I know some of you are touched by the simple, open-wound charms of The Beach Boys’ Love You album. Isn’t part of that album’s appeal the sympathetic vibe you get from a band hanging onto its gifts by a thread?
That’s at the root of my soft spot for The Byrds‘ “Chestnut Mare.” I’m a hard ass about The Byrds’ prime-era work, as some of you know, but I find “Chestnut Mare” most sympathetic. You can tell Roger McGuinn is still trying to catch that elusive sound he’d been chasing during the ups and downs of The Byrds. He’s the last of the original Byrds standing, but he’s not ready to think outside the band structure. Roger’s got a business suit on – just in case – and it’s not clear that everyone in this version of The Byrds makes sense (conga player???), but it’s not quite the season for the band to die.
Musically, I think there’s something to be said for the lack of cohesion and confidence in this performance. I wish the early Byrds could have shown more rough edges and vulnerability. I wish The Byrds had trafficked in more Loser Rock. OK, maybe not, but at least this weird, waning performance allows me to feel something wistful.
What’s your most sympathetic last-ditch effort by a band that’s clearly past its prime?
I think Chestnut Mare is one of the most interesting rock songs ever recorded. For the reasons you mentioned, plus its just SO different. The kind of odd story, combined with Roger’s spoken-word vocal and Clarence White’s nice guitar playing make it stand out from other songs of the era (or any period).
While there are echoes of earlier Byrds songs, this wasn’t a case of McGuinn trying to rehash anything. He’s still shooting for something relevant.
I wouldn’t judge Chestnut Mare from this video, which is literally just the second half of the song. I saw this version of the Byrds (minus the percussionist, i.e., the version with Clarence White) back in the day. I, and most of the audience, had never heard Chestnut Mare before, but it was very impressive, a real show-stopper. Sustained applause. The same thing when I saw McGuinn on the Thunderbyrd tour in 76 or 77. The song just really works live.
I really like the X album Hey Zeus. This was after Billy Zoom had left, and it was right before his replacement Tony Gilkyson left. I would never claim that it’s as good as Wild Gift or anything, but it works for me.
I think it’s the compassion in me, but I prefer the post-Sweetheart Byrds to the classic line-up. I know this just the defiant defend-it-til-I-die side of me, but Untitled is classic in every way to my ears. I’ve said the same for The Beach Boys. Speaking of which…
The Beach Boys (85) is an example that I’ll offer up. It’s mired in 80s gloss and “Getcha Back” is their “Chestnut Mare”.
I’ll also offer up the last “Who” album, Endless Wire. I love Pete and I love his songs. I like the album because it is Pete releasing songs that he’s written and I’ll take it in whatever name he wants to slap on it. I love The Who, but this album clearly doesn’t belong with true Who canon. It should have ended with It’s Hard and been done (some may argue it should have ended with Who Are You). I guess when it takes almost 25 years between albums, plus two less members, well you get the point. I would never admit it, but The Who is past its prime. But I’ll go see them tomorrow if I could…
TB
I’m a big fan of the Jam’s end-of-the-road material, especially the “Move On Up” single. Buckler is completely clueless in Weller’s new soul/pop universe — and even Paul is struggling to play things “properly.” Foxton does the best job pretending he knows what he’s doing, but it’s clear the band, at Weller’s insistence, has set off into bear territory without a compass. Still, for all that, the fish-out-of-water-ness of this late-period music really grabs me. “Move On Up” is strong, but I especially like “Stoned Out Of My Mind,” with Buckler’s stoic paradiddle holding down the extremely un-soulful fort. Heck, I even like “Shopping”!
I’m glad Townspeople are getting what I was trying to get at! Another example for me, as I’ve discussed before, is The Beatles’ Let It, which I feel benefits from its unplanned humility.
The bona fide last Kinks album, To the Bone is mostly new versions of old songs, mostly recorded acoustic in the studio. It’s one of those sad quasi-Unplugged albums made by a band not famous enough anymore to get on the actual MTV Unplugged. But I think there’s some really bittersweet renditions of songs like “Don’t Forget to Dance,” “Village Green Preservation Society” and “See My Friends” that sound like Ray and Dave are coming to terms with their legacy, and all the ways they were unable to live up to it. Also, the rendition of “Waterloo Sunset” that’s only on the UK version of the album is in some ways my favorite interpretation of my favorite song.
I also like “Chestnut Mare” a lot. To me it’s the symbolic end for the Byrds. I also would like to nominate two songs by Gene Clark which I have on a comp called Flying High, “One In A Million” & “She’s The Kind of Girl” that were actually done by the original Byrds lineup in 1970. They sound like what would have happened if that original lineup stayed together.
I would also put “Come Dancing” & “Don’t Forget To Dance” by the Kinks, which were their final Top 40 hits, in this catagory, especially since although they weren’t “Waterloo Sunset”, they were both unlike the AOR metal sound they were into at this period.
Big Star Third. My least favorite of the three but a fitting last gasp.
I’m also torn between Some Girls and Tattoo You.
By the time of Trompe Le Monde The Pixies were barely speaking to one another, but it’s by far my favorite album of theirs.
Also, it may not wind up being the end of their recorded career, but Blur’s Think Tank has a melancholy, sad edge to it, particularly the last track “Battery in Your Leg,” which is also the only song on the album Graham Coxon plays on.
Keep ’em coming! By the way, one of these “last-ditch” efforts need not be a band’s actual last album or record made together but a record made as if they were pulling together for one final shot at doing something special. As cdm pointed out, Some Girls through Tattoo You can qualify. The last 20 or 30 years of Stones albums, depending on when you stopped caring, may be seen as them cruising along, but there are a few albums on which it sounds like they pulled together. I honestly like the single “Mixed Emotions” in this last-ditch effort way.
Beside the Stones, XTC is another band could be seen as having made multiple last-ditch records, with Mummer and that first Apple Venus “comeback” album being my faves. Despite coming up with a handful of other worthwhile songs, they should have called it a day after each of those records, if you ask me.
Speaking of the Pixies, I know their appeal escapes a lot of Townspeople, but I nevertheless strongly recommend the documentary about their reunion tour, Loudquietloud. That movie says so much about the tolls of cult fame, from the financial and emotional fallout to the gingerly passive-aggressive behavior. Everyone in that band has some amount of shrapnel, and the reunion takes some very interesting left turns. I think the dynamics we talk about on RTH are in full display in the film.
I’m lukewarm on the Pixies but I liked that documentary too. Especially the parts with that obsessed high school fan girl.
Well, Mod, the Byrds had plenty of vulnerability: listen to Gene Clark’s songs (he was already examining the pitfalls of fame and fortune long before anyone else). And for rough edges, there’s this song called “Eight Miles High.”
I think the problem may be that the Byrds didn’t show off all of their talent on one song, let alone one album. That makes for a lot of cool deep cuts, which is why they always get high rankings.
Dr. John, “Eight Miles High” is a great, compact, unified single. I didn’t mean rough edges as in “tough” or “ballsy,” which that song has in spades. I meant rough edges like having that Clarence White guy play one style and in one tonal range while McGuinn’s trying to do something else and the rhythm section is going in yet another direction. Those White-era Byrds albums sound amateurish or ramshackle, in the case of “Chestnut Mare,” in pretty cool way. That song seems to set the template for what Tom Petty and Mike Campbell set out to do in making that Mudcrutch album. Maybe they should have added a conga player:)
I like George Harrison’s truly last ditch effort Brainwashed album.
This is one of the things I adore about the sound of those later Byrds albums: the interplay between Clarence and Roger. It shows really well when their playing the earlier hits on the live material. That classic Byrds 12-string juxtaposed against Clarence’s chicken-picking country is amazing to me. It’s like a power struggle between two leads with two very different styles.
TB
Mod, you bring up an interesting question: what are other examples of “ramshackle rock” before the punk era? Red Krayola, perhaps?
The Byrds, like The Beach Boys, were just not made for the 1970’s. Chestnut Mare is a song I like, but Lover Of The Bayou could have been their “last” song and I would have been fine.
I like the two Badfinger records from the late 70’s and early 80’s
Wings’ Back To The Egg was after their golden era but a step up from the prior two
Man, this is closely related to your thing about liking Max’s Kansas City, and Other Public Uncomfortable Moments by Lou Reed. This video is odd and odd, and bears little resemblance to the small bit of Byrds stuff with which I am familiar. Does this carry into performances that are awkward for other reasons? Meds or amputations or psychoses or whatever? No thanks, generally, to this concept as a genre…
Even though I love the Byrds, even the late iterations of the band, I’ve always had mixed feelings about Clarence White playing tasty licks throughout every song no matter what else is going on. He’s a good player, but he does go on.
BigSteve says:
I’ve always had mixed feelings about Clarence White playing tasty licks throughout every song no matter what else is going on. He’s a good player, but he does go on.
I say:
WE REACH!
Slocum’s right, there’s something really off about the Byrds video at the top that I can’t get past. It’s a combination of that murky background and the band’s overall Look. Especially their facial hair and his suit-and-crazy-beard combo. Check out :30 – :37. Look at his eyes! I’m getting a Manson Family Band vibe or something, which is probably unfair, but it is what it is and I would not want to be in a van that ran out of gas outside a farm where this version of The Byrds was living.
jungleland, I’m a fan of Back To The Egg, too. I’d say underrated and not at all a bad way for Wings to go out, all things considered, but there might be too much swagger (or what counts for swagger for McCartney) on that album to qualify as “sympathetic” I guess.
Wings had a “golden era?” who knew?
i agree with BigSteve about Clarence White, and I also think the drummer’s Keith-Moon-isms show remarkably little grasp of the song’s demands.
“half smiles of the decomposed” or whatever it was called, by GBV, is a good example of a last ditch that just doesn’t speak to me in the least.
pavement’s “terror twilight” is an admirable stab at continuing to stoke the fires…
so is “drama,” by Yes, a strong effort that has the band sounding leaner and newer than they had when they were young men. the formula: turn the treble up on the bass, use flangers instead of reverb, and address sci-fi themes in your lyrics instead of tolkein-esque ones.
it was only three short years later that they would add the van halen-esque guitar of trevor rabin to that formula for “90125,” an album that falls into another category altogether: the “first ditch effort,” which is a *re-union* album, rather than a continuance, that has a band trying to sound like their old selves while also sounding extremely up-to-date.
Is Golden Earring’s career a last ditch effort?
“I also think the drummer’s Keith-Moon-isms show remarkably little grasp of the song’s demands. “
Any slack for him because he invented the B brender? It’s a pretty cool device…
yes Wings had a golden era. (73-76)
Band On The Run
Venus & Mars
Wings At The Speed Of Sound
Wings Over America (live LP)
I’ll agree with you, Jungle, about the “golden era”. Even though I’m not huge fan of Speed of Sound. I feel that Red Rose Speedway is underrated and I actually like Wild Life more than anyone I know, but the “band” didn’t hit its highest peak until Band On The Run. Venus and Mars is decent, but it’s all downhill from there. There moments for me, but on the whole, never a complete album…
TB
lately david, you start by saying you think Wings had a golden era, but then the rest of your comment describes spottiness throughout it.
and didn’t both agree that “back to the egg” is a good album too? there’s only one album between your golden era and “egg”: London Town. And that’s not so appreciably worse than the others that it brings a golden era to a grinding halt.
i think wings has a few good songs on each album. and if there’s a trajectory that includes a peak, it’s not noticeably higher, or long enough to constitute an ‘era.’
lately david, you start by saying you think Wings had a golden era, but then the rest of your comment describes spottiness throughout it.
and didn’t both agree that “back to the egg” is a good album too? there’s only one album between your golden era and “egg”: London Town. And that’s not so appreciably worse than the others that it brings a golden era to a grinding halt.
i think wings has a few good songs on each album. and if there’s a trajectory that includes a peak, it’s not noticeably higher than the rest (that’s the “golden” part), or long enough (that’s the “era” part), to differentiate itself from the rest of their output as a “golden era.”
I am also a fan of “back to the egg”, I don’t know if I can analyze it so much.
I’ll go out on a limb and mention an album I’ve foisted before here: The Special AKA, “In The Studio”. It’s such a stylistic departure, the lineup is pretty different, and even the band name was changed. The ska, and the party, is missing. I didn’t care for it for eons. But I kept coming back to it, and at one point I realized that the album was maintaining a level of interest for me that went way deeper than the occasional desire to hear “Sock it to ’em JB” or “You’re wondering now”.
There are deep R&B grooves and Afro-beat influences, the cool, smokey organ of “Alcohol”, the sarcastic and pitiful “what I like most about you is your girlfriend”, all of which is seemingly dwarfed by the ebullient “Free Nelson Mandela”. Uneven? Yes. But I think there is determination and sophistication that carries it all through.
I didn’t care for this album at all, at first, I was sticking with the single. But it was a real grower for me and I wish I had my copy at hand right now!
to recall a recent thread: “morrison hotel” and “LA Woman” are both pretty admirable last ditch attempts after the drop in quality on “waiting for the sun” and the increased dreck-iness of “soft parade.”