The Byrds: Mr. Tambourine Man
1965
Columbia Records
Format I Own it on: Vinyl
Track Listing: 1. Mr. Tambourine Man 2. I'll Feel a Whole Lot Better 3. Spanish Harlem Incident 4. You Won't Have to Cry 5. Here Without You 6. The Bells of Rhymney 7. All I Really Want to Do 8. I Knew I'd Want You 9. It's No Use 10. Don't Doubt Yourself, Babe 11. Chimes of Freedom 12. We'll Meet Again
Before we start, let's take a look at some of my favorite birds....
The yellow-bellied sapsucker...
The blue-crested titmouse...
The gray-boobied barn howler...
The Lesser Ern..
Anyway.... Part of me always kind of wants to hate the Byrds...I think it's because whenever they show footage of the 1960's there's always a scene of a hippie chick twirling around to either "Turn! Turn! Turn!" or "Time of the Season" by the Zombies...
I'm so tired of hippie girls twirling! Why don't they twerk, goddamit?!?!
Either way, I forget about all that petty shit once I actually put on a Byrds record...I always enjoy them greatly...
This was the band's debut and it pretty much kicked off the whole 60's folk rock thing...They basically take a handful of Dylan songs, a couple of folk standards and play them on rock instruments...Y'know, a drum set, electric guitars, amps...They somehow maintain the gentle, poetic feel of folk mainly because of the thoughtful singing, intricate harmonies and the real star of the show, which is...
...the dreamy chime of James Roger McGuinn's electric 12 string Rickenbakher... Oooo, it sounds so good jangling away on "Bells of Rhymney."...
Gene Clark gives us some stellar originals that actually rock out a bit more than I was expecting.... "I'll Feel a Whole Lot Better" being a particular standout...Sort of an early Beatles "beat" sound, but they really give it their own spin...I think their easily identifiable sound helps make this one of the
better early to mid 60's debuts... Records from that era tended to have a couple of great original singles and then a ton of filler cover tunes, but the Byrds come out on top because they so radically reinterpret the covers....
For examples there's a whopping four Dylan covers (three of which are from "Another Side of Bob Dylan"), but when I listen to these I honestly kind of forget about Dylan....Not to infer they surpass the Dylan originals, but honestly, when you listen to their "Mr. Tambourine Man" it's so quintessential Byrds...Compare this to the tired Chuck Berry covers on early Stones and Beatles albums....Come to think of it, right around 1965 was when entire good albums started coming out...We also had....
...The Who's stellar debut..
The Beach Boys: Summer Days (and Summer Nights!!)
Bob Dylan: Bringing it All Back Home
Beatles: Rubber Soul
Sun Ra: The Heliocentric Worlds of Sun Ra
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Bob Dylan::Highway 61 Revisited
Man, I don't know...If that many classic albums came out in 2013, I might have to twirl around in circles too...So we're cool Byrds and hippie chick, we're cool...
So let's all twirl to "I'll Feel a Whole Lot Better" by the Byrds...Enjoy...
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