Mocking Byrds: Feel A Whole Lot Better

Our final selection in our Mocking Byrds Second Week Special evokes the spirit of The Byrds’ Gene Clark with a 1978 cover of his signature tune, “Feel A Whole Lot Better.” While many artists have recorded “Feel A Whole Lot Better,” I prefer the rendition of the tune by the Flamin’ Groovies.

The Byrds recorded Gene Clark’s composition on their debut album: “Mr. Tambourine Man.” Although the song was the “B” side to the band’s second single “All I Really Want to Do.” The “A” side just made it into the Top 40 at the #40 slot and even “Feel A Whole Lot Better” made a splash at #103.

Columbia issued both sides as separate promo singles. Clark later admitted that he borrowed the riff from The Searcher’s “Needles and Pins.” When you think of it, you can hear the influence of the former tune.

The Flamin’ Groovies reincarnate The Byrds’ spirit and even have a jangly 12-string electric. Released on their 1978 LP, “Now,” “Feel A Whole Lot Better” appeared solely as an album cut. The great Dave Edmunds produced this record.

Mocking Byrds: Hickory Wind

If you would scan the names of the members of The Byrds, you might conclude that the band had two Clark(e)s (Gene Clark & Michael Clarke), two Parsons (Gram & Gene), and two McGuinns (Jim & Roger). None of these people were related to one another except for the two McGuinns who were actually one and the same person. Of those in our list, we turn our eyes (and our ears) to one: Gram Parsons.

Gram Parsons was influential in persuading his fellow Byrds to tackle a complete country album instead of McGuinn’s original intent to do an LP of 20th century American music. He even convinced the band to record the album in Nashville.

The result was the seminal recording of “Sweetheart of the Rodeo.” The album would help shape the sound of The Byrds and led Chris Hillman and Gram Parsons to form The Flying Burrito Brothers. The “Sweetheart of the Rodeo” lineup featuring another new member, Kevin Kelley on drums, lasted only a brief five weeks in 1968.

Probably considered Gram Parsons’ signature song, “Hickory Wind” was penned by Parsons and his former band mate Bob Buchanan. There has been some controversy considering the authorship of the song, as South Carolinian Sylvia Sammons claimed to have penned “Hickory Wind.” Although a cash settlement was reached with Sammons by the song’s publisher in 1969, many believe that it was an authentic Parsons/Buchanan composition.

While many artists have recorded “Hickory Wind,” one of the earliest covers of the tune was recorded in 1969 by Joan Baez. Because Baez’s then husband, David Harris, was going to be sentenced for draft evasion, she recorded an album of country music as her gift to him. Because Harris was a fan of country music, Baez titled the LP as “David’s Album.”

Interesting enough, Baez’s foray into country music did better on the charts than The Byrds despite their contract with a major record label. While others have recorded this tune, Joan’s low voice is stronger than most others who attempted “Hickory Wind” including Parson’s close friend Emmylou Harris. Enjoy.

Mocking Byrds: Have You Seen Her Face

During 1966, The Byrds were pared down to four members with the exodus of Gene Clark during the “Fifth Dimension” sessions. With Clark gone, bassist Chris Hillman was elevated to songwriter and vocalist in the band. Although Hillman had writing credits on arrangements and compositions that included all of The Byrds, it was the first time he participated as a full-fledged writer.

Released in 1967, “Younger than Yesterday” included four Hillman compositions and his collaboration with Roger McGuinn on “So You Want to be a Rock ‘n’ Roll Star.” Hillman was responsible for nearly half of the album as he is credited with five of its 11 tunes.

Up until last night, I had planned to feature Tom Petty and the Heartbreakers on “So You Want to be a Rock ‘N’ Roll Star,” but discovered that I had already did this back in 2010. So I scrambled to find a replacement of this often recorded Byrds’ tune.

Unfortunately, none passed muster. Some versions of “So You Want to be a Rock ‘N’ Roll Star” had excellent instrumentation, but the vocals were lacking. Others had the vocal chops down, but the instrumental performance was dismal. After listening to a dozen covers, I decided to find another Chris Hillman vehicle.

Released as the third single from “Younger than Yesterday,” Chris Hillman captured the spirit of The Beatles in his song “Have You Seen Her Face.” Actually, it sounds more like the tunes The Beatles gave Peter and Gordon to record. It even has a country inspired lead played on a Gretsch Country Gentleman by Roger McGuinn – similar what George Harrison might have done on this tune. Unfortunately, the original “Have You Seen Her Face” only made it to #74 on the Hot 100.

As for a cover, I’ve decided to move outside the box and feature a Chris Hillman cover of a Chris Hillman song. It is actually a 2010 live recording of Hillman and Herb Pedersen “At Edwards Barn.” Both Hillman and Pedersen had previously worked together in the Desert Rose Band. During the intro, Chris mentions his metamorphosis as a songwriter and vocalist in one of the premier bands of the ‘60s – The Byrds. For now though, here’s a very nice acoustic rendition of “Have You Seen Her Face.”

Mocking Byrds: Eight Miles High

It’s day four of our Second Week Feature that I call “Mocking Byrds,” as it is a weeklong tribute to songs of The Byrds recorded by other artists. One of the better known singles by The Byrds, it was their only composition to chart in the Top 20 and it peaked at #14 during the spring of 1966. Only two other songs by The Byrds charted higher and were both #1 hits: “Mr. Tambourine Man,” penned by Bob Dylan, and “Turn! Turn! Turn!” – Pete Seeger’s musical interpretation of Ecclesiastes’ third chapter.


Written primarily by Gene Clark, but aided by David Crosby and Roger McGuinn, “Eight Miles High” was influenced by the band’s trip to London in 1965. The song is stellar in that it captures the spirit of Ravi Shankar and John Coltrane – two artists the band was listening while on tour during 1965. The original version appears on their third LP: “Fifth Dimension.”

Today’s cover comes from the husband and wife duo – The Kennedys, who prior to their marriage, were part of Nanci Griffith’s band in 1990s. This version comes from their 2006 album “Songs of the Open Road” and features Maura and Pete using all manner of acoustic and electric guitars and a Rogue electric sitar to bring the “raga rock” sound to fruition.

While The Byrds’ version is my favorite and Golden Earring’s rendition is my second favorite, The Kennedy’s interpretation comes in as a close third. In my book, that’s a pretty good place to be. Pete and Maura Kennedy also perform with The Strangelings and I have included that band’s versions of their renditions of Fairport Convention’s “Matty Groves” and Donovan’s “Season of the Witch.”

Episode 1500: Mocking Byrds: Dolphin's Smile

Today we celebrate Reading Between the Grooves 1500th post. The timing of this auspicious occasion, however, is right in the middle of our Second Week Special – this month it’s “Mocking Byrds” – a look at covers of songs by The Byrds. We’ll deal with this first and then talk about the stats for this 1500th post.

Earlier this week, I mentioned that my affinity towards The Byrds goes back to 1966 with my first purchase of a 45 RPM single by the band. Later in the early 70s, they were the subject of my first cassette tape purchase. That album was “The Notorious Byrd Brothers.” This collection saw great personnel changes of the original members of The Byrds.

All five original members are believed to be present on this album, but only two, Roger McGuinn and Chris Hillman, were constants. There was a great deal of tension regarding the recording of the album, but despite this, “The Notorious Byrd Brothers” is often cited as a critical success for the band and it is considered more cohesive in style even though the band at the time was anything but cohesive. For more, see a former post regarding this album that is still one of my favorites by The Byrds.

For today’s feature, we dip into the album’s depths for a little known tune named “Dolphin’s Smile.” It was written by David Crosby, Roger McGuinn, and Chris Hillman. If you listen to the outtakes of this recording, there was quite a bit of angst exhibited towards Michael Clarke on the recording of “Dolphin’s Smile.” In a word, he was not getting it and it took at least 15 takes for him to capture the spirit that the other three members and the engineer wanted.

For today’s cover, we provide a live version by Blue Coupe at Don O’Dell’s Legends Studio in Palmer, Massachusetts. Blue Coupe features three multi-instrumentalists that are no strangers to the rock music scene. For this number, Dennis Dunaway, formerly of Alice Cooper, is on bass and he is joined by the two Bouchard brothers who had been members of Blue Öyster Cult during their heyday.

Albert Bouchard, who was BÖC’s drummer, is playing the six-string acoustic and Joe Bouchard, BÖC’s bassist, is on the 12-string acoustic. All three as well as a couple of female back-up vocalists do an amazing job capturing the spirit of The Byrds’ original sans the sound effects, Moog synthesizer, and of course drums. The name Blue Coupe is an amalgamation of their former bands’ names: Blue Öyster Cult and Alice Cooper. Good stuff for our “Mocking Byrds” feature.

 

RBTG’s 1,500th Post Retrospect

Like I had reported with every other 100th post anniversary, I took a look backward on how we are doing visitor wise. I began this blog on September 26, 2009, but did not start monitoring the visits until October 16, 2009. Currently, we have 87 declared followers of the blog – up from 76 in February 2014. There are many others who have visited frequently without declaring themselves as followers. As noted with our 1400th post, Google+ remains a major source of new visitors.

The cumulative statistics for the blog are listed below:

Variable	Statistic
Unique Visitors	155,273
Times Visited	174,399
Number of Pages Viewed	249,046
People Visiting 200+ Times	2,819
People Visiting 101-200 Times	1,364
People Visiting 51-100 Times	1,210
People Visiting 26-50 Times	1,088
Number of Visitor Countries Represented	186

The Top Ten Visitor Countries

Since our 1,400th post, four new countries were added to the list: two from the Caribbean (Caribbean Netherlands and the British Virgin Islands), one from Central Asia (Kyrgyzstan), and one from Africa (Mali). The Top 10 countries remain the same; however, former seventh position Australia knocked Italy out of the sixth position.

Rank	Country	Visits
1	United States	84,957
2	United Kingdom	14,668
3	Canada	9,309
4	Germany	8,194
5	France	5,828
6	Australia	3,888
7	Italy	3,820
8	Brazil	3,671
9	Spain	2,793
10	Netherlands	2,789

As always, I want to take this time to thank all of you for your support of this site and the encouragement to keep going forward. Thanks again for Reading between the Grooves.

Mocking Byrds: Full Circle

Our next selection during our “Mocking Byrds” Second Week Feature looks at Dan Fogelberg’s rendition of a tune that was released by The Byrds in 1973. Although Gene Clark recorded “Full Circle Song” as a solo artist first in 1972, The Byrds’ recording is better known.  It is from their original lineup reunion album titled simply “Byrds.” Last October, I discussed their release, and you can check out that post for more detailed info on the song.

In 2003, Dan Fogelberg plied his craft on “Full Circle” and used it as the title cut for his CD – an album that unfortunately didn’t chart. Even though it failed to garner widespread exposure, Fogelberg did an excellent job on his rendition of this Gene Clark composition.

While I like The Byrds’ arrangement (especially Chris Hillman’s mandolin) better, I prefer Dan Fogelberg’s vocals over Gene Clark’s. In addition, the production on Fogelberg’s rendition is much fuller, but this may be a result of advances in recording technology since the early 70s.

Mocking Byrds: Ballad of Easy Rider

Since last November, I’ve been planning a second week special on remakes of songs by The Byrds. At that time I picked out four tunes and immediately forgot about it until last week when I selected three additional tunes for inclusion. You won’t be hearing covers of some of their bigger hits, as many were written by others like Bob Dylan and Pete Seeger.

I call this week’s feature “Mocking Byrds,” and we’ll be looking at a number of Byrds’ tunes that were composed by members of the band and covered by other artists. Some of The Byrds’ originals are better known than others, but I’ve endeavored to find some of the best covers of some classic Byrds’ cuts.

I have a bit of closeness to The Byrds, as the first 45 that I purchased was their “Mr. Spaceman” single. In addition, the first commercially recorded cassette tape I bought was “The Notorious Byrd Brothers.” With my history with loving their recordings, it was easy to come up with this week’s feature.

Our first song is the 1969 recording of the “Ballad of Easy Rider” by Fairport Convention. While the song was recorded during the band’s “Liege and Lief” sessions and it includes the band’s lineup at the time except for Dave Swarbrick. Although the song was the band’s encore number at the time, the recording was out of character with the rest of “Liege and Lief’s” traditional folk character, and so it was shelved.

Although it features Sandy Denny on vocals, it first showed up on guitarist Richard Thompson’s 1976 compilation album, “(guitar, vocal).” It has also appeared on a number of other compilations, as well as a being a bonus track on the band’s “Unhalfbricking” CD and on their “Liege and Lief” boxed set.

Of all of covers of material by The Byrds that I’m featuring, I like this one better than the Byrds’ 1969 release. It’s different than either the solo version by Roger McGuinn on the “Easy Rider” soundtrack and the single release and title cut from The Byrds’ “Ballad of Easy Rider” album.

Not only is Fairport’s version slower and more soulful, it is in a different time signature. I believe McGuinn wrote the tune in either 2/2 or 2/4 time, but I can’t find any documentation on its specific time signature.

The Byrds’ version is much faster than McGuinn’s solo version on the movie soundtrack. That version also features former Byrd Gene Clark on harmonica. Fairport’s version is a waltz in ¾ time. It’s turnabout for The Byrds, as they were known to change the time signatures of Dylan’s tunes that they recorded.

The writing of the “Ballad of Easy Rider” by McGuinn has an interesting twist. Peter Fonda asked Bob Dylan to write the theme for the movie, but Dylan wouldn’t have any part of it. What he did though is write down the lyrics, “The river flows; it flows to the sea. Wherever that river goes, that's where I want to be. Flow, river, flow" on a napkin. He then handed it to Fonda and said, in essence, “Take this to McGuinn, he’ll know what to do with it.”

McGuinn took the lyrical fragment and constructed the “Ballad of Easy Rider.” Although Dylan’s name appeared alongside McGuinn’s as the author in the movie’s credits, he asked that it be removed and in essence disavowed any connection to the song. McGuinn theorized that Dylan didn’t like the movie and didn’t want his name associated with it.

I hope you like Fairport’s recording of this number. Although I typically prefer The Byrds’ recordings of their tunes, I like this rendition better.