Powerful things are brewing inside

Continuing my trip back through the 1968 album charts.

09/06/68 : The Notorious Byrd Brothers - The Byrds

Our third visit with The Byrds - I liked the first one and loathed the second one.  And I have a sneaking suspicion this is going to be more like the second one, but I'm also suspecting it will be horrible in an interesting way.

Actually, I didn't mind this at all - it's like they've taken their "Tambourine Man" stuff, removed the tambourines and added electric guitars (and probably a shed load of drugs).  It's a good balance between the old and the new, which isn't always something the albums of the time have managed.  It also sounds pretty influential to me - I heard some Stone Roses (particularly "She's A Waterfall") and shoegazey sounds in there.  I won't be rushing back to it, but it was considerably better than I was expecting - it was nice to be surprised by it.  It also can't be accused of outstaying its welcome - 28:28 is all you're getting.

We drop further to #17 in the charts this week on their seventh week of an eleven week run with it having peaked at #12.  The top five were Andy (seriously?!?), Scott, Bob, TSOM and Fleetwood Mac, the highest new entry was The Small Faces (#23) and there are no new women involved in the chart this week. 

Wikipedia has a huge amount on the album (266 milliPeppers) - particularly compared with all the ones we've seen recently,  A lot of it is on the conflict going on at the time - they managed to lose David Crosby and MIchael Clarke during the recording of this album and Gene Clark (one of the group's original members who came back to help out) lasted three weeks before he gave up as well.  Despite all this, the album is generally viewed as their most cohesive maybe because they had to get in session musicians who just did whatever they were told (rather than argue endlessly about it) - the album is also of interest because it's one of the first to feature the Moog synthesiser.  It was very well regarded on release and, if anything, its reputation has increased with time but it didn't set the US charts alight, only getting to #47.  It also points us at a massive snopes.com article as to whether the band replaced David Crosby with a horse on the album cover (allegedly untrue, whilst also quite obviously being literally true).

"Customers also listened to" Buffalo Springfield, Moby Grape, The Lovin' Spoonful and Love - all very much of the age, I believe.  As are The Byrds, but I really quite enjoyed this (certainly more so than I was expecting) - it felt pretty well put together and featured some interesting (but not too mad) sounds which certainly felt to have a legacy to me.  One to check out if you don't know it, I think.

02/06/68 - Fine, but not exactly essential
16/06/68 - Some more sixties nonsense

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