amongst my generation. And then there's the next track, "Have You Seen Her Face," where all I can do is tip my cap and stare slack-jawed. How the band managed to put together that perfect guitar sound with that perfect verse melody with those even-more-perfect-than-usual harmonies with that hook in the chorus boggles my mind, but however they did it, I'm not complaining! This is, seriously, a nearly perfect 60's guitar-rock song, the kind that's on a level only exceeded by such even more otherworldly tracks as, say, "Paperback Writer" or "And Your Bird Can Sing."

A few tracks later, though, he almost tops himself with "Thoughts and Words," though much of the credit for the greatness of the song must go to McGuinn and the producer. In addition to the simultaneously upbeat and mournful vocal parts (don't ask how, they just are), as well as a GREAT "cosmic" chorus, there's a perfect addition of backwards guitar solos in much of the second half of the three-minute track. When it's all added up, you have something in the vein of the bizzare pop of stuff like "I See You" from the last album, only druggier and with a better melody, and my unhesitant thumbs-up. In any case, his other two contributions aren't quite the knockouts as are his highlights, but that's only because they're each less than two minutes long. No matter, though, they each have their own enjoyably clever melody twists, and it's not like I'm about to put down enjoyably clever melody twists.

As for the other six tracks, two of them represent a slight throwback to the past, while the other four (two for David, one for Roger, and one shared between them) show the other two guys further cementing their creative niches. The throwbacks are very good, fortunately - "My Back Pages" is by FAR my favorite of the band's Dylan covers, with Roger daring to reach the grandeur of the verse melody without backing vocals in support. As a result, more so than with any other Dylan cover, the band manages to preserve most of the essence of Bob's original while also making it more "listenable," and thus it succeeds marvelously. On the other end of the spectrum, the album closer Why is a remake of the B-side of the "Eight Miles High" single, and while it has a bit less of an edge than the previous version, as it's brisker and less "sludgy," those very features work to its benefit here, and I'm perfectly happy when the album ends on this note.

The most famous of the remaining tracks is the McGuinn/Crosby collaboration "Renaissance Fair," which may seem terribly dated to some but that I enjoy quite a bit. Yes, yes, the lyrics are a massive hippy-dippy fantasy, showing on one level a vision of, well, a Renaissance fair, and on another somebody who's massively stoned into oblivion. But argh, that chorus has a perfect 'fading in and out of a dream' feel, and any song that has that combination of a rolling 12-string line and that riff near the beginning gets a massive pass from me on any other potential faults.

The two Crosby solo cuts each stand out significantly, but for markedly different reasons. "Everybody's Been Burned" is a nearly perfect mournful confessional ballad, one written before the band was even formed, a kind of song intended for "a girl torch singer .... to sing the hell out of that song" (to quote the liner notes). One can bet, though, that when Crosby first wrote it, he wouldn't have thought that it would end up including as lovely a quiet McGuinn solo as it does. On the other hand, the experimental "Mind Gardens" is absolutely awful, and ultimately the deciding factor that keeps me from considering upping the rating to an E. Crosby offers a massively bullshit-filled argument defending it in the liner notes, on the grounds that the only reason people disliked it was that it didn't have rhyme or rhythm. No, David. This argument tries to fall back on an argument of, "If it's avant-garde, it must automatically be good!" and that is NOT an argument I'm about to accept. There's good avant-garde, and there's unlistenable noise. Guess where I classify this.

Aaw, but I don't want to spend excessive time being vitriolic over an album I like as much as this one. Roger's remaining contribution, "CTA 102," is just about the epitome of dated, but I really think one would have to be a cold-hearted cynic to not dig it at least somewhat. I mean, those noises at the end, which are basically aliens commenting in funny alien voices while they listen to a distant recording of the rest of the track, are tremendously amusing to me, while the noises before that part are just as amusing in their quaint attempt to simulate corny sci-fi noises. C'mon, people, there's no point in dismissing something solely on the basis of it having camp value.

In short, this is undoubtedly, for me, the best Byrds album. Creativity + solid songwriting + harmonies of gold = whee!

For starters, the brief explosion of talent Hillman displayed on YtY, while not gone by any means, is much weaker than before; all but one of the songs on here (except the two covers) have at least a co-writing credit from Chris, but none of them come even close to the glorious heights he reached on the last album. Some of them are good, to be sure, but the bursts of perfection are basically gone, never to return. For the most part, most of the duties are shared with McGuinn, but he too was starting to lose his talent. Likewise, Crosby was drifting further and further away from the group into his own little hippified "love rules, livers suck" world, and while he does make some small nice contributions, his impact feels quite perfunctory at this point (it's no wonder he was gone before this album's release).

Anyway, it says something that the best song ("Goin' Back") on here by far is a cover, not by Dylan, but by .. Gerry Goffin and Carole King. Should the name not ring a bell, they were corporate songwriters of the 60's (though definitely not among the worst). Still, great songs are great songs, especially when they feature some of the most beautiful angelic harmonies to ever appear on a Byrds album (which, of course, says a lot) and one of the best mixes of slide guitar, chimes and harpsichord imaginable (now THAT's a combination!). And let's give corporate America some credit, too, for the great lovely melody on which all these trappings are able to delicately grace themselves like flakes of falling snow. The other cover is by the same duo, a country piece called "Wasn't Born to Follow," and while it's not as breathtakingly lovely as its counterpart, it has a decent enough melody to get by, and while the midsection may be a bit too perfunctory nod at their "spacey" legacy of the past two albums, it still doesn't ruin the track.

Otherwise, there's nine originals, and they're ... nice. If I had to play favorites, I'd go with the opening "Artificial Energy" (the band's first song to actually be about drugs), which has a cool brass section to go with the "regular" instrumentation and bizarre harmonies, and the quite lovely "Draft Morning," an anti-war tune that successfully distinguishes itself from most other such songs by focusing more on the dreamy, pro-peace-and-love aspects of the movement than on an attack on the horrors of war. It does have a bunch of gunfire sound effects in the middle, but the sound is set up so that they seem to be in a world outside of the protagonist's, as if to emphasize that this person doesn't really feel a part of the fighting that's going on around him. If I decided to stretch myself a bit more, I guess I'd pick Hillman's "Natural Harmony," whose eerie use of Moog goes well with the vibe of the song, sort of a spiritual communing with the universe around him or whatever.

The rest, though, is nice, but ... just more or less there. McGuinn's closing "Space Odyssey" comes close to being obnoxious, but that's about the only track I dislike on the album. Otherwise, everything is nice and decently enjoyable when on, and totally unnecessary for my life's enjoyment once it's over. Ah well.

So along with Crosby, drummer Michael Clarke decided he'd had enough with the band (or vice verse, whatever), leaving only McGuinn and Hillman as original members. In came some guy on drums and one Gram Parsons to contribute guitars and vocals. Roger had been thinking about doing a double album that would serve as an American music anthology, but I guess Gram talked him out of it and convinced him that if he and the band really wanted to make a big statement, they should make a hardcore country album. So instead of something potentially really interesting, we got this.

I don't have anything in particular against country music, you see. But I definitely do have something against this album's presentation of country music. It really seems to me when listening that the band's only goal was make the album as "generically country" as humanly possible, as if Gram saw this as his one big chance to break country into the rock mainstream and wanted to present the populace with an unadorned, uncut version of the genre. Furthermore, this is at the expense of everything else, including anything to break the monotony of sound, mood and instrumentation.

It's not even a thing of the group writing bad songs for the album - only two of the tracks are originals (both written by Parsons), while the rest are covers. But aside from the TERRIFIC Dylan covers that bookend the album ("You Ain't Going Nowhere" beginning, "Nothing was Delivered" ending, both from The Basement Tapes, where the originals never really caught my ear), filled with great melodies and resonance and mood changes and all that, the song selection here is just awful. The songs are so unbelievably unentertaining and cliched that they almost end up sounding like deliberate self-parodies of the country genre. Just the same muck of slide guitar and McGuinn's beautiful voice not getting much of a chance to soar above Parson's regular backing drawl, over and over and over again. And there's NO HUMOR - country music is so much funnier (and funner) when there's some mocking self-irony or hilarious stories or whatever. Not that I'm saying all country songs need this, but if you don't have at least some of it, you put yourself at a disadvantage.

Anyway, the most annoying thing is that, when listening to the bonus tracks (ESPECIALLY the awesome "You Gotta Reputation"), it becomes obvious that the group had some material ready for the album that definitely could have raised the album a couple of points. But, you see, they 'rocked' too much, with too many interesting mixings of genres and moods to draw attention to country and only country. I could boost the album for these bonus tracks, but I refuse - this attitude of putting the popularization of a genre above concerns of song quality is one that seriously pisses me off. I give it a 6 because only a few songs actively offend me, and a couple rule, but nothing more.

Okay, the bits of good news first. A couple of the songs are actually quite good, both of which are throwbacks to the countryish motif of the last album but definitely more enjoyable than what took up most of it. "Your Gentle Way of Loving Me" is very nice, a solid example of what Sweetheart could have been had the band been more concerned with filling the time with good songs than with living up to their desired "country cred." It's upbeat, which eliminates any potential "bog-down" factor whatsoever, the melody is swell, and the instrumentation shows a definite country edge while not compromising the band's pop-rock strengths. Better, though, is "Drug Store Truck Drivin' Man," with some decent political-commentary lyrics put to a nice country melody and filled with nice country instrumentation. It's not really brilliant, but it definitely stands out among the rest as a good representative of later Byrds.

However, as evidenced by most of the rest, later Byrds wasn't something that was off to a particularly great start. The other country songs consist of a waaaaaaaaaay too lightweight number called "Old Blue" (about a dog, natch) and a decent (I guess) but totally throwaway instrumental ("Nashville West") that has some obligatory stupid "Yee HAW!"'s somewhere near the end. Among the second side of the album you'll also find a rather bland, somewhat countryish ballad ("Candy") that never really lives up to the slight promise shown by the opening notes.

Still, the songs up to this point might be slightly lame, but not yet murderous to the rating. That function, however, is filled by one other aspect of the album - The Byrds decided they wanted to rock. Yup, the album contains attempts at crunchy hard rock (often bordering on Zeppelin-style late 60's metal), some more "spacey" rockers, and even an attempt at a standard R&B jam. And almost all of it sucks mightily. Ok, I'll admit that I get some sort of dorky pleasure out of the band's cover of Dylan's "Wheel's On Fire" (I sorta like what they do with the harmonies in the chorus), but it's totally ridiculous to hear Roger trying to give his voice some sort of menacing tone while the guitarist uses up all his copped Page licks. Plus, there's that stupid bit of synth at the end - I still cannot believe that the liner notes of the CD edition I have of this have the gaul to call this "explosive synthesizer work," as that seems to imply some great piece of playing, when in reality it's just ... a sound of an explosive. How friggin' lame. In any case, "King Apathy III" is slightly better because it has a decent riff, so at least it stands out among the "rocker" crowd.

The other "rockers," though, are unbelievably lame. "Child of the Universe" and "Bad Night at the Whiskey" each try to take on this spacey-heavy vibe, and they fail miserably under the burden of pretentiously stupid lyrics, "astral" harmonies and overly echoed guitar solos. In terms of cheeziness, though, both fall very short of the last track, where the band decides to reprise its cover of "My Back Pages" (including the parts not sung in the first cover), and then segue this into a blues jam and then some old r&b number. Culminating in the band doing a "thanks for listening, hope to see you soon" send-off at the end! ARRRRRGH.

So anyway, um, this sucks. Like, really badly. I give it as high of a grade as I do because some parts of it are nice, and some other parts are just minimally offensive, but the rest should be avoided like the plague.

It also helps that McGuinn, in limiting himself to only one original composition for this album, manages to funnel whatever songwriting talent he still had left into the amazingly gorgeous title track. Yup, it's only two minutes long, but within that time contains a totally beautiful solo McGuinn vocal, one of the most perfect plaintive melodies ever conceived (at least, in 1969, which still says a lot), a lovely mix of acoustic guitars and orchestration, and in short all that stuff that even this "bastardized" version of the Byrds could count on giving to the music world. The lyrics are partially from Dylan, but to tell the truth, they're really not the part that I enjoy the most; the music itself keeps my attention just fine.

Amazingly enough, though, the rest of the band does a good job of living up to that brilliant opening, as many of the following tunes are incredible in their own right. Drummer Gene Parsons, in particular, shines in the wonderful "Gunga Din," where (and I'm serious here) he manages to do an almost spot-on imitation of what I would imagine the contemporary Moody Blues sounding like if they had more of a country element to their sound back then. I mean, I can't be the only one who has instantly thought (erroneously, of course) upon first hearing the vocals, "Whoa! They got Justin Hayward in for a guest appearance! Cool!" The melody sounds JUST LIKE something that could have come from the band back then (a compliment for sure), and if you know me at all, you'll know that there's a little voice inside me going "Yay!!!!" because of that.

Three other tracks hit me as particular highlights as well. First of all, there's "Jesus is Just Alright," one of the best examples of Gospel Rock I've ever heard, as it manages to take a potentially "standard happy" piece and squeeze all the banality out of it by making it as morose and hard-hitting as possible. Rocking almost as hard (but in a different way) is "Fido," where the organ and TIGHT drumming give the piece an intensity that Clarence White's wanna-be Page solos of the last album could never approach, as he (as on the rest of the album) sticks to much more economic and effective licks. And hey, it even has a drum jam that WORKS, simply because it's based around keeping a tight rhythm instead of banging around mindlessly, all the while mixing all sorts of different implements on the kit terrifically. Boy, if you could combine the "Moby Dick" riff with something like THAT, maybe I wouldn't be so hard on Zeppelin all the time ... but that's another issue all together.

The third track that I like so very much is the band's cover of Dylan's "It's All Over Now, Baby Blue." Some may lament what the band does to it here, making it into a slow (at least, slower than the original), mellow, low-key imitation of the original, but I actually really like what they do here. It's hard to explain why, but I actually find this to have more emotional power than the original (which you definitely won't see me say about a lot of Dylan covers), if only because it emphasizes the sad goodbye aspect of the song more than the original did. Say what you will, but that slow repetition of the chorus with heavenly, slightly countryish harmonies surrounded by all those lovely slide guitars is pure emotional bliss for me.

Unfortunately, there are six other tracks on the album, and while not a single one of them is anywhere near bad, none of them quite rise to the classic level of the ones I've mentioned. Some are monotonous in a Sweetheart way, one is an ok English Folk reading ("Jack Tarr the Sailor"), a couple are emotional but not really memorable, and one is a slightly tacked-on ending with a brief tribute to the astronauts on Apollo 11. However, I want to make it clear that not a single one of these songs are offensive, and since five of them are classics or danged near it, this deserves a very good rating. Yes, I like it more than Turn! Turn! Turn!. Ha!

Well, ok, I don't want to give the impression that this one of the greatest live albums ever or anything - it's just neat to hear the Byrds, whose original incarnation doesn't exactly strike me as the kind that would be killer on stage, putting out these perfectly solid performances. The band is still more or less working in a country-rock vein soundwise, but somehow everything turns out alright, with even a few nice surprises here and there. For instance, the album kicks off with a fine rendition of the unreleased (until, of course, Unissued) tune "Lover of the Bayou," where the Byrds almost turn into a menacing CCR for a couple of minutes, with all sorts of solid guitar work and a surprisingly menacing McGuinn vocal (boy, now that's a word combination I never thought I'd be using) about, well, loving the bayou. And then there's a surprising Dylan cover, one they also hadn't done in studio before, the great putdown "Positively 4th Street" - it's not spectacular, but it's still quite a treat.

After a decent runthrough of "Nashville West" (which I never really liked, but whatever), and an enjoyable dose of nostalgia ("So You Wanna be a Rock'n'Roll Star," "Mr. Tambourine Man," "Mr. Spaceman"), we hit a point of controversy, a 16-minute jam based around "Eight Miles High." I guess one could find better ways to spend 16 minutes of their lives, but one could definitely find worse ways - the guitar interplay is superb (which quite surprises me, as I wouldn't immediately think of McGuinn as a great guitarist, but sure enough he finds away to make his jangle-jangle do plenty of stuff in conjunction with White), there's a terrific bass-and-drum-only section which displays both strong technical ability and tasteful cleverness on the part of the rhythm section, and the part where they briefly reference the actual song is just fine. If you hate it, that's ok, but look at it this way - there's no drum solo! Seriously, though, except for maybe a couple of minutes after the bass-and-drum part but before the song that could be cut, this jam is perfectly entertaining from start to finish, and a fine inclusion in the collection of anybody who doesn't automatically hate wankathons.

The Unissued part of the package is kind enough to include eight additional performances from these same shows, and except for "Old Blue" (which as is stupid as ever), ALL of them are terrific and enhance my listening experience. "You Ain't Goin' Nowhere" is as playful as before, "It's Alright Ma (I'm Only Bleeding)" is done as a terrific shortened cover, "Ballad of Easy Rider" is just lovely, "My Back Pages" (ALRIGHT) is as inspiring as ever, "Take a Whiff on Me" (done in a studio form on Untitled) is a hilarious countryish ode to cocaine, "Jesus is Just Alright" has the same powerful Gospel Rock vibe as before, and "Wheels on Fire" drops the stupid heavy metal elements of before and just leaves a nice, slightly rockin' cover that's a great way to close. Yeah, I know that namechecking every good live track in one sentence is a copout, but you have to understand, I REALLY like this stretch, and to try to pick one over the others would be exceedingly difficult for me.

On the other side of the coin, there's a bunch of studio tunes on here, and while some of them (actually, quite a few of them) stink things up, there's actually quite a few decent songs here. Aside from some expected bits of more-or-less straightup country, there's also some remnants of a musical McGuinn had been working on with Jacques Levy (of writing-many-of-the-lyrics-for-Dylan's-Desire fame), and a whole bunch of hickish Buddhism courtesy of Skip Battin. The last category is, unfortunately, a major rating killer for this album. "Yesterday's Train" has an ok melody that would be fine for a normal country piece with a relatively normal topic, but it's about reincarnation, so the eye-rolling factor is a bit of a crippler here (it's also reprised in a different version on the Unissued disc, and it's no better or worse there). "Hungry Planet" is at least a somewhat interesting rocker with a bunch of odd effects, but I won't lie and say that I don't wish that the cool instrumentation was placed with a different vocal melody and different vocal effects. Yet it seems like brilliancy compared to the disc closer, the ridiculous "Welcome Back Home," which turns from a mediocre ballad into an overlong Buddhist chant with Battin thinking that by uttering, "...the highest sound in the universe" again and again he'll make the song into a classic. Riiiiiiight .....

The other songs, however, are all quite enjoyable, so the situation is hardly hopeless. There's a whole bunch of well-done country songs (the highlight of which is the aforementioned "Take a Whiff on Me"), which I won't go through individually, and the McGuinn leftovers are almost all treats. There's two versions of a VERY lovely ballad called "All the Things" (the better version, of course, is on Unissued), which deserves to stand with the best Byrds classics. "Just a Season" could easily have fit in just fine on the first two albums (and would have been a highlight, at least a minor one), "Kathleen's Song" (which would pop up on the next album, but here has no additional orchestration) is gorgeous, and the studio version of "Lover of the Bayou" is where they REALLY outdo CCR at their own game, as everything is slowed down just enough to really jack up the intensity and make the echoed vocals and loud harmonica stand out even more clearly.

All in all, then, there is more than a bit of low quality material here, but there are also a LOT of tracks here I very much like, and for all that I happily give it an A. Just remember, though - this isn't an album so much intended for a Byrds fan as it is for somebody who likes the Byrds and has at least a tolerance for well-done country rock. If that's you, swoop it up.

So imagine my surprise when I put this in, expecting to hear one of the worst albums ever put out by a classic rock artist (ie, the Byrds equivalent of Jethro Tull's Under Wraps), and discovering that it was ... ok. I mean, this album isn't that great, not by any means, but bad??!! Horrible??!! Not on your life. Only one of the songs offends me ("Tunnel of Love," which just sucks the snot out of my nose), while the rest of the songs all range from mediocre-but-passable to quite decent. The tracks bookending the album (both covers), for instance, leave a nice taste in my mouth; the gospel "Glory, Glory" (with a GREAT opening piano line) may be very simple, but it's still very moving, while "Jamaica Say You Will" features a VERY lovely Clarence White (so I've been told!) vocal (and a nice vocal melody, of course), so it too can stick around. "Kathleen's Song" is also very pretty, albeit slightly tackier with orchestration than it was without (as on Unissued), and McGuinn's amusing "I Wanna Grow Up to be a Politician" fuses corny bouncy schmaltz with a funny melody, so they're fine. And finally, Battin's novelty piece "Citizen Kane" has a great chorus to go with the good verse melody, so whatever.

The other five tracks don't do much to standout, but they're definitely all pleasant to listen to. The two-minute instrumental near the end is a bit pointless, but then again, I guess it's no more pointless than anything else. But see, these songs are a good type of pointless - I don't feel too much of a need to hear them again when they're done, but they manage to tweak the amusement part of my brain with their quirkiness when they're on. And see, this is a good example of how diversity can save an album for me - even if I don't like the songs an album gives that much, any album that can consistently make me smirk for at least a second near the beginning of most of the tracks, to make me go, "Well THAT was unexpected" will definitely get a significant upgrade from me. Anyway, point is, this isn't that great an album, but it's definitely not worthy of its bad reputation. At least, not to me - I did give it a higher grade than the beloved Sweetheart of the Rodeo, after all ...

The opening "Tiffany Queen" actually gets the album off to an excellent start - the riff might be a Satisfaction ripoff, but at least it sounds drastically different from the Stones, and it's nice to hear it pop up between verses of Roger's attempts at singing 50's r'n'r. The one group-composed number of the album, "Antique Sandy," is also a highlight, a fine cross of slightly countryish guitars and all sorts of wonderful things that made the Byrds such a lovely listen for so long, in particular of course the ultra-lovely McGuinn vocal. Besides those tracks, though, the album gets less and less interesting as time goes on, as the other songs show the band working in the same formula as before but not pulling out the same quality they might have managed before. Parsons' contributions especially disappoint me - the songs he includes here are more-or-less ok, but they border way too close to generic country hickishness for my liking (though the ultra-gruff vocals on "B.B. Class Road" are kinda funny). There's no "Gunga Din" here, that's for sure, and the closing instrumental isn't about to fill that void.

Elsewhere, White gets one lead vocal, on the traditional gospel of the title track, and while the piece is quite nice, it doesn't do that much emotion-wise that other gospel songs can't (though I should note that in light of the fact that White would die in an accident a year later, the song does take on a new power). The Battin stuff, as usual, runs from ehn to total garbage ("America's Great National Pastime," an unbelievably cheesy tune that may be the lowpoint of the Byrds' career). And finally, the covers are decent enough - "Bugler" is yet another piece about a dog, but with a lot more emotional power than "Old Blue" (not hard to do), while their totally random cover of the Fiestas' r&b song "So Fine" isn't an embarrassment, but hardly a highlight.

In short, then, it's just what one could expect of the band at this point - an ok, reasonably pleasant but not at all necessary listen. Frankly, I get the feeling that even if subsequent events had turned out differently, this version of the band would still have broken up at this point, if only because they really had nothing left to say as a unit. But at least they went out with some semblance of credibility, I guess.

In light of all that, though, I have to ask - did anybody actually bother to listen to the album? By that I mean I don't mean listening to it specifically as a *Byrds* album, but as just a collection of songs? I ask because these songs are almost all good - only a small number of them are much more than that, but almost none of them are any worse than that, and last I checked, an album that consists of mostly good songs gets a good rating. Eight originals (evenly split between McGuinn, Crosby, Clark and Hillman) and three covers, and only one duffer! Quite a few Byrds albums would kill for that!

The biggest news for Byrds fans is, of course, that the Gene Clark songs are totally on par with the tracks he contributed in his first stint with the band, both filled with perfect guitar-pop melodies (though mostly based around acoustic guitars instead of electric, which I guess angered a bunch of fans, whatever). "Full Circle" strikes me as a musing on how fate has caused Clark to inevitably return to the band where he was once the primary creative force, but it also works on a general level of how fate works in a funny way with all sorts of people everywhere. "Changing Heart" is less directly personal, but it's still TOTALLY first-rate countryish guitar-rock, with all these little hooks nibbling at you like mosquitoes until you realize just how much of an impact it's made on you.

The second best set of contributions come from McGuinn, who continues his amazing slow drip of a couple of decent songs per album (going on for quite a few albums now). "Sweet Mary" is a wonderful little somber waltz about not wanting to fall in love with somebody because "the last thing I need is a wife," and while "Born to Rock'n'Roll" (first recorded in the FA sessions) hardly lives up to its title stylistically, it's still got some cute melody ideas here and there, so it can stay around. Next down the totem pole are Hillman's contributions, which aren't so much bad as they are irritatingly short; "Things Will be Better" (with its neat melding of little pop guitar riffs, including the neat part that George Starostin attributes to a synth but that I just think is a weird-sound from the 12-string) is classic Hillman, with more neat ideas thrown in than you'd think could be in a 2:13 track (which still slightly bugs me, as I wish they'd be expanded out more), and "Borrowing Time" is the sort of thing you'll like if you liked "Time Between." Finally, Crosby comes in last songwriting-wise, as he'd totally renounced the idea of hooks and melodies and catchiness by this time, but the strength of his vocals is able to bring at least some power into the otherwise uninteresting "Long Live with the King" ("Laughing" doesn't really even succeed on that level, though, as it's 50% longer than anything else on here).

On the plus side, the three covers are major successes, so whatever weaknesses might exist in the originals are largely covered up. Crosby's vocals are a perfect fit for Joni Mitchell's For Free, which mostly relies on a very simplistic acoustic pattern but that plays right into Crosby's strengths, and the band's covers of two Neil Young tunes ("Cowgirl in the Sand," "(See the Sky) About to Rain") are great enough to have singlehandedly made me start investigating Neil's solo career. It's actually quite interesting for me that the closest thing to "classic" Byrds harmonies occurs on those two covers, especially on the former, but whatever.

So that's it for the album and the band. It's not a giant, earth-shattering comeback, nor an amazing way to say goodbye - instead, it's a nice demonstration of the still-remaining talents of the updated original Byrds, and from that perspective, I wouldn't have this album any other way.