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Anniversary Byrd


E-minor7

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Congratulations to this guy who just turned 70 - though he sadly took off for good over 2 decades ago. .

 

1967 ~ GeneClarkTeenSetFeb67wDove-2.jpg

 

Never knew he played the Dove, but maybe here's the reason T. Petty picked that one as his acoustic favorite - lying in the Byrds-trail as he always did in the beginning. .

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I reached my quota of mistakes the other day when having the up-bowe/back-bowe logic wrong. And it surely undermined my self esteem.

 

Not so this time –

 

The celebrated fellow seen above is Gene Clark. The main-songwriter, founding and first to leave member of The Byrds.

 

Guess turning an imaginary 70 three days ago should qualify him as an Anniversary Byrd – playing the Dove of course.

 

Or. . .

 

 

 

 

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Gene Clark's story is a sad one, but all too familiar. He was a great songwriter, with my favorites being "I'll set You Free this Time", and "Eight Miles High", even though we associate the latter with McGuinn's rather remarkable electric 12-string "off into space" riff.

 

Clark truly was the Byrd who flew alone.

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The bizarre thing is he was afraid of flying - his songs did from the start though.

 

Here's an all time fav of mine - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ykip-ue2BuU&list=RDykip-ue2BuU

 

What a melodyyyyyy

 

 

Melody, chord structure, and phrasing are first-cousin of Eight Miles High, but this song would lend itself very well to a solo acoustic version. Over to you, Em7, I feel a recording from you coming on......

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Maybe, maybe not........

 

 

A sympathetic clip - happy to say I saw the Firebyrds he's talking about a year after this interview. .

 

Btw. I really like his 2 songs on the reuinion album from '73 also. Don't know if anybody remember that one.

 

Full Circle -

 

 

 

 

 

 

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Blame it on Em7, but he sent me crashing down memory lane tonight. I confess to being a serious Byrds fanatic, and am really fond of a lot of their early material, when they were just breaking in the Southern California scene. A lot of their music was real cross-over stuff : LA folk/rock mixed with early SF proto-psychedelic, like early Dead and early Jefferson Airplane.

 

This is one of those songs, and has always been a personal favorite, even though it barely made it onto an album. It's still on my ipod, and I frequently play it over the sound system in my wife's car (which has an awesome sound system for an SUV), when I'm cruising along the highway by myself. I usually repeat it two or three times before I get tired of it.

 

This a really lousy videotape excerpt of a pretty bad TV show (Hollywood A Go-go) out of LA sometime in 1965, and as a live version with poor sound recording, it doesn't have the impact of the digitally re-mastered studio version of the song.

 

I have a fondness for these period "Au Go-Go" TV shows, as hokey as they seem now. I was 18 then, and absolutely full of it. We lived in Scottsdale, Arizona then, and the local live music watering hole--The Pink Pony--had under-21 Sunday afternoon disco and live music parties, complete with go-go girls in cages.

 

My parents would have killed me if they knew where I was going with my buddies on Sunday afternoon, but it was an awesome time for us.

 

By the way, at least sit through the intros on this video. At about 30 seconds, you see Bob Lind, with what looks very much like a Dove, but maybe with an odd sunburst. Who the F is Bob Lind? Well, if you're of a certain age, you would know him by his one big hit, the slightly folkie/trippy "Elusive Butterfly".

 

Let's face it, Memory Lane is a dangerous place to get lost.......

 

 

 

(just fixed bad link)

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No mention of Clark solo albums, White Light or No Other? Or the Clark & Carla Olson album, So Rebellious A Lover?

 

I was just floored by Ebbets Field tapes, which are apparently from a Denver bar and issued as Silverado '75 and under other names. Sound quality is rough, but it enhances the feel. A boatload of demos are in there, too, which again when it's Gene Clark it's all different levels of genius.

 

His Two Sides to Every Story album also got a major overhaul recently, though the album is considered meh.

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Just listening to tap at work here and a song came on and I thought of you two hippy chicks.

 

em7 and nick , have a Google for mark fry.

If it's not up your streets then I don't know what is.

 

 

You're kidding, right BBG?

 

Nostalgia bands have as much to do with the original stuff as Civil War re-enacters have to do with those who fought at the Battle of Gettysburg.

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Yeah Yeah

did you listen

 

 

Yes, I have listened to them. They are good for what they do, but I have no more interest in listening to them than I do in listening to an Elvis impersonator. Being able to copy what someone else did is a skill, but it ain't the real thing, any more than I'm Bob Dylan because I play a couple of his songs.

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Yes, I have listened to them. They are good for what they do, but I have no more interest in listening to them than I do in listening to an Elvis impersonator. Being able to copy what someone else did is a skill, but it ain't the real thing, any more than I'm Bob Dylan because I play a couple of his songs.

 

his album 'dancing with alice' is from 1972.

maybe that's to recent ? :-/

I honestly thought you'd like it

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Been dreaming with Alice half way through the album as I write and will have to take a little food-break.

 

A real hippie-record it is - the moods and atmospheres are there. The sound is fairly primitive and the material could need a bit more focus.

 

Or maybe that's exactly what they didn't want ~ as they went for that floating down stream-like dreamery. . .

 

 

 

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Been dreaming with Alice half way through the album as I write and will have to take a little food-break.

 

A real hippie-record it is - the moods and atmospheres are there. The sound is fairly primitive and the material could need a bit more focus.

 

Or maybe that's exactly what they didn't want ~ as they went for that floating down stream-like dreamery. . .

 

I listened to the album this PM, and wasn't particularly impressed. There was a lot of Celtic/psychedelic music coming out of the UK then, and through the 1980's, when it was rebranded as "New Age Celtic". The best material from that period, from groups like Pentangle, was light-years ahead of Mark Fry, from what I've listened to, which is just the "Dreaming with Alice" album that you're listening to.

 

It's a totally different thread from the US folk/rock/psychedelic movement at about the same time. But Pentangle had Bert Jansch and John Renbourn, who were (are, in the case of Renbourn) staggeringly talented. When it comes to pure acoustic guitar talent, you have to look at someone like Jorma over here to find anyone comparable. I'm not sure Mark Fry rises to that level.

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Didn't eat - took the rest of the album instead - found out I was too spaced to be hungry. .

 

Not sure I'll go there again soon - but glad to have heard the thing. Won't end up in my collection tho.

 

Are you an ol' fan bbg ?

 

No , I just heard it for the very first time today on the radio and it was 10 minutes after reading this thread.

 

I know your a fan of this type of music and thought you'd like it.

 

I checked out the alice album , because it seems to be the most talked about and highest regarded , but the song I heard was 'aeroplanes' which is from his latest album .

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