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Sweetheart of the Rodeo by the Byrds (Vinyl record album review)

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Record basics

  • Album name: Sweetheart of the Rodeo
  • Group name: the Byrds
  • Year: 1968
  • Number of discs: one
  • Label: Columbia Records
  • Collection: Brenner / Gessner
  • Who owned it: my father
  • Buy it on Amazon: $27.96

Sweetheart of the Rodeo by the Byrds

My review

Level of familiarity before listening

In the past several months, I’ve listened to three other Byrds records:

When I mentioned to my parents that I would be listening to this one, my father wanted me to know that it was his “favorite Byrds album,” adding that it was “a very good album” and that Hickory Wind was his favorite song on it. Describing the style, he said that it was country. Cosmic American, I asked? No, he said – more traditional country.

What I expected

I guess country, though I also see that Gram Parsons joined the Byrds for this record, so maybe it will be Cosmic American after all?

What it was actually like

First, Sweetheart of the Rodeo was phenomenal and every track on it was outstanding.

Second, like Dr. Byrds & Mr. Hyde, it was very consistent. There were no bad songs on it, and even its worst songs might have been the best on some comparable band’s record.

Third, to say that this is traditional country (ie, country as it existed before the mid 1960s) isn’t right, in my opinion: if I were a fan of unmodified “country,” I don’t think I’d have enjoyed this music at all – too much of it sounded too much like rock, or like rock trying to reinterpret country as rock, and even though it wasn’t psychedelic in the sense of what, for example, Quicksilver Messenger Service or the Beatles or Jimi Hendrix were doing right around that time, no one who listens to it could come away with the impression that the Byrds had never tried acid. Sweetheart of the Rodeo sounds a lot like Roger McGuinn and the other Byrds records that I’ve reviewed recently, but it also sounds a hell of a lot like Gram Parsons and cosmic American music to me.

Trying to list what I liked about each song individually would get awfully repetitive, but in general I liked the whiny and twangy country-style steel guitar, the vocal harmonies, the banjo and the fiddle.

Several of the songs, while very excellent, could have been faster to make me a bit happier, such as I Am a Pilgrim, a traditional song that I’ve heard a ton of artists do. I also thought the fiddle on it was great, but wouldn’t it have been better with some more Scruggs style banjo?

You Don’t Miss Your Water was also a bit slow for me, and interestingly, I actually knew it as a Peter Tosh song called Till Your Well Runs Dry.

You’re Still on My Mind, another classic country song reinterpreted, might have been my favorite on the record, and was such a good example of how much better country music can get when it meets all that rock sound.

I felt the same way about Life in Prison, a Merle Haggard song that they made a little more upbeat and just added so much richness to it.

When they got to Woody Guthrie‘s Pretty Boy Floyd, though, giving it a bit of a bluegrass sound with banjo and some slightly Oompa Loompa guitar… I want to be respectful to Guthrie, but the Byrds didn’t just take it to another level, but took it to ten other levels that he never even imagined.

I thought Hickory Wind was fine, but I wanted it to be faster at every moment. Of Gram Parsons songs, I liked One Hundred Years from Now much better, with just the right harmonized vocals and just the right pacing and intensity. Maybe it was more of a rock song than most on the record.

Nothing Was Delivered was a bit like that also. Its chorus sounded like the folk rock Byrds of a different era, which was cool, and I loved how that fit into the rest of the song. It also had a great bass line and percussion, and putting it at the end was perfect.

Sunday 11 December 2022

Just re-reading this review now, as I’ve listened to Sweetheart of the Rodeo very frequently in the past six weeks, and it’s amazing to me that I didn’t even mention You Ain’t Goin’ Nowhere, which quickly became one of my favorite songs! Also, here’s a pretty cool video about when McGuinn played it with Earl Scruggs.

Grade

5/5: love it

Jackson Browne (Saturate Before Using) by Jackson Browne (Vinyl record album review)

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Record basics

  • Album name: Jackson Browne (Saturate Before Using)
  • Artist name: Jackson Browne
  • Year: 1972
  • Number of discs: one
  • Label: Asylum Records
  • Collection: Brenner / Gessner
  • Who owned it: my mother
  • Buy it on Amazon: $19.95

Blood, Sweat & Tears

My review

Level of familiarity before listening

I’ve heard of Jackson Browne, but wasn’t even sure if Jackson was a man or a woman, and the picture on the album cover didn’t help, so I looked Jackson up, and Jackson is a man.

What I expected

Maybe folk rock?

What it was actually like

This was folk rock and I thought it was ok, but not special.

A few of the songs sounded weirdly like Elton John, such as Jamaica Say You Will that had a piano and was very melodic, and Doctor, My Eyes, which was actually much better, more rhythmic, with some good electric guitar and percussion.

Song for Adam was folky with some good acoustic guitar.

Under the Falling Sky almost sounded at the beginning like some kind of carnival music, but got much better with faster tempos and excellent guitars, even though the bongo drums were so weird.

A Child in These Hills, though not inventing anything new, felt familiar and comfortable, and I liked the harmonica.

Mostly the rest of the record was just boring.

Grade

3/5: interesting, but not for me

Blood, Sweat & Tears (Vinyl record album review)

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Record basics

  • Album name: Blood, Sweat & Tears
  • Group name: Blood, Sweat & Tears
  • Year: 1968
  • Number of discs: one
  • Label: Columbia Records
  • Collection: Brenner / Gessner
  • Distinguishing characteristics: “G” written on top left of album, indicating that my father owned it
  • Buy it on Amazon: $105.00

Blood, Sweat & Tears

My review

Level of familiarity before listening

I’ve definitely heard of Blood, Sweat & Tears and expect to recognize some of this music, but can’t name or imagine a single Blood, Sweat & Tears song.

What I expected

Describing the band, the album itself says: “Brash and exciting, their music is a wedding of rock and jazz.”

What it was actually like

This record was terrible. I didn’t expect to love it, but it was a thousand times worse than I imagined. But it was definitely “brash”!

Here’s what I hated the most: if you take bad rock music and mash it up with bad jazz music, it doesn’t turn into something brilliant. There’s nothing clever at all about that. It’s like The Godfather: Part II taking a boring storyline set in 1970s Las Vegas and another boring storyline set in 1920s New York, alternating boring scenes between those two boring storylines, and trying to tell people that it’s a masterpiece.

Blood, Sweat & Tears definitely had plenty of musical talent, but so much of this record was filled with anti-melodic, arrhythmic, even atonal crap – in a word, “brash.”

I recognized Spinning Wheel. And When I Die had some distinct Oompa-Loompa tendencies.

Probably the dumbest part of the whole record was opening and closing it with Variations on a Theme by Erik Satie. That might have made sense for a different record, made by a different band, but all it did here was highlight how much crap the rest of it was.

The only part I liked was the few bars of Blues – Part II that channeled Sunshine of Your Love.

Grade

1/5: horrible enough that I couldn’t make it through

Teaser and the Firecat by Cat Stevens (Vinyl record album review)

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Record basics

  • Album name: Teaser and the Firecat
  • Artist name: Cat Stevens
  • Year: 1971
  • Number of discs: one
  • Label: A&M Records
  • Collection: Brenner / Gessner
  • Distinguishing characteristics: “G” written on top left of album, indicating that my father owned it
  • Buy it on Amazon: $22.99

Teaser and the Firecat by Cat Stevens

My review

Level of familiarity before listening

I don’t have a lot of familiarity with Cat Stevens, or Yusuf Islam, except that he made singer-songwriter type music in the 1970s.

(I actually first heard about him on cable news as a teenager, in the context of what he said about Salman Rushdie, germane today because Rushdie was just very nearly assassinated a couple of months ago.)

This is the first Cat Stevens record that I’ll be reviewing, though there are several others in the collection, including one that will be up in a week or so.

What I expected

Singer-songwriter.

What it was actually like

I actually recognized a bunch of these songs, which wasn’t all that surprising, since my parents were both very enthusiastic when I mentioned that I’d be listening to it.

The Wind was quite a good song and, while listening to it, I recalled that I did know it as a Cat Stevens song! It was very folky with great guitar, a great voice and great lyrics! But why was it so short?

Another that I recognized was Morning Has Broken, a traditional song, but I don’t know if I remembered it because of Cat Stevens or not. Its very simple guitar made me think of it as a campfire song, but not in a good way. On the other hand, I recognized Moonshadow as well, and it also had that simple guitar and made me think of it as a campfire song, but in a good way!

Both Changes IV and Bitterblue had more of a rock sound, which I would generally appreciate, but they were only ok. They sounded sort of choppy and staccato-like, as if Stevens just didn’t get that rock is supposed to be rhythmic too.

Peace Train, that I recalled as one of Stevens’ hits, was another that I recognized, and had the staccato effect that I didn’t like, as well as some deeply inane lyrics.

If I Laugh and How Can I Tell You were boring, and the two worst songs on the record. They were actually more like what I expected all of them to sound like.

Rubylove, which had a verse in Greek, also had some outstanding Greek (or at least Mediterranean) style guitar, and that guitar really stood out on the record. I don’t know that I would have wanted to listen to a whole record of it, but I wouldn’t have minded one more song with it, either.

Tuesday’s Dead kind of reminded me of Jimmy Buffett, which was so weird.

Grade

4/5: would listen again

The Best of Tim Hardin (Vinyl record album review)

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Record basics

  • Album name: The Best of Tim Hardin
  • Artist name: Tim Hardin
  • Year: 1969
  • Number of discs: one
  • Label: Verve Records
  • Collection: Brenner / Gessner
  • Who owned it: my father
  • Buy it on Amazon: $19.55

The Best of Tim Hardin

My review

Level of familiarity before listening

I’ve never heard of Tim Hardin, but he’s clearly a folk artist, and I’m only familiar with one of the songs, If I Were A Carpenter.

What I expected

Mostly original folk-style songs.

Also, I note that Tim Hardin’s hair very slightly covers the top of his ears, unlike Tom Paxton’s on the cover of Ramblin’ Boy. That’s 1969 versus 1964 right there.

What it was actually like

It’s hard to choose a genre label for this record because it’s not really folk music, but also not really folk rock. “Folk style” is mostly right, but a few songs on it, like It’ll Never Happen Again and Misty Roses, were kind of easy listening crap, quite a surprise coming from a 1960s-era folk singer.

On the other hand, there were a bunch of songs like Don’t Make Promises that were nice and upbeat, and I enjoyed those a lot.

Black Sheep Boy was sad and moving, and I thought it was outstanding.

I was (maybe a bit embarrassingly) surprised to learn that Tim Hardin actually wrote If I Were A Carpenter. I had always thought that it was a “traditional” song, and figured that he had adapted it roughly around the same time as Johnny Cash et al. also did. The Johnny Cash and June Carter version was very true to Tim Hardin’s original, but I think I have to say that Cash/Carter did it way better, because this song actually begs to be a duet, and because Cash’s voice conveys so much emotion and struggle than Hardin’s, and because the plain old snare drum was far less distracting than the bizarre bongo drums in the original.

On that note, I also didn’t realize that Tim Hardin performed at Woodstock, though he didn’t make it onto the record.

Smugglin’ Man was the most different from the other songs on the record – a blues song in a very standard style, with some cute and topical lyrics and a great tempo. I thought it was the best track on the record.

Grade

3/5: interesting, but not for me