Gram Parsons:Classic or dud?

I like me some International Submarine Band.

i like sweetheart of the rodeo

I have it on excellent authority that when I was four years old my favorite records were Sweetheart of the Rodeo and John Wesley Harding.

i think the grievous angel love is probably colored by the title track (because who doesn't love it?). and also maybe just its retroactive aura of impending doom. but i totally agree that gp is superior.

the burritos live disc that came out a while back on amoeba is worth getting, but who the fuck decided on the billing, jeez

Hot Burrito nr 2 is my favourite song of the moment FUCK. such an awesome song. cant listen to the whole album all the way through as i am not a country girl at heart.

i can't get w/ people who would say 'dud'

so classic it hurts

gram's the king of heartbreak

whatever that means

a grand piano made entirely of smack

this old earthquake's gonna leave me in the poor house

sin city is the best song i've listened to all year

<3 his cover of "to love somebody" so much...

i can't get w/ people who would say 'dud'

― mark cl, Thursday, May 7, 2009 11:14 PM (Yesterday) Bookmark Suggest Ban Permalink

so classic it hurts

― mark cl, Thursday, May 7, 2009 11:14 PM (Yesterday) Bookmark

word, esp the first part

Dud. I have FBB's'Gilded Palace...' and the one after it on a single CD, and well, I don't know, it's just too *country* for me. The press would have us believe all this stuff about creating a 'New American Music'. These two albums contain some fairly pleasant country-rock, but there is such a high percentage of the worst kind of trad, mawkish old country in there too, that this claim seems absurd.
He ruined the Byrds too - although I guess it's ultimately McGuinn's fault for letting in turds like Skip Battin afterwards.

― Dr. C, Wednesday, March 14, 2001 7:00 PM (8 years ago) Bookmark

fuck you imo

still feeling blue didn't do shit and we'll sweep out the ashes was too ragged and then BOOM a song for you and i'm rapt and will listen to anything with this man's name on it

i mean i own mad hank williams and conway twitty and patsy cline and david allen coe and shit but the fiddles on still feeling blue are so fuckin trebly i can't even really listen. a song for you on is the best country soul record ever made tho.

still feeling blue is all about the pedal steel

hoos u heard $1000 Wedding?

hell yes i have and it can't be fucked with imo

velko ty for the correction i totally thought those were fiddles all this time and i feel a douche

and now hoos still feel a douche.

xxpost Mekons did an awesome cover of that song btw

the back-to-back jams of still feeling blue & we'll sweep out the ashes do it for me every time

hoos listen to 'sin city'

or 'return of the grevious angel' god this guy is so good

so guys gp or grevious angel? i think i like gp. what i really like tho is the 2-disc sacred hearts anthology that basically has both these albums + all kinds of stuff from ISB/byrds/FBB

^^^OTM
Best present I got last year (thank u gf). Want a Nudie suit (gf protests).

haha me too

I checked out this guy's records from the library and was surprised by how shitty they were. I was led to believe that this guy was some kind of genius.

wife says i play too much gram parsons

do u like country music? xp

anyways so i've also been reading 'twenty thousand roads' by david meyer, prob the most detailed bio of gram that i've come across (tho i know there are others out there). really fascinating book. guy has an irrational hatred for the eagles (then again i suppose most people do) and has a few quirks but all in all it's a really interesting and entertaining read. especially enjoyed the nellcote/stones stuff during the recording of 'exile'

through tons of interviews what meyer conveys so well is the effect gp had on everyone around him - so many people were like 'yea i didn't really think much about country music, thought it was mostly for hicks until gram sat me down and played me a bunch of songs'

*checks amazon*
ooh, might want to get that. i'm not that familiar with gp apart from the musics

like a lot of musician bios i never read them start to finish - i just bounce around and pick up chapters here and there, but it's really good. there's also a big section in that back w/ a suggested discography of country records gram loved, albums by his contemporaries, and later bands that were influenced by him

do u like country music? xp

Yeah, I do actually-- well, the old stuff. Not whatever passes for country these days.

what didn't u like about parsons?

yeah i enjoyed that book a lot, tho my major takeaway was that gram had a totally weird and fucked up life.

this is true

I can't really get into Parsons because what I've heard sounds like some rich kid who stumbled upon country music and wanted to adopt it.

ha u get that from his music or from reading that he came from a rich family?

b/c i don't really know how someone could tell from listening any particular song that he came from wealth

more "steeped in" than "stumbled upon" imo

Something about the guy's music sounds makes me think of posturing-- mimicry and affectation. This is also true of the Rolling Stones, but for reasons I can't really articulate, I can let them slide.

this prob gets way into issues of authenticity that go over my head but imo musicians we often think of as 'authentic' wrt to any type of music (and perhaps ESPECIALLY country music in this case) there are all kinds of mimicry and affectation.

even hank williams who people might take as the prime example of a'pure' authentic classic country music was a PERFORMER, who's borrowing from a tradition and emulating aspects of that tradition, mimicking it, using affectation

authenticity is a messy business imo and i don't necessarily have the theoretical savvy to unpack it, but i do know it's messy. stones affected and mimicked and borrowed like crazy but i would never say they're not an authentic rock n roll band

I don't care that he actually was rich kid who stumbled upon country, but sounding like one is a dealbreaker. If he'd made it past 30, who knows.

like i said i don't know how u can glean from his actual songs that he's a rich kid?

He sounds like a wuss so I blame the money.

there was a tribute album that came out like 20 years ago that was pretty good, def one of the very few of these trendy bands covering canonical artists comps that I would reach for over and over

“On his head an amphetamine crown”

What would I keep? These.

"How Much I've Lied" is on there twice.

Good -- I can slip "Hippie Boy" in there.

No "Sin City," Alfred?? I couldn't do without all of Gilded Palace, Grievous Angel, parts of several others--thought some of the GP material worked better on that live album Hoos cheers for upthread (the Fallen Angels being pretty much the GP/GA studio band). He had this little, crinkly, quirky voice---a bit teary here, sneery there, but good with the succinct phrasing, occasional Lou Reedy dreams sliding by---think he mostly knew he was better with other voices, especially stepping back just a little, so that less experienced Emmylou had to step up, or sound like it.
This is a handy overview, with his voice mixed back up on the Byrds tracks, before Sony did that, I think:
https://www.discogs.com/Gram-Parsons-Warm-Evenings-Pale-Mornings-Bottled-Blues-1963-1973/release/3275973

Chris Hillman is the voice you hear in Hippie Boy

https://coolspod.com/products/shopcoolpod-3d-custom-gram-parsons-nudie-suit-apparel-v2-1

“Yes you loved me
And you sold my clothes”

that Live 1973 album is such a lovely thing, i listen to it a lot

shit, i don't listen to it enough!

no one has asked for it, and this would convince zero juries of my peers, but i have to give my excuse anyway:

i have his GP and Grievous Angel LPs, along with Notorious Byrd Brothers, and i played the crap out of them. but 1) when i moved i left all my LPs behind except for like 20. GP and Grievous Angel are among the chosen.

But my terrible shame is that I'm not sure I've even heard the Live 1973 album at all. gonna fix that tonight.

*tip of the hat*

it has a lot of warmth imo
and i love that version of “we’ll sweep out the ashes”

Thanks for the rec! Listening now and Lordy Gram struck some kind of gold getting Emmylou for backing vocals.

there’s an alternate reality where the Grateful Dead have Emmylou instead of Donna.

it’s stunning to realize emmylou had only recorded her first album just a few years prior, she’s still so new and young but so incredible already… her harmonies with gram are lightyears above what he’d done w hillman

i mean, apples and oranges really but still

His death was an absolute classic.