Mr. Mod inquired whether any RTHers had actually heard the “legendary” trax recorded by Neil Young and Rick James, when they were in a band together in the mid-’60s. Well, as it turns out, thanks to a generous RTH inter-library loan from townsman cjdawson, I have — and now you can, too!
According to the liner notes found in The Complete Motown Singles, Vol. 6: 1966, Neil (who had apparently only just joined the band, and had nothing to do with writing either of these tracks) said in 1984: “We went in and recorded five or six nights, and if we needed something, or if they thought we just weren’t strong enough, a couple of Motown singers would walk right in and they’d just *Motown us*. If someone wasn’t confident or didn’t have it, they didn’t say, ‘well, let’s work on this.’ Some guy would come in who had it… and an amazing thing happened… we sounded hot.”
Judge for yourselves.
HVB
thanks for getting these, though! I’ve always been curious.
in “shakey” it says that they were a crossover wet dream because of rick’s soul, and neil white boy twelve string.
this stuff aint bad, but nothin’ to write home to mama about. “hot”? don’t know about that.
wow. the first song has parts that are really close to the cure’s “boys don’t cry”.
the ballad is lovely, but doesn’t express any sentiments we haven’t heard a bazillion times.
They coulda been The Cure of Motown. The verse on that first song was so much like “Boys Don’t Cry”, and then they follow it with a song about crying. Pretty cool. Thanks!
Isn’t Mynah Birds a really bad choice of name when there was already a famous rock group called The Byrds? I mean, it would have been a pretty stupid name even without that, but still….
It’s no more stupid than Art Woods’ english mod band, called the Birds.
My point is that The Byrds were already bigtime when The Mynah Birds were named. This is not true of the other Birds. From AMG:
Disaster struck the band from a completely unexpected quarter — across the Atlantic — at in the spring of 1965, however. Fresh off of their first U.S. hit came a Los Angeles-based quintet called the Byrds. Their debut single, “Mr. Tambourine Man,” released on the newly-established British CBS Records label, was burning up the British charts, and “Leaving Here” by the Birds was left there, on record store shelves (when it was ordered at all). That summer the rival group toured England for the first time, and although the Birds’ manager tried to take legal action, it was to no avail — the spellings were different, and both groups’ claim to the name were about equally good. … The name confusion probably killed whatever chance they had of cracking the English charts, as well as eclipsing their musical virtues for posterity.
I agree, BigSteve. In fact, I think it strongly foreshadows the decisions that led to James’ legal troubles.
didn’t know that about the chronology of Arty Woods’s band!
But still, I suspect that the presence of the word “mynah” in front of the word byrds might have quelled some of the confusion you imagine. nobody at motown seemed to have a problem with it….
I forget where, but I read that Motown gave the OK to The Mynah Birds as a name only after turning down earlier suggestions like “The Lesser Hollies” and “Jack London & The Sparrows, But Shittier”.
ouch.
That was less a comment on the music than the historical context of the name.
Whatta bunch of naysayers. Thanks HVB for putting up these Mynah Bird sides, which have existed only in my imagination for decades. “It’s My Time” is kinda Young Rascals-like and I’m not adverse to the doo-woppy tone of the B-side.
Makes me wish I could justify buying all those Motown singles boxes, I could spend hours of geek-love combing through that stuff.
You’re welcome, Townsman d. The real question is: was it worth the wait? On the old list, we had a thread about rock “holy grails” which was informative. Mine was a major disappointment — I finally tracked down a copy of Harry Vanda and George Young’s “Tales Of Old Grand-dad,” a hard-rockin’ album done under the name “the Marcus Hook Roll Band,” (and featuring the rumored first recorded appearance of Angus and Malcolm on a track or two)… and it pretty much sucked!
It was worth the wait for me. I like hearing Young in different contexts, and I never liked Rick James, so it was good to hear a couple of songs by him with elements I could dig.
I don’t know if any song would be worth a two decades wait but it sounded completely charming coming out of my car cassette mix this afternoon. It’s fun to hear Rick James in a different context, only a decade or so later he’d be recording “You And I”.