Gram Parsons:Classic or dud?

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.

well yea i guess. gp wasn't a hardman country singer, nor was that what he was trying to be obv

obv

He sounds like he's going through puberty all the time. With a backing singer he's often forgivable but anything he's flying solo on sounds like a fourteen-year-old's demo recordings. Oh, oh, he sure couldn't sing. Now his writing, on the other hand... "$1000 Wedding" and "Sin City" alone would place him in the history books, and there's any number of good songs that in other mouths are devastating. But as a performer, overrated: essential for those who think Costello's "Almost Blue" is an essential album. For all the genre-hopper mythology it all sounds just so straight, so suburban. Maybe if he didn't have some "cosmic vision" to play out and he'd just let himself bring it instead of approaching it like a religious convert who needs to convert the rest of us heathens. And to play him out as the sole father of country-rock? Just wrong. Buck Owens, for example, both rocked harder and was more authentically country than at least three Gram Parsonses put together. But Buck didn't party with the Stones and overdose himself while he still had his baby fat, so he doesn't get the posthumous girl.

Whatever all that's supposed to mean.

staggerlee = chris hillman sock

yeah, that's the kind of paragraph you stumble upon years later and realize how completely naive and off the mark you were.

His voice and songs fuckin' break my heart. And that's all that matters to me.

http://ecx.images-amazon.com/images/I/61tWL7qrO5L._SL500_AA300_.jpg

^^^ this is really, really great. i think i actually like it better than all the records.

its well mastered too so it sounds really warm and organic, all the albums always felt like they were recorded in a sardine can to me.

"This DJ tried to ask me how it felt to be leading the Progressive Country movement, I told him we played Regressive Country." - emmylou

<33333333333

ohh i didn't know about that, and now i need it.

I've never really dug deep into Parsons catalog but I gotta say that the Hank Williams inversion in Hippie Boy is pretty clever

I didn't hear Sweetheart of the Rodeo until long after I'd gotten familiar with Bakersfield's country scene and it just sounded like half-assed shit to me. maybe I would feel differently about it now.

i much prefer ISB, burrito bros, and solo parsons to sweetheart of the rodeo, unless it's the parson-sung originals. mcguinn isn't convincing on that album, imo

yep. solo parsons > burritos >>> sweetheart.

sweetheart is a totally sweet record

I've never really dug deep into Parsons catalog but I gotta say that the Hank Williams inversion in Hippie Boy is pretty clever

I thought that was a Chris Hillman track?

Got Burrito?

Buritto no 2 vs Rundgren's Hello it's me

Latter may be more smooth but former has the energy

Is "Oh Lord, grant me speed" a reference to speed.....or speed?

That line is from the bible.

i promise that i'm going to go back and read the other 102 posts in this thread, but wtf is up with the first three posts. holy shit, a criticism of G.P. /Grievous Angel that "parsons's voice works much better in tandem with another singer", without even mentioning that those albums were basically duets with emmylou fucking harris?

it's been a very gram parsons weekend. i have been fond of his byrds output for a while now, and knew the 'hot burritos' on the first flying burrito bros, but i had never really set aside a bunch of consecutive time to focus on his albums with the bros and his solo albums. they are so, so good. i love that feeling of hearing a personal instant classic, knowing i'm going to hear these songs a ton of more times.

Early ILX is pretty much ChallopsCity.

That’s the place for you and me

Someone gave me two boxes of albums a few days ago. Only kept about 20, the best thing being a late-'70s reissue of the Early Years compilation (slightly different cover than the original).

Saw the bio Twenty Thousand Roads in The Strand this week, thinking about reading it. Either that or Will Birch’s Nick Lowe bio.

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.